James Joyce Quotes

Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods.

Justice it means but it's everybody eating everyone else. That's what life is after all.

Though their life was modest, they believed in eating well.

The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine. How different are the words HOME, CHRIST, ALE, MASTER, on his lips and on mine! I cannot speak or write these words without unrest of spirit. His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired speech. I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My soul frets in the shadow of his language.

Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.

You find my words dark. Darkness is in our souls, do you not think?

—Alone, quite alone. You have no fear of that. And you know what that word means? Not only to be separate from all others but to have not even one friend.—I will take the risk, said Stephen.—And not to have any one person, Cranly said, who would be more than a friend, more even than the noblest and truest friend a man ever had.

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