James Joyce Quotes

“Pain, that was not yet the pain of love, fretted his heart. Silently, in a dream she had come to him after her death, her wasted body within its loose brown graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath, that had bent upon him, mute, reproachful, a faint odour of wetted ashes.”
― James Joyce, James Joyce: Collection of All Complete Classics Works

“I wanted then to have now concluded. Nightdress was never. Hence this. But tomorrow is a new day will be. Past was is today. What now is will then tomorrow as now was be past yester.”
― James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Collection

“There was cold sunlight outside the window.”
― James Joyce, Delphi Collected Works of James Joyce

“Universally that person’s acumen is esteemed very little perceptive concerning whatsoever matters are being held as most profitably by mortals with sapience endowed to be studied who is ignorant of that which the most in doctrine erudite and certainly by reason of that in them high mind’s ornament deserving of veneration constantly maintain when by general consent they affirm that other circumstances being equal by no exterior splendour is the prosperity of a nation more efficaciously asserted than by the measure of how far forward may have progressed the tribute of its solicitude for that proliferent continuance which of evils the original if it be absent when fortunately present constitutes the certain sign of omnipollent nature’s incorrupted benefaction.”
― James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Collection

“The distinguished scientist Herr Professor Luitpold Blumenduft tendered medical evidence to the effect that the instantaneous fracture of the cervical vertebrae and consequent scission of the spinal cord would, according to the best approved traditions of medical science, be calculated to inevitably produce in the human subject a violent ganglionic stimulus of the nerve centres, causing the pores of the corpora cavernosa to rapidly dilate in such a way as to instantaneously facilitate the flow of blood to that part of the human anatomy known as the penis or male organ resulting in the phenomenon which has been denominated by the faculty a morbid upwards and outwards philoprogenetive erection in articulo mortis per diminutionem capitis.”
― James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Collection

“I”
― James Joyce, The James Joyce Collection

“It was very big to think about everything and everywhere. Only God could do that. He tried to think what a big thought that must be; but he could only think of God. God was God’s name just as his name was Stephen. DIEU was the French for God and that was God’s name too; and when anyone prayed to God and said DIEU then God knew at once that it was a French person that was praying.”
― James Joyce, Delphi Collected Works of James Joyce

“All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad blood, from some bump of combativeness or gland of some kind, erroneously supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag, were very largely a question of the money question which was at the back of everything greed and jealousy, people never knowing when to stop.”
― James Joyce, Delphi Collected Works of James Joyce

“Of course, Mr B. proceeded to stipulate, you must look at both sides of the question. It is hard to lay down any hard and fast rules as to right and wrong but room for improvement all round there certainly is though every country, they say, our own distressful included, has the government it deserves. But with a little goodwill all round. It’s all very fine to boast of mutual superiority but what about mutual equality. I resent violence and intolerance in any shape or form. It never reaches anything or stops anything. A revolution must come on the due instalments plan. It’s a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they live round the corner and speak another vernacular, in the next house so to speak.”
― James Joyce, Delphi Collected Works of James Joyce

“Words which he did not understand he said over and over to himself till he had learned them by heart: and through them he had glimpses of the real world about him.”
― James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Collection

“—God and religion before everything! 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!”
― James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Collection

“To Caesar what is Caesar’s, to God what is God’s. A long look from dark eyes, a riddling sentence to be woven and woven on the church’s looms. Ay.”
― James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Collection

“Some day we shall have to choose between England and Europe.”
― James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Collection

“Introibo ad altare Dei.”
― James Joyce, Delphi Collected Works of James Joyce

“it is as for them saying theres no God I wouldnt give a snap of my two fingers for all their learning why dont they go and create something I often asked him atheists or whatever they call themselves go and wash the cobbles off themselves first then they go howling for the priest and they dying and why why because theyre afraid of hell on account of their bad conscience ah yes I know them well who was the first person in the universe before there was anybody that made it all who ah that they dont know neither do I so there you are they might as well try to stop the sun from rising tomorrow the sun shines for you”
― James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Collection

“itd be much better for the world to be governed by the women in it you wouldnt see women going and [728] killing one another and slaughtering when do you ever see women rolling around drunk like they do or gambling every penny they have and losing it on horses yes because a woman whatever she does she knows where to stop”
― James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Collection

“I suppose she was pious because no man would look at her twice”
― James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Collection

“What in water did Bloom, waterlover, drawer of water, watercarrier, returning to the range, admire? Its universality: its democratic equality and constancy to its nature in seeking its own level:”
― James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Collection

“We can’t change the country. Let us change the subject.”
― James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Collection

“Turks, it’s in the dogma. Because if they didn’t believe they’d go straight to heaven when they die they’d try to live better — at least, so I think.”
― James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Collection

“All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad blood — bump of combativeness or gland of some kind, erroneously supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag, — were very largely a question of the money question which was at the back of everything, greed and jealousy, people never knowing when to stop.”
― James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Collection

“resent violence or intolerance in any shape or form. It never reaches anything or stops anything. A revolution must come on the due instalments plan. It’s a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they live round the corner and speak another vernacular, so to speak.”
― James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Collection

“Everybody gets their own ration of luck, they say.”
― James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Collection

“(He gives up the ghost. A violent erection of the hanged sends gouts of sperm spouting through his death clothes on to the cobblestones. Mrs Bellingham, Mrs Yelverton Barry and the Honourable Mrs Mervy Talboys rush forward with their handkerchiefs to sop it up.)”
― James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Collection

“But this is the point. You die for your country, suppose. (He places his arm on Private Carr’s sleeve.) Not that I wish it for you. But I say: Let my country die for me. Up to the present it has done so. I don’t want it to die. Damn death. Long live life!”
― James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Collection

“All insanity. Patriotism, sorrow for the dead, music, future of the race. To be or not to be. Life’s dream is o’er. End it peacefully. They can live on. (He gazes far away mournfully.) I am ruined. A few pastilles of aconite. The blinds drawn. A letter. Then lie back to rest. (He breathes softly.) No more. I have lived. Fare. Farewell.”
― James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Collection

“Mankind is incorrigible. Sir Walter Raleigh brought from the new world that potato and that weed, the one a killer of pestilence by absorption, the other a poisoner of the ear, eye, heart, memory, will, understanding, all. That is to say, he brought the poison a hundred years before another person whose name I forget brought the food. Suicide. Lies. All our habits. Why, look at our public”
― James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Collection

“May Allah, the Excellent One, your soul this night ever tremendously conserve.”
― James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Collection

“It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born. Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods.”
― James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Collection

“In woman’s womb word is made flesh but in the spirit of the maker all flesh that passes becomes the word that shall not pass away. This is the postcreation. Omnis caro ad te veniet.”
― James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Collection