Quotes from James Joyce

Your mind will give back exactly what you put into it.

She was alone and still, gazing out to sea; and when she felt his presence and the worship of his eyes her eyes turned to him in quiet sufferance of his gaze, without shame or wantonness.

Coffined thoughts around me, in mummycases, embalmed in spice of words. Thoth, god of libraries, a birdgod, moonycrowned. And I heard the voice of that Egyptian highpriest. In painted chambers loaded with tilebooks. They are still. Once quick in the brains of men. Still: but an itch of death is in them, to tell me in my ear a maudlin tale, urge me to wreak their will.

Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies.

His mind seemed older than theirs: it shone coldly on their strifes and happiness and regrets like a moon upon a younger earth.

He is cured by faith who is sick of fate.

It was hard work-a hard life-but now that she was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable life.

It is a curious thing, do you know, Cranly said dispassionately, how your mind is supersaturated with the religion in which you say you disbelieve.

The barometer of his emotional nature was set for a spell of riot.

I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake and perhaps as long as eternity too.

It was very big to think about everything and everywhere. Only God could do that.

What was after the universe? Nothing. But was there anything round the universe to show where it stopped before the nothing place began?

God spoke to you by so many voices but you would not hear.

I think he died for me, she answered.

But Noodynaady's actual ingrate tootle is of come into the garner mauve and thy nice are stores of morning and buy me a bunch of iodines.

An exquisite dulcet epithalame of most mollificative suadency for juveniles amatory whom the odoriferous flambeaus of the paranymphs have escorted to the quadrupedal proscenium of connubial communion.

Jesus was a bachelor and never lived with a woman. Surely living with a woman is one of the most difficult things a man has to do, and he never did it.

White roses and red roses: those were beautiful colours to think of. And the cards for first place and second place and third place were beautiful colours too: pink and cream and lavender. Lavender and cream and pink roses were beautiful to think of. Perhaps a wild rose might be like those colours and he remembered the song about the wild rose blossoms on the little green place. But you could not have a green rose. But perhaps somewhere in the world you could.

If anyone thinks that I amn't divine He'll get no free drinks when I'm making the wine But have to drink water and wish it were plain That I make when the wine becomes water again.

No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.

But though there were different names for God in all the different languages in the world and God understood what all the people who prayed said in their different languages still God remained always the same God and God's real name was God.

Are you not weary of ardent ways? Tell no more of enchanted days.

Deal with him, Hemingway!