Quotes by James Joyce


Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
– James Joyce
Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.
– James Joyce
Satan, really, is the romantic youth of Jesus re-appearing for a moment.
– James Joyce
Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.
– James Joyce
Men are governed by lines of intellect - women: by curves of emotion.
– James Joyce
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.
– James Joyce
Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art it is the part the schools cannot recognize.
– James Joyce
Ireland sober is Ireland stiff.
– James Joyce
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.
– James Joyce
I fear those big words which make us so unhappy.
– 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
Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.
– James Joyce