Quotes from James Joyce

Across the page the numbers moved in grave morrice, in the mummery of their letters, wearing quaint caps of squares and cubes.

He comes into the world God knows how, walks on the water, gets out of his grave and goes up off the Hill of Howth. What drivel is this?

History is a nightmare from which we are trying to awaken.

Our civilization, bequeathed to us by fierce adventurers, eaters of meat and hunters, is so full of hurry and combat, so busy about many things which perhaps are of no importance, that it cannot but see something feeble in a civilization which smiles as it refuses to make the battlefield the test of excellence.

There is no heresy or philosophy so abhorrent to the church as a human being.

We are bound together by the sympathy of our antipathies.

You forget that the kingdom of heaven suffers violence: and the kingdom of heaven is like a woman.

Shut your eyes and see.

Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.

And then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes.

His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that in some dim past, whether in life or revery, he had heard their tale before.

History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

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.

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.

He wanted to cry quietly but not for himself: for the words, so beautiful and sad, like music.

All Moanday, Tearday, Wailsday, Thumpsday, Frightday, Shatterday.

Your battles inspired me - not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead.

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

Why is it that words like these seem dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.

The sea, the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea.

and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.

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.

Her lips touched his brain as they touched his lips, as though they were a vehicle of some vague speech and between them he felt an unknown and timid preasure, darker than the swoon of sin, softer than sound or odor.