69+ Best James Joyce Quotes: Exclusive Selection

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist, short story writer, poet, teacher, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde and is regarded as one of the most influential and important authors of the 20th century. Profoundly inspirational James Joyce quotes will challenge the way you think, and help guide you through any life experience.

If you’re searching for quotes from greatest authors that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of profound John Steinbeck quotes, amazing Upton Sinclair quotes and top H. P. Lovecraft quotes.

Famous James Joyce Quotes

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

We can’t change the world, but we can change the subject.

Life is too short to read a bad book. James Joyce

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

People trample over flowers, yet only to embrace a cactus. James Joyce

They call them stupid. They understand what we say better than we understand them. She understands all she wants to. Vindictive too. Cruel. Her nature.

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

And when all was said and done the lies a fellow told about himself couldn’t probably hold a proverbial candle to the wholesale whoppers other fellows coined about him.

Ask no questions and you’ll hear no lies. 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, liver slices fried with crust crumbs, fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.

Love loves to love love. James Joyce

Each imagining himself to be the first last and only alone, whereas he is neither first last nor last nor only not alone in a series originating in and repeated to infinity.

I am proud to be an emotionalist. James Joyce

Horseness is the whatness of all horse. Streams of tendency and eons they worship. God: noise in the street: very peripatetic.

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

Beauty: curves, curves are beauty. Shapely goddesses, Venus, Juno: curves the world admires.

Children must be educated by love, not punishment. James Joyce

The sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue

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

To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life. James Joyce

He laughed to free his mind from his mind’s bondage.

While you have a thing it can be taken from you, but when you give it, you have given it. no robber can take it from you. It is yours then forever when you have given it. It will be yours always. That is to give. James Joyce

You cruel creature, little mite of a thing with a heart the size of a full stop.

All Moanday, Tearday, Wailsday, Thumpsday, Frightday, Shatterday. James Joyce

Come what might, she would be wild, untrammeled, free.

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

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.

Fall if you will, but rise you must. James Joyce

The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring.

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

The sea, the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea.

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

The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.

There is not past, no future; everything flows in an eternal present. James Joyce

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

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

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

I have the words already. What I am seeking is the perfect order of words in the sentence. You can see for yourself how many different ways they might be arranged. James Joyce

God made food; the devil the cooks

They lived and laughed and loved and left James Joyce

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

The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit. James Joyce

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.

But we are living in a skeptical 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 humor which belonged to an older day. James Joyce

Love loves to love love.

One great part of every human existence is passed in a state which cannot be rendered sensible by the use of wide awake language, cut and dry grammar and go ahead plot. James Joyce

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

Mistakes are the portals of discovery. James Joyce

As you are now so once were we.

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

Drugs age you after mental excitement. Lethargy then. Why? Reaction. A lifetime in a night. Gradually change your character.

Time’s ruins build eternity’s mansions. James Joyce

Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has it all vanished since? If I open and am forever in the black adiaphane. Basta! I will see if I can see.

Absence, the highest form of presence. James Joyce

The movements which work revolutions in the world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant’s heart on the hillside.

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

When one reads these strange pages of one long gone one feels that one is at one with one who once

Shut your eyes and see. 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.

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

Touch me. Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand. I am lonely here. O, touch me soon, now. What is that word known to all men? I am quiet here alone. Sad too. Touch, touch me.

Your mind will give back to you exactly what you put into it. James Joyce

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

The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring. 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.

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

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Deniz Yalım is the founder and visionary behind BayArt, a platform renowned for its deeply resonant and inspirational content focusing on love, relationship, happiness, success and motivation. With a background rich in literature, psychology, and communication, Deniz has dedicated their career to the art of using words to inspire and empower. Passionate about the transformative power of language, Deniz has skillfully curated BayArt to be a platform for those seeking wisdom and guidance in the realms of love and life.

Their writings not only reflect a deep understanding of human emotions and relationships but also aim to ignite change and encourage positive thinking. Through BayArt, Deniz Yalım continues to touch lives, offering solace, motivation, and a sense of connectedness to a global community.