James Joyce Quotes

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

Absence, the highest form of presence.

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

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.

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

Fall if you will, but rise you must.

Shut your eyes and see.

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

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.

They lived and laughed and loved and left.

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

Ask no questions and you'll hear no lies.

Love loves to love love.

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

There's many a true word spoken in jest.

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.

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

Life is too short to read a bad book.

To discover the mode of life or of art whereby my spirit could express itself in unfettered freedom.

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

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.

Wipe your glasses with what you know.

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

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

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