James Joyce
The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.Collection: Men
A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.Collection: Intelligence
I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.Collection: Future
A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk.Collection: Food
Men are governed by lines of intellect - women: by curves of emotion.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Legal
I fear those big words which make us so unhappy.Collection: Fear
A nation is the same people living in the same place.Collection: Patriotism
Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.Collection: Art
Satan, really, is the romantic youth of Jesus re-appearing for a moment.Collection: Romantic
It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked looking-glass of a servant.Collection: Art
Mistakes are the portals of discovery.Collection: Failure
Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.Collection: Poetry
Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.Collection: Age
Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not.Collection: Family
Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America.Collection: Funny
Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.Collection: Home
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.
There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.
When I die Dublin will be written in my heart.
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.
Your battles inspired me - not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead.
No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination.
Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance.
Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.
The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you.
God spoke to you by so many voices but you would not hear.
Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.
My words in her mind: cold polished stones sinking through a quagmire.
He found in the world without as actual what was in his world within as possible.
Nations have their ego, just like individuals.
You forget that the kingdom of heaven suffers violence: and the kingdom of heaven is like a woman.
If Ireland is to become a new Ireland she must first become European.
Ireland sober is Ireland stiff.
The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole Life to reading my works.
My mouth is full of decayed teeth and my soul of decayed ambitions.
Your mind will give back to you exactly what you put into it.Collection: Giving
There is not past, no future; everything flows in an eternal present.Collection: Past
Absence, the highest form of presence.Collection: Absence
People trample over flowers, yet only to embrace a cactus.Collection: Flower
Shut your eyes and see.Collection: Eye
Fall if you will, but rise you must.Collection: Fall
But we are living in a sceptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hyper-educated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humour which belonged to an older day.Collection: Humanity
They lived and laughed and loved and left.Collection: Love
Beware the horns of a bull, the heels of the horse, and the smile of an Englishman.Collection: Horse
Love loves to love love.Collection: Love
Ask no questions and you'll hear no lies.Collection: Lying
Never let us do wrong, because our opponents did so. Let us, rather, by doing right, show them what they ought to have done, and establish a rule the dictates of reason and conscience, rather than of the angry passions.Collection: Passion
To learn one must be humble. But life is the great teacher.Collection: Teacher
The important thing is not what we write but how we write, and in my opinion the modern writer must be an adventurer above all, willing to take every risk, and be prepared to founder in his effort if need be. In other words we must write dangerouslyCollection: Writing