The 20th century was one of the most thriving eras of literature as some of the greatest literary giants were born during this time. And while talking of the greatest, one cannot just miss out on James Joyce, the Irish novelist and poet who immensely contributed to modernist avant-garde and was one of the most influential and important authors of the century. His 1922 work ‘Ulysses’ is a masterpiece or landmark of success as it exhibits Joyce’s talent for writing and storytelling. In it, he employs stream of consciousness, parody, jokes, and virtually every other established literary technique to present his characters. His writing style soon gave him a celebrity status in the literary society. However, the phenomenal success of ‘Ulysses’ isn’t the only thing that Joyce’s literary career stands out for. His other works are equally successful and noteworthy, right from short story ‘Dubliners’ to novels, ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’ and ‘Finnegans Wake’. Joyce’s unconventional style, exploration of language and new literary forms were not just visible in his fictional and non-fictional works but also in his quotes wherein he dealt with life’s truth in an avant-garde way. Stream through this section and get your hands on some of the most famous and prominent quotes by James Joyce.
His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that in some dim past, whether in life or revery, he had heard their tale before.
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.
Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants willing to be dethroned.
James Joyce
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.
Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance.
James Joyce
One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.
James Joyce
Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.
James Joyce
Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.
James Joyce
Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his memory.
When a man is born...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.
I wanted real adventures to happen to myself. But real
adventures, I reflected, do not happen to people who remain at home: they must be sought abroad.
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.
When one reads these strange pages of one long gone one feels that one is at one with one who once…
James Joyce
His soul swooned softly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo
In the name of Annah the Allmaziful, the Everliving, the Bringer of Plurabilities, haloed be her eve, her singtime sung, her rill be run, unhemmed as it is uneven!
His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
Love between man and woman is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse, and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse.
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.
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.
It was cold autumn weather, but in spite of the cold they wandered up and down the roads of the Park for nearly three hours. They agreed to break off their intercourse; every bond, he said, is a bond to sorrow.
James Joyce
Write it, damn you, write it! What else are you good for?
