110+ James Joyce Quotes On Death, Writing And Friendship

James Joyce was an Irish novelist, poet, and short story writer who is considered to be one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. He is best known for his novel Ulysses, which is often cited as one of the most important works of modernist literature. His other works include A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners, and Finnegans Wake. Following is our collection on famous quotes by James Joyce on love, life, death.

Top 10 James Joyce Quotes

1. People trample over flowers, yet only to embrace a cactus.
2. Shut your eyes and see.
3. Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
4. Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.
5. The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring.
6. 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.
7. The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.
8. History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
9. A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
10. One great part of every human existence is passed in a state which cannot be rendered sensible by the use of wideawake language, cutanddry grammar and goahead plot.

James Joyce Image Quotes

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

Love me. Love my umbrella. — James Joyce

James Joyce Short Quotes

• You can still die when the sun is shining.
• Civilization may be said indeed to be the creation of its outlaws.
• A man's errors are his portals of discovery.
• I am proud to be an emotionalist.
• There's no friends like the old friends.
• Every jackass going the roads thinks he has ideas.
• Masturbation! The amazing availability of it!
• You cannot eat your cake and have it.
• I have left my book, I have left my room, For I heard you singing Through the gloom.
• You forget that the kingdom of heaven suffers violence: and the kingdom of heaven is like a woman.

James Joyce Quotes About Love

They lived and laughed and loved and left. — James Joyce

Love me. Love my umbrella. — James Joyce

Love loves to love love. — James Joyce

The light music of whiskey falling into glasses made an agreeable interlude. — James Joyce

A way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. — James Joyce

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. — James Joyce

Winds of May, that dance on the sea, Dancing a ring-around in glee From furrow to furrow, while overhead The foam flies up to be garlanded, In silvery arches spanning the air, Saw you my true love anywhere? Welladay! Welladay! For the winds of May! Love is unhappy when love is away! — James Joyce

The pleasures of love lasts but a fleeting but the pledges of life outlusts a lieftime. — James Joyce

Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world, a mother's love is not. — James Joyce

Oh Ireland my first and only love Where Christ and Caesar are hand in glove! — James Joyce

James Joyce Quotes About Life

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

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

To learn one must be humble. But life is the great teacher. — James Joyce

His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead. — 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

White pudding and eggs and sausages and cups of tea! How simple and beautiful was life after all! — James Joyce

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

Some people believe that we go on living in another body after death, that we lived before. They call it reincarnation. That we all lived before on the earth thousands of years ago or on some other planet. They say we have forgotten it. Some say they remember their past lives. — James Joyce

Beauty, the splendour of truth, is a gracious presence when the imagination contemplates intensely the truth of its own being or the visible world, and the spirit which proceeds out of truth and beauty is the holy spirit of joy. These are realities and these alone give and sustain life. — James Joyce

Though their life was modest, they believed in eating well. — James Joyce

James Joyce Quotes About Death

We were always loyal to lost causes...Success for us is the death of the intellect and of the imagination. ~ Professor MacHugh — James Joyce

We are all born in the same way but we all die in different ways. — James Joyce

Death, a cause of terror to the sinner, is a blessed moment for him who has walked in the right path. — James Joyce

I don't want to die. Damn death. Long live life. — James Joyce

James Joyce Quotes About Writing

No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination. — James Joyce

I shall write a book some day about the appropriateness of names. Geoffrey Chaucer has a ribald ring, as is proper and correct, and Alexander Pope was inevitably Alexander Pope. Colley Cibber was a silly little man without much elegance and Shelley was very Percy and very Bysshe. — James Joyce

There is an atmosphere of spiritual effort here. No other city is quite like it. I wake early, often at 5 o'clock, and start writing at once. — James Joyce

My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis. — James Joyce

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

What's in a name? That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we write the name that we are told is ours. — James Joyce

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. — James Joyce

O thanks be to the great God I got somebody to give me what I badly wanted to put some heart up into me youve no chances at all inthis place like you used long ago I wish somebody would write me a loveletter. — James Joyce

The important thing is not what we write but how we write, and in my opinion the modern writer must be an adventurer above all, willing to take every risk, and be prepared to founder in his effort if need be. In other words we must write dangerously — James Joyce

If there is any difficulty in what I write, it is because of the material I use. The thought is always simple. — James Joyce

James Joyce Quotes About Ireland

No one who has any self-respect stays in Ireland, but flees afar as though from a country that has undergone the visitation of an angered Jove. — James Joyce

Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow. — James Joyce

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

Save the trees of Ireland for the future men of Ireland on the fair hills of Eire, O. — James Joyce

My heart is quite calm now. I will go back. — James Joyce

James Joyce Quotes About History

It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born. — James Joyce

And the first till last alshemist wrote over every square inch of the only foolscap available, his own body, till by its corrosive sublimation one continuous present tense integument slowly unfolded all marryvoising moodmoulded cyclewheeling history. — James Joyce

All human history moves towards one great goal — James Joyce

History is that nightmare from which there is no awakening. — James Joyce

First, in the history of words there is much that indicates the history of men, and in comparing the speech of to-day with that ofyears ago, we have a useful illustration of the effect of external influences on the very words of a race. — James Joyce

James Joyce Quotes About Time

Time's ruins build eternity's mansions. — James Joyce

My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out. — James Joyce

I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppled masonry, and time one livid final flame. — James Joyce

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo — James Joyce

I am, a stride at a time. A very short space of time through very short time of space. — James Joyce

Can't bring back time. Like holding water in your hand. — James Joyce

Desire's wind blasts the thorntree but after it becomes from a bramblebush to be a rose upon the rood of time. — James Joyce

Time is, time was, but time shall be no more. — James Joyce

He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances. He had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a verb in the past tense. — James Joyce

I was happier then. Or was that I? Or am I now I? Can't bring back time. Like holding water in your hand. Would you go back to then? Just beginning then. Would you? — James Joyce

James Joyce Quotes About Heart

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. — James Joyce

Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants willing to be dethroned. — James Joyce

Under cover of her silence he pressed her arm closely to his side; and, as they stood at the hotel door, he felt that they had escaped from their lives and duties, escaped from home and friends and run away together with wild and radiant hearts to a new adventure. — James Joyce

Heart of my heart, were it more,More would be laid at your feet. — James Joyce

He thought that he was sick in his heart if you could be sick in that place. — James Joyce

When I die Dublin will be written on my heart. — James Joyce

He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life — James Joyce

Deal with him, Hemingway! — James Joyce

(...) You cruel creature, little mite of a thing with a heart the size of a fullstop. — James Joyce

She would follow, her dream of love, the dictates of her heart that told her he was her all in all, the only man in all the world for her for love was the master guide. Come what might she would be wild, untrammelled, free. — James Joyce

James Joyce Quotes About Exile

An Irishman needs three things : silence, cunnning, and exile. — James Joyce

I don't mean to presume to dictate to you in the slightest degree but why did you leave your father's house? MTo seek misfortune, was Stephen's answer. — James Joyce

If the Irish programme did not insist on the Irish language I suppose I could call myself a nationalist. As it is, I am content torecognize myself an exile: and, prophetically, a repudiated one. — James Joyce

James Joyce Famous Quotes And Sayings

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. — James Joyce

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

I think a child should be allowed to take his father's or mother's name at will on coming of age. Paternity is a legal fiction. — James Joyce

A Classical style... is the syllogism of art, the only legitimate process from one world to another. Classicism is not the manner of any fixed age or of any fixed country; it is a constant state of the artistic mind. It is a temper of security and satisfaction and patience. — James Joyce

Love me. Love my umbrella. — James Joyce

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. — James Joyce

But we are living in a sceptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hyper-educated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humour which belonged to an older day. — James Joyce

Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine. — James Joyce

[Robinson Crusoe] is the true prototype of the British colonist. The whole Anglo-Saxon spirit is in Crusoe: the manly independence, the unconscious cruelty, the persistence, the slow yet efficient intelligence, the sexual apathy, the calculating taciturnity. — James Joyce

Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. — James Joyce

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

By an epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or memorable phrase of the mind itself. He believed it was for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme care (saving them for later use, that is), seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and evanescent of moments. — James Joyce

All things are inconstant except the faith in the soul, which changes all things and fills their inconstancy with light. — James Joyce

I am not likely to die of bashfulness but neither am I prepared to be crucified to attest the perfection of my art. I dislike to hear of any stray heroics on the prowl for me. — James Joyce

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

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

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

Though people may read more into Ulysses than I ever intended, who is to say that they are wrong: do any of us know what we are creating?Which of us can control our scribblings? They are the script of one's personality like your voice or your walk — James Joyce

Beware the horns of a bull, the heels of the horse, and the smile of an Englishman. — James Joyce

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

Evening had fallen. A rim of the young moon cleft the pale waste of sky line, the rim of a silver hoop embedded in grey sand: and the tide was flowing in fast to the land with a low whisper of her waves, islanding a few last figures in distant pools. — James Joyce

Tenors get women by the score. — James Joyce

You get a decent do at the Brazen Head — James Joyce

Very gratefully, with grateful appreciation, with sincere appreciative gratitude, in appreciatively grateful sincerity of regret, he declined. — James Joyce

People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what properly riled them was a bite from a sheep. — James Joyce

...rapid motion through space elates one. — James Joyce

The mouth can be better engaged than with a cylinder of rank weed. — James Joyce

Sentimentality is unearned emotion. — James Joyce

Lord, heap miseries upon us yet entwine our arts with laughters low. — James Joyce

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

It was cold autumn weather, but in spite of the cold they wandered up and down the roads of the Park for nearly three hours. They agreed to break off their intercourse; every bond, he said, is a bond to sorrow. — James Joyce

In the name of Annah the Allmaziful, the Everliving, the Bringer of Plurabilities, haloed be her eve, her singtime sung, her rill be run, unhemmed as it is uneven! — James Joyce

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. — James Joyce

The voices blend and fuse in clouded silence: silence that is infinite of space: and swiftly, silently the sound is wafted over regions of cycles of cycles of generations that have lived. — James Joyce

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

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

Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past. — James Joyce

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen. — James Joyce

What is better than to sit at the end of the day and drink wine with friends, or substitutes for friends? — James Joyce

My puns are not trivial. They are quadrivial — James Joyce

I am quite content to go down to posterity as a scissors and paste man for that seems to me a harsh but not unjust description — James Joyce

White wine is like electricity. Red wine looks and tastes like a liquified beefsteak. — James Joyce

The artist who could disentangle the subtle soul of the image from its mesh of defining circumstances most exactly and 're-embody' it in artistic circumstances chosen as the most exact for it in its new office, he was the supreme artist. — James Joyce

When a man is born...there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets. — James Joyce

The philosophic mind inclines always to an elaborate life--the life of Goethe or of Leonardo da Vinci; but the life of the poet isintense--the life of Blake or of Dante--taking into its centre the life that surrounds it and flinging it abroad again amid planetary music. — James Joyce

Frequent and violent temptations were a proof that the citadel of the soul had not fallen and that the devil raged to make it fall. — James Joyce

Nations have their ego, just like individuals. — James Joyce

The artist... standing in the position of mediator between the world of his experience and the world of his dreams - 'a mediator, consequently gifted with twin faculties, a selective faculty and a reproductive faculty.' To equate these faculties was the secret of artistic success. — James Joyce

Man and woman, love, what is it? A cork and a bottle. — James Joyce

Never let us do wrong, because our opponents did so. Let us, rather, by doing right, show them what they ought to have done, and establish a rule the dictates of reason and conscience, rather than of the angry passions. — James Joyce

Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his memory. — James Joyce

What did that mean, to kiss? You put your face up like that to say goodnight and then his mother put her face down. That was to kiss. His mother put her lips on his cheek; her lips were soft and they wetted his cheek; and they made a tiny little noise: kiss. Why did people do that with their two faces? — James Joyce

The sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue. — James Joyce

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned: ----Introibo ad altare Dei. — James Joyce

Life Lessons by James Joyce

1. James Joyce emphasizes the importance of following your passions and living life to its fullest. He encourages us to embrace our own unique perspectives and to strive to be creative and innovative.
2. Joyce also encourages us to be open to new experiences and to embrace the beauty and complexity of life. He encourages us to be mindful of our actions and to strive for meaningful relationships with others.
3. Finally, Joyce teaches us to be resilient in the face of adversity and to never give up on our dreams. He reminds us to take risks, to be courageous, and to never be afraid to express ourselves.