Quotes By James Joyce

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

Your battles inspired me - not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead.

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

My words in her mind: cold polished stones sinking through a quagmire.

Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance.

A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk.

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.

When I die Dublin will be written in my heart.

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

A man's errors are his portals of discovery.

He found in the world without as actual what was in his world within as possible.

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

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

I fear those big words which make us so unhappy.

If Ireland is to become a new Ireland she must first become European.

Nations have their ego, just like individuals.

Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.

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.

My mouth is full of decayed teeth and my soul of decayed ambitions.

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

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.

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

The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole Life to reading my works.

Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.

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

A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

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.

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

The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.

You forget that the kingdom of heaven suffers violence: and the kingdom of heaven is like a woman.