Quotes from James Joyce

The shortest way to Tara is via Holyhead

You suspect, Stephen retorted with a sort of a half laugh, that I may be important because I belong to the fauborgh Saint Patrice called Ireland for short. —I would go a step farther, Mr Bloom insinuated. —But I suspect, Stephen interrupted, that Ireland must be important because it belongs to me.

His soul had arisen from the grave of boyhood, spurning her grave-clothes. Yes! Yes! Yes! He would create proudly out of the freedom and power of his soul, as the great artificer whose name he bore, a living thing, new and soaring and beautiful, impalpable, imperishable.

Ever he would wander, selfcompelled, to the extreme limit of his cometary orbit, beyond the fixed stars and variable suns and telescopic planets, astronomical waifs and strays, to the extreme boundary of space, passing from land to land, among peoples, amid events.

His brain was simmering and bubbling within the cracking tenement of the skull.Flames burst forth from his skull like a corolla,shrieking like voices: -Hell! Hell! Hell! Hell! Hell!

In the wide land under a tender lucid evening sky, a cloud drifting westward amid a pale green sea of heaven, they stood together, children that had erred.

Lips kissed, kissing kissed.

First you must take your degree. Set that before you as your first aim. Then, little by little, you will see your way. I mean in every sense, your way in life and in thinking.

Unsheathe your dagger definitions; Horseness is the Whatness of All Horse...

Dust webbed the window and the showtrays. Dust darkened the toiling fingers with their vulture nails. Dust slept on dull coils of bronze and silver, lozenges of cinnabar, on rubies, leprous and winedark stones.

She asked me why I never came, said she had heard all sorts of stories about me. This was only to gain time. Asked me, was I writing poems? About whom? I asked her. This confused her more and I felt sorry and mean. Turned off that valve at once and opened the spiritual-heroic refrigerating apparatus, invented and patented in all countries by Dante Alighieri...

They listened feeling that flow endearing flow over skin limbs human heart soul spine.

Knock knock. War's where! Which war? The Twwinns. Knock knock. Woos without! Without what? An apple. Knock knock.

Answer: They war loving, they love laughing, they laugh weeping, they weep smelling, they smell smiling, they smile hating, they hate thinking, they think feeling, they feel tempting, they tempt daring, they dare waiting, they wait taking, they take thanking, they thank seeking, (...)

Jesus Christ, with His divine understanding of every understanding of our human nature, understood that not all men were called to the religious life, that by far the vast majority were forced to live in the world, and, to a certain extent, for the world.

The spirit of quarrelsome comradeship which he had observed lately in his rival had not seduced Stephen from his habits of quiet obedience. He mistrusted the turbulence and doubted the sincerity of such comradeship which seemed to him a sorry anticipation of manhood.

Ah, poor dogsbody! Here lies poor dogsbody's body.

he met the eyes of others with unanswering eyes, for he felt that the spirit of beauty had folded him round like a mantle and that in revery at least he had been acquainted with nobility.

Sleep, where in the waste is the wisdom?

Never back a woman you defend, never get quit of a friend on whom you depend, never make face to a foe till he's rife and never get stuck to another man's pfife.

Puck Mulligan footed featly, trilling: I HARDLY HEAR THE PURLIEU CRY OR A TOMMY TALK AS I PASS ONE BY BEFORE MY THOUGHTS BEGIN TO RUN ON F. M'CURDY ATKINSON, THE SAME THAT HAD THE WOODEN LEG AND THAT FILIBUSTERING FILIBEG THAT NEVER DARED TO SLAKE HIS DROUTH, MAGEE THAT HAD THE CHINLESS MOUTH. BEING AFRAID TO MARRY ON EARTH THEY MASTURBATED FOR ALL THEY WERE WORTH. Jest on. Know thyself.

Begin to forget it. It will remember itself from every sides, with all gestures in each our word. Today's truth, tomorrow's trend.

Alone, quite alone. You have no fear of that. And you know what that word means? Not only to be separate from all others but to have not even one friend. —I will take the risk, said Stephen. —And not to have any one person, Cranly said, who would be more than a friend, more even than the noblest and truest friend a man ever had.

And yet and yet! That strained look on her face! A gnawing sorrow is there all the time. Her very soul is in her eyes and she would give worlds to be in the privacy of her own familiar chamber where, giving way to tears, she could have a good cry and relieve her pentup feelings. Though not too much because she knew how to cry nicely before the mirror. You are lovely, Gerty, it said.