Famous Joyce Quotations

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"Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an esthetic end."
by James Joyce
"Boxing has become America's tragic theater."
by Joyce Carol Oates
"Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality."
by James Joyce
"Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery."
by Dr. Joyce Brothers
"Trust your hunches. They're usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level."
by Joyce
"A 2 pencil and a dream can take you anywhere."
by Joyce A. Myers
"A good home must be made, not bought."
by Joyce Maynard
"A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery."
by James Joyce
"A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery."
by James Joyce
"Accept that all of us can be hurt, that all of us can--and surely will at times--fail. I think we should follow a simple rule if we can take the worst, take the risk."
by Joyce
"Accept that all of us can be hurt, that all of us can - - and surely will at times -- fail. I think we should follow a simple rule: if we can take the worst, take the risk."
by Dr. Joyce Brothers
"Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake, one of them keeps paying for it."
by Peggy Joyce
"By the age of 45, I knew I could no longer start a sentence with a mention of strudel. My fingers would want to do it but my mind just wouldn't react."
by James Joyce
"Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America."
by James Joyce
"Everyone, whether cardinal or scientist, who believes that his own truth is complete and final must become a dogmatist...The more sincere his faith, the more he is bound to persecute, to save others from falling into error."
by Joyce
"History is a nightmare from which we are trying to awaken."
by James Joyce
"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."
by James Joyce
"How does the poet transform his banal thoughts (are not most thoughts banal?) into such stunning forms, into beauty?"
by Joyce Carol Oates
"I call that a scumhead."
by James Joyce
"I have come to believe that giving and receiving are really the same. Giving and receiving - not giving and taking."
by Joyce Grenfell
"