Quotes by James Joyce

"A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery."

"Your battles inspired me - not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead."

"A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery."

"Mistakes are the portals of discovery."

"Men are governed by lines of intellect - women: by curves of emotion."

"The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts."

"Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize."

"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."

"Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality."

"Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art it is the part the schools cannot recognize."

"… and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."

"Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not."

"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."

"There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being."

"Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why."

"A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk."

"Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America."

"No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination."

"I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day."

"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."

"Ireland sober is Ireland stiff."

"The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you."

"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."

"Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home."

"History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."

"I fear those big words which make us so unhappy."

"Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age."

"A nation is the same people living in the same place."

"My mouth is full of decayed teeth and my soul of decayed ambitions."

"I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."

"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."

"When I die Dublin will be written in my heart."