James Joyce: Quotes about life

James Joyce was Irish novelist and poet. Explore interesting quotes on life.
James Joyce: 382 quotes33 likes
James Joyce quote: “Life is too short to read a bad book.”

“Life is too short to read a bad book.”

James Joyce

“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.”

James Joyce book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“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.”

James Joyce book Dubliners

"A Little Cloud"
Dubliners (1914)

“Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

“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.”

James Joyce book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“He was alone. He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the seaharvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight.”

James Joyce book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“And if he had judged her harshly? If her life were a simple rosary of hours, her life simple and strange as a bird's life, gay in the morning, restless all day, tired at sundown? Her heart simple and willful as a bird's heart?”

James Joyce book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“To learn one must be humble. But life is the great teacher.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

“This race and this country and this life produced me, he said. I shall express myself as I am.”

James Joyce book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“To discover the mode of life or of art whereby my spirit could express itself in unfettered freedom.”

James Joyce book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“Though their life was modest, they believed in eating well.”

James Joyce book Dubliners

Source: Dubliners

“Like the tender fires of stars moments of their life together, that no one knew of or would ever know of, broke upon and illuminated his memory.”

James Joyce book The Dead

Source: The Dead

“By his monstrous way of life he seemed to have put himself beyond the limits of reality. Nothing moved him or spoke to him from the real world unless he heard it in an echo of the infuriated cries within him.”

James Joyce book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“Read your own obituary notice; they say you live longer. Gives you second wind. New lease of life.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

“[A writer is] a priest of eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life.”

James Joyce

“A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory.”

James Joyce book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“I could call my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child's play, ugly monotonous child's play.”

James Joyce book Dubliners

Source: Dubliners

“Bury the dead. Say Robinson Crusoe was true to life. Well then Friday buried him. Every Friday buries a Thursday if you come to look at it.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses