James Joyce quotes

Born
2 February 1882, Rathgar, Irland.

Died
13 January 1941, Zürich, Schweiz.

Occupation
Novelist, writer, poet.

James Joyce was an Irish novelist, short story writer and poet. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde and is regarded as one of the most influential and important authors of the 20th century.

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

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

Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.
– James Joyce

When I die Dublin will be written in my heart.
– James Joyce

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

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

Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother’s love is not.
– James Joyce

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
– James Joyce

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

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

The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.
– James Joyce

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

Men are governed by lines of intellect – women: by curves of emotion.
– James Joyce

A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what’s cheese? Corpse of milk.
– James Joyce

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

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

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

I fear those big words which make us so unhappy.
– James Joyce

It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked looking-glass of a servant.
– James Joyce

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

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

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

Ireland sober is Ireland stiff.
– James Joyce