James Joyce

“His prayer, addressed neither to God nor saint, began with a shiver, as the chilly morning breeze crept through the chink of the carriage door to his feet, and ended in a trail of foolish words which he made to fit the insistent rhythm of the train; and silently, at intervals of four seconds, the telegraph-poles held the galloping notes of the music between punctual bars.”

“Numbers it is. All music when you come to think. Two multiplied by two divided by half is twice one. Vibrations: chords those are. One plus two plus six is seven. Do anything you like with figures juggling. Always find out this equal to that, symmetry under a cemetery wall. He doesn't see my mourning. Callous: all for his own gut. Musemathematics. And you think you're listening to the etherial. But suppose you said it like: Martha, seven times nine minus x is thirtyfive thousand. Fall quite flat. It's on account of the sounds it is.”

“Beingless beings. Stop! Throb always without you and the throb always within. Your heart you sing of. I between them. Where? Between two roaring worlds where they swirl, I. Shatter them, one and both. But stun myself too in the blow. Shatter me you who can. Bawd and butcher, were the words. I say! Not yet awhile. A look around.”

“He walked there, reading in the evening and heard the cries of the boys' lines at their play, young cries in the quiet evening. He was their rector: his reign was mild.”

“As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said, from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist weave and unweave his image. And as the mole on my right breast is where it was when I was born, though all my body has been woven of new stuff time after time, so through the ghost of the unquiet father the image of the unliving son looks forth. In the intense instant of imagination, when the mind, Shelley says, is a fading coal, that which I was is that which I am and that which in possibility I may come to be. So in the future, the sister of the past, I may see myself as I sit here now but by reflection from that which then I shall be.”

“As he crossed Grattan Bridge he looked down the river towards the lower quays and pitied the poor stunted houses. They seemed to him a band of tramps, huddled together along the riverbanks, their old coats covered with dust and soot, stupefied by the panorama of sunset and waiting for the first chill of night bid them arise, shake themselves and begone.”

“Introibo ad altare Dei”

“Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration.”

“She said he just looked as if he was asleep, he looked that peaceful and resigned. No one would think he'd make such a beautiful corpse.”

“A duodene of bird notes chirruped bright treble answer under sensitive hand. Brightly the keys, all twinkling, linked, all harpsichording, called to a voice to sing the strain of dewy morn, of youth, of love's leave-taking, life's, love's morn.”

“Good puzzle would be cross Dublin without passing a pub.”

“What? Corpus. Body. Corpse. Good idea the Latin. Stupifies them first. Hospice for the dying. They don't seem to chew it; only swallow it down.”

“Our souls, shamewounded by our sins, cling to us yet more, a woman to her lover clinging, the more the more. She trusts me, her hand gentle, the longlashed eyes. Now where the blue hell am I bringing her beyond the veil? Into the ineluctable modality of the ineluctable visuality. She, she, she. What she?”

“The pity is that the public will demand and find a moral in my book, or worse they may take it in some serious way, and on the honour of a gentleman, there is not one single serious word in it.”

“His shadow lay over the rocks as he bent, ending. Why not endless till the farthest star? Darkly they are there behind this light, darkness shining in the brightness, delta of Cassiopeia, worlds. Me sits there with his augur's rod of ash, in borrowed sandals, by day beside a livid sea, unbeheld, in violet nigh walking beneath a reign of uncouth stars. I throw this ended shadow from me, manshape ineluctable, call it back. Endless, would it be mine, form of my form? Who watches me here? Who ever anywhere will read these written words?”

“Thought and plot are not so important as some would make them out to be. The object of any work of art is the transference of emotion; talent is the gift of conveying that emotion”

“(...) You cruel creature, little mite of a thing with a heart the size of a fullstop.”

“Horseness is the whatness of allhorse. Streams of tendency and eons they worship. God: noise in the street: very peripatetic.”

“I resent violence or intolerance in any shape or form. It never reaches anything or stops anything. A revolution must come on the due installments plans. It's a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they live round the corner and speak a different vernacular, so to speak.”

“Why was he doubly irritated?Because he had forgotten and because he remembered that he had reminded himself twice not to forget.”

“With will will we withstand, withsay.”

“Know all men, he said, time's ruins build eternity's mansions.”

“A region where grey twilight ever descends, never falls on wide sagegreen pasturefields, shedding her dusk, scattering a perennial dew of stars.”

“It flows purling, widely flowing, floating foampool, flower unfurling.”

“The leaning of sophists toward the bypaths of apocrypha is a constant quantity. The highroads are dreary but they lead to the town.”

“Dear Mister Germ’s Choice,in gutter dispear I am taking my pen toilet you know that, being Leyde up in bad with the prewailent distemper (I opened the window and in flew Enza), I have been reeding one half ter one other the numboars of “transition” in witch are printed the severeall instorments of your “Work in Progress”.You must not stink I am attempting to ridicul (de sac!) you or to be smart, but I am so disturd by my inhumility to onthorstand most of the impslocations constrained in your work that (although I am by nominals dump and in fact I consider myself not brilliantly ejewcatered but still of above Averroëge men’s tality and having maid the most of the oporto unities I kismet) I am writing you, dear mysterre Shame’s Voice, to let you no how bed I feeloxerab out it all.I am überzeugt that the labour involved in the compostition of your work must be almost supper humane and that so much travail from a man of your intellacked must ryeseult in somethink very signicophant. I would only like to know have I been so strichnine by my illnest white wresting under my warm Coverlyette that I am as they say in my neightive land “out of the mind gone out” and unable to combprehen that which is clear or is there really in your work some ass pecked which is Uncle Lear?Please froggive my t’Emeritus and any inconvince that may have been caused by this litter.Yours veri tassVladimir Dixon”

“...his monstrous dreams, peopled by ape-like creatures and by harlots with gleaming jewel eyes..”

