Quotes by James Joyce

Men are governed by lines of intellect - women: by curves of emotion.

I fear those big words which make us so unhappy.

A nation is the same people living in the same place.

Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America.

Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art it is the part the schools cannot recognize.

Satan, really, is the romantic youth of Jesus re-appearing for a moment.

Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.

Think youre escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.

I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.

“I am, a stride at a time. A very short space of time through very short time of space.”

“Cant bring back time. Like holding water in your hand.”

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

“You made me confess the fears that I have. But I will tell you also what I do not fear. I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake and perhaps as long as eternity too.”

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

“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.”

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