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James Joyce Quotes
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James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist, short story writer, poet, teacher, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde and is regarded as one of the most influential and important authors of the 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses , a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, most famously stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story collection Dubliners , and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Finnegans Wake . His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, his published letters and occasional journalism.

Joyce was born in Dublin into a middle-class family. A brilliant student, he briefly attended the Christian Brothers-run O'Connell School before excelling at the Jesuit schools Clongowes and Belvedere, despite the chaotic family life imposed by his father's unpredictable finances. He went on to attend University College Dublin.

In 1904, in his early twenties, Joyce emigrated to continental Europe with his partner Nora Barnacle. They lived in Trieste, Paris, and Zürich. Although most of his adult life was spent abroad, Joyce's fictional universe centres on Dublin and is populated largely by characters who closely resemble family members, enemies and friends from his time there. Ulysses in particular is set with precision in the streets and alleyways of the city. Shortly after the publication of Ulysses, he elucidated this preoccupation somewhat, saying, "For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal." Wikipedia  

✵ 2. February 1882 – 13. January 1941
James Joyce photo
James Joyce: 191 quotes33 likes

James Joyce Quotes

“When I hear the word "stream" uttered with such a revolting primness, what I think of is urine and not the contemporary novel. And besides, it isn't new, it is far from the dernier cri. Shakespeare used it continually, much too much in my opinion, and there's Tristram Shandy, not to mention the Agamemnon.”

James Joyce

Said in conversation with Frederic Prokosch and quoted in Prokosch's Voices: A Memoir (1983), "At Sylvia’s." Joyce was replying to Prokosch's statement that Molly Bloom’s monologue in Ulysses was written as a stream of consciousness. "Molly Bloom was a down-to-earth lady" said Joyce. "She would never have indulged in anything so refined as a stream of consciousness."

“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.”

James Joyce

"A Suave Philosophy," in Daily Express, Dublin (6 February 1903), printed in James Joyce: Occasional, Critical and Political Writing (2002) edited by Kevin Barry [Oxford University Press, <small> ISBN 0-192-83353-7</small>], p. 67

“This is the moment which I call epiphany. First we recognise that the object is one integral thing, then we recognise that it is an organised composite structure, a thing in fact: finally, when the relation of the parts is exquisite, when the parts are adjusted to the special point, we recognise that it is that thing which it is. Its soul, its whatness, leaps to us from the vestment of its appearance. The soul of the commonest object, the structure of which is so adjusted, seems to us radiant. The object achieves its epiphany.”

James Joyce book Stephen Hero

Stephen Hero (1944)
Context: Now for the third quality. For a long time I couldn't make out what Aquinas meant. He uses a figurative word (a very unusual thing for him) but I have solved it. Claritas is quidditas. After the analysis which discovers the second quality the mind makes the only logically possible synthesis and discovers the third quality. This is the moment which I call epiphany. First we recognise that the object is one integral thing, then we recognise that it is an organised composite structure, a thing in fact: finally, when the relation of the parts is exquisite, when the parts are adjusted to the special point, we recognise that it is that thing which it is. Its soul, its whatness, leaps to us from the vestment of its appearance. The soul of the commonest object, the structure of which is so adjusted, seems to us radiant. The object achieves its epiphany.

“For that (the rapt one warns) is what papyr is meed of, made of, hides and hints and misses in prints. Till ye finally (though not yet endlike) meet with the acquaintance of Mister Typus, Mistress Tope and all the little typtopies. Filstup. So you need hardly spell me how every word will be bound over to carry three score and ten toptypsical readings throughout the book of Doublends Jined (may his forehead be darkened with mud who would sunder!) till Daleth, mahomahouma, who oped it closeth thereof the. Dor.”

James Joyce book Finnegans Wake

20.10-18
Finnegans Wake (1939)

“Around us fear, descending
Darkness of fear above”

James Joyce book Pomes Penyeach

On The Beach At Fontana, p. 14
Pomes Penyeach (1927)

“Can you nei do her, numb? asks Dolph, suspecting the answer know. Oikkont, ken you, ninny? asks Kev, expecting the answer guess.”

James Joyce book Finnegans Wake

286.25-27
Finnegans Wake (1939)

“Seraphim,
The lost hosts awaken”

James Joyce book Pomes Penyeach

Nightpiece, p. 17
Pomes Penyeach (1927)

“Every age must look for its sanction to its poetry and philosophy, for in these the human mind, as it looks backward or forward, attains to an eternal state.”

James Joyce

"James Clarence Mangan" (1902)

“Boor, bond of thy herd,
Tonight stretch full by the fire!”

James Joyce book Pomes Penyeach

Tilly, p. 9
Pomes Penyeach (1927)

“Thaw! The last word in stolentelling! (424.35)”

James Joyce book Finnegans Wake

(Finnegans Wake ends with the word 'the')
Finnegans Wake (1939)

“She dealt with moral problems the way a cleaver deals with meat: and in this case she had made up her mind.”

James Joyce book Dubliners

"The Boarding House"
Dubliners (1914)

“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.”

James Joyce

To Djuna Barnes, in an interview published in Vanity Fair (March 1922)

“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?”

James Joyce book Finnegans Wake

Source: Finnegans Wake (1939), p. 299

“I want to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Said in conversation with Frank Budgen, Zurich, 1918, as told by Budgen http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/JoyceColl/JoyceColl-idx?type=turn&amp;entity=JoyceColl.BudgenUlysses.p0092&amp;id=JoyceColl.BudgenUlysses&amp;isize=M&amp;pview=hide in his book James Joyce and the Making of &quot;Ulysses&quot; (1934), ch. IV

“Your lean jaws grin with. Lash
Your itch and quailing, nude greed of the flesh.”

James Joyce book Pomes Penyeach

A Memory Of The Players In A Mirror At Midnight, p. 19
Pomes Penyeach (1927)

“If I gave it all up immediately, I'd lose my immortality. I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality.”

James Joyce

Joyce's reply for a request for a plan of Ulysses, as quoted in James Joyce (1959) by Richard Ellmann

“How soft, how sad his voice is ever calling,
Ever unanswered, and the dark rain falling”

James Joyce book Pomes Penyeach

She Weeps Over Rahoon, p. 12
Pomes Penyeach (1927)

“To say that a great genius is half-mad, while recognizing his artistic prowess, is worth as much as saying that he was rheumatic, or that he suffered from diabetes. Madness, in fact, is a medical expression to which a balanced critic should pay no more heed than he would to the accusation of heresy brought by the theologian, or to the accusation of immorality brought by the public prosecutor.”

James Joyce

"Realism and Idealism in English Literature (Daniel Defoe - William Blake)," lecture, Università Popolare, Trieste (February 27-28, 1912), printed in James Joyce: Occasional, Critical and Political Writing (2002) edited by Kevin Barry [Oxford University Press, <small> ISBN 0-192-83353-7</small>], p. 179

“Does nobody understand?”

James Joyce

Last words (January 1941)