“تملأ كل حياتى .. اتعنى باسمها فى كل آونة واهتف به واردده فى خشوع كالأدعية والتراتيل… وكثيراً ما كانت عيناي تغرورقان بدموع لا افهم لها معنى … وكان يمتلكنى فى بعض الاحيان شعور بأن سيلا جارفاً من الحياة الحارة ينبثق من قلبى ويفيض على جوانبه فيملأ دفؤه صدرى … وما كنت اسمح لتفكيرى أن يذهب بعيداً , وهل سأنعم بالحديث إليها ؟ … وما سيدور بيننا ؟ … وكيفية التعبير لها عن حبى , وما يعتلج فى نفسى حيالها من شعور جارف وعواطف ملتهبة . لقد كانت تطغى على كل تفكيرى , وكان جسدى اشبه بآلة موسيقية تجرى عليها اصابع سحرية بألحان من اسمها وكلماتها وبسماتها”

“He asked himself what is a woman standing on the stairs in the shadow, listening to distant music, a symbol of. If he were a painter he would paint her in that attitude. Her blue felt hat would show off the bronze of her hair against the darkness and the dark panels of her skirt would show off the light ones. Distant Music he would call the picture if he were a painter.”

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

“Jesus Christ, with His divine understanding of every understanding of our human nature, understood that not all men were called to the religious life, that by far the vast majority were forced to live in the world, and, to a certain extent, for the world.”

“Estaba destinado a aprender su propia sabiduría aparte de los otros o a aprender la sabiduría de los otros por sí mismo, errando entre las asechanzas del mundo.”

“I am, a stride at a time. A very short space of time through very short time of space.”

“The soul ... has a slow and dark birth, more mysterious than the birth of the body. When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.”

“It could not be a wall but there could be a thin thin line there all round everything.”

“Ah, there's no friends like the old friends.”

“He found something mean in the pretty furniture which he had bought for his house on the hire system. Annie had chosen it herself and it reminded him of her. It too was prim and pretty. A dull resentment against his life awoke within him. Could he not escape from his little house? Was it too late for him to try to live bravely like Gallaher? Could he go to London? There was furniture still to be paid for. If he could only write a book and get it published, that might open the way for him.”

“Well, Tommy, he said, I wish you and yours every joy in life, old chap, and tons of money, and may you never die till I shoot you. And that's the wish of a sincere friend, an old friend. You know that?”

“He found trivial all that was meant to charm him and did not answer the glances which invited him to be bold.”

“and with that he took the bloody old towser by the scruff of the neck and by Jesus he near throttled him.”

“bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!”

“Stephen watched the three glasses being raised from the counter as his father and his two cronies drank to the memory of their past. An abyss of fortune or of temperament sundered him from them. His mind seemed older than theirs: it shone coldly on their strifes and happiness and regrets like a moon upon a younger earth. No life or youth stirred in him as it had stirred in them. He had known neither the pleasure of companionship with others nor the vigour of rude male health nor filial piety. Nothing stirred within his soul but a cold and cruel and loveless lust. His childhood was dead or lost and with it his soul capable of simple joys, and he was drifting amid life like the barren shell of the moon.Art thou pale for wearinessOf climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,Wandering companionless...?He repeated to himself the lines of Shelley's fragment. Its alternation of sad human ineffectiveness with vast inhuman cycles of activity chilled him, and he forgot his own human and ineffectual grieving.”

“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.”

“He was sitting in the midst of a children's party at Harold's Cross. His silent watchful manner had grown upon him and he took little part in the games. The children, wearing the spoils of their crackers, danced and romped noisily and, though he tried to share their merriment, he felt himself a gloomy figure amid the gay cocked hats and sunbonnets.But when he had sung his song and withdrawn into a snug corner of the room he began to taste the joy of his loneliness. The mirth, which in the beginning of the evening had seemed to him false and trivial, was like a sothing air to him, passing gaily by his senses, hiding from other eyes the feverish agitation of his blood while through the circling of the dancers and amid the music and laughter her glance travelled to his corner, flattering, taunting, searching, exciting his heart.”

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

“I wish some man or other would take me sometime when hes there and kiss me in his arms theres nothing like a kiss long and hot down to your soul almost paralyses you...I love flowers Id love to have the whole place swimming in roses God of heaven theres nothing like nature the wild mountains then the sea and waves rushing then the beautiful country with the fields of oats and wheat and all kinds of things and all the fine cattle going about that would do your heart good to see rivers and lakes and flowers all sorts of shapes and smells and colours...after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes...then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes.”

“He lived his spiritual life without any communion with others, visiting his relatives at Christmas and escorting them to the cemetery when they died. He performed these two social duties for old dignity's sake but conceded nothing further to the conventions which regulate the civic life.”

“There was no doubt about it: if you wanted to succeed you had to go away. You could do nothing in Dublin.”

“A way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.”

“L'esthétique et les cosmétiques sont pour le boudoir. Je suis pour la vérité. La simple vérité pour un homme simple.”