Quotes by James Joyce

• The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.
• Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.
• Nations have their ego, just like individuals.
• Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.
• Satan, really, is the romantic youth of Jesus re-appearing for a moment.
• Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance.
• The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.
• No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination.
• The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole Life to reading my works.
• The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you.
• There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.
• Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.
• Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk.
• My words in her mind: cold polished stones sinking through a quagmire.
• When I die Dublin will be written in my heart.
• Ireland sober is Ireland stiff.
• You forget that the kingdom of heaven suffers violence: and the kingdom of heaven is like a woman.
• Your battles inspired me - not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead.
• Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.
• A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk.
• A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
• A man's errors are his portals of discovery.
• 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.
• And then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes.
• My mouth is full of decayed teeth and my soul of decayed ambitions.
• Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America.
• He found in the world without as actual what was in his world within as possible.
• Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
• I fear those big words which make us so unhappy.
• 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.
• I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality.
• If Ireland is to become a new Ireland she must first become European.
• Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.
• Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.
• Men are governed by lines of intellect - women: by curves of emotion.
• I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.
• A nation is the same people living in the same place.
• Do not fear mistakes, for they are portals of discovery.
• Mistakes are the portals of discovery
• Mistakes are the portals to discovery.
• Mistakes are portals to discovery.
• Mistakes are portals of discovery.
• Mistakes are the portals of unexpected discoveries.
• Mistakes are the portals of discover
• Don't be afraid to make mistakes, because these are the portals of discovery.