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James Joyce Quotes

1882–1941 Ireland

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, short-story writer and poet. He contributed to the modernist movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the twentieth century.

Ireland
Educators
Journalists
Non-fiction authors
Novelists

Also known as: James joyce, Joyce, Joyce, James

Random James Joyce quote

79 quotes

The pity is the public will demand and find a moral in my book — or worse they may take it in some more serious way, and on the honor of a gentleman, there is not one single serious line in it.

He could hear nothing: the night was perfectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent. He felt that he was alone.

Dubliners (1914)

Frail the white rose and frail are
Her hands that gave

Pomes Penyeach (1927)

The sly reeds whisper to the night
A name — her name —

Pomes Penyeach (1927)

My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair?
My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone?

Then all at once I see it and I know at once what it is: epiphany.

Stephen Hero (1944)

Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.

He was not sure what idea he wished to express but the thought that a poetic moment had touched upon him took life within him like an infant hope. He stepped onward bravely.

Dubliners (1914)

Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.

Dubliners (1914)

Imagine my glimpses at that clock as the gropings of a spiritual eye which seeks to adjust its vision to an exact focus. The moment the focus is reached the object is epiphanised.

Stephen Hero (1944)

I think I would know Nora's fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women.

Ah star of evil! star of pain!
Highhearted youth comes not again

Pomes Penyeach (1927)

But toms will till. I know he well.

Finnegans Wake (1939)

One of his sentences, written two months after his last interview with Mrs. Sinico, read: Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse.

Dubliners (1914)

Quoint a quincidence! O.K. Omnius Kollidimus. As Ollover Krumwall sayed when he slepped ueber his grannyamother. Kangaroose feathers. Who in the name of thunder'd ever belevin you were that bolt?

Finnegans Wake (1939)

'Tis as human a little story as paper could well carry (115.36)

Finnegans Wake (1939)

Loveward above the glancing oar

Pomes Penyeach (1927)

The oaks of ald now they lie in peat yet elms leap where askes lay. (4.14-15)

Finnegans Wake (1939)

But all they are all there scraping along to sneeze out a likelihood that will solve and salve life's robulous rebus (12.32-33)

Finnegans Wake (1939)

The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit. (683)

Ulysses (1922)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: James Joyce (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.