Jane > Jane's Quotes

“Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.”
― Voltaire

“Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use -- silence, exile, and cunning.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.

from “Araby”
― James Joyce, Dubliners

“A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
― James Joyce, Dubliners

“I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“Love loves to love love.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his memory.”
― James Joyce, The Dead

“Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“Love loves to love love. Nurse loves the new chemist. Constable 14A loves Mary Kelly. Gerty MacDowell loves the boy that has the bicycle. M. B. loves a fair gentlema. Li Chi Han lovey up kissy Cha Pu Chow. Jumbo, the elephant, loves Alice, the elephant. Old Mr Verschole with the ear trumpet loves old Mrs VErschoyle with the turnedin eye. The man in the brown macintosh loves a lady who is dead. His Majesty the King loves Her Majesty the Queen. Mrs Norman W. Tupper loves officer Taylor. You love a certain person. And this person loves that other person because everybody loves somebody but God loves everybody.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“This race and this country and this life produced me, he said. I shall express myself as I am.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“Have read little and understood less.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“[A writer is] a priest of eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life.”
― James Joyce

“He was alone. He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the seaharvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“He did not want to play. He wanted to meet in the real world the unsubstantial image which his soul so constantly beheld. He did not know where to seek it or how, but a premonition which led him on told him that this image would, without any overt act of his, encounter him. They would meet quietly as if they had known each other and had made their tryst, perhaps at one of the gates or in some more secret place. They would be alone, surrounded by darkness and silence: and in that moment of supreme tenderness he would be transfigured.
He would fade into something impalpable under her eyes and then in a moment he would be transfigured. Weakness and timidity and inexperience would fall from him in that magic moment.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“Like the tender fires of stars moments of their life together, that no one knew of or would ever know of, broke upon and illuminated his memory.”
― James Joyce, The Dead

“Read your own obituary notice; they say you live longer. Gives you second wind. New lease of life.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“I've been working hard on [Ulysses] all day," said Joyce.

Does that mean that you have written a great deal?" I said.

Two sentences," said Joyce.

I looked sideways but Joyce was not smiling. I thought of [French novelist Gustave] Flaubert. "You've been seeking the mot juste?" I said.

No," said Joyce. "I have the words already. What I am seeking is the perfect order of words in the sentence.”
― James Joyce

“When I die, Dublin will be written on my heart.”
― James Joyce

“The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails”
― James Joyce

“If Socrates leaves his house today he will find the sage seated on his doorstep. If Judas go forth tonight it is to Judas his steps will tend.’ Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-law. But always meeting ourselves.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“When a man is born...there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“Unsheathe your dagger definitions; Horseness is the Whatness of All Horse...”
― James Joyce

“God and religion before every thing!' Dante cried. 'God and religion before the world.'

Mr Casey raised his clenched fist and brought it down on the table with a crash.

'Very well then,' he shouted hoarsely, 'if it comes to that, no God for Ireland!'

'John! John!' cried Mr Dedalus, seizing his guest by the coat sleeve.

Dante stared across the table, her cheeks shaking. Mr Casey struggled up from his chair and bent across the table towards her, scraping the air from before his eyes with one hand as though he were tearing aside a cobweb.

'No God for Ireland!' he cried, 'We have had too much God in Ireland. Away with God!”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man