James Joyce Quotes

And you’ll miss me more as the narrowing weeks wing by. Someday duly, oneday truly, twosday newly, till whensday.

Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an esthetic end.

The Gracehoper was always jigging ajog, hoppy on akkant of his joyicity.

"I've been working hard on [Ulysses] all day," said Joyce.

Does that mean that you have written a great deal?" I said.

Two sentences," said Joyce.

I looked sideways but Joyce was not smiling. I thought of [French novelist Gustave] Flaubert. "You've been seeking the mot juste?" I said.

No," said Joyce. "I have the words already. What I am seeking is the perfect order of words in the sentence.

Too excited to be genuinely happy

‎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 is the only way of insuring one's immortality.

The mystery of esthetic like that of material creation is accomplished. 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.

The object of the artist is the creation of the beautiful. What the beautiful is is another question.

He read the verses backwards but then they were not poetry. Then he read the flyleaf from the bottom to the top till he came to his own name. That was he: and he read down the page again. What was after the universe?

Nothing. But was there anything round the universe to show where it stopped before the nothing place began?

It could not be a wall; but there could be a thin thin line there all round everything. It was very big to think about everything and everywhere. Only God could do that. He tried to think what a big thought that must be; but he could only think of God. God was God's name just as his name was Stephen.

One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.

The fragrant hair,
Falling as through the silence falleth now
Dusk of the air.

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?

What incensed him the most was the blatant jokes of the ones that passed it all off as a jest, pretending to understand everything and in reality not knowing their own minds.

No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination

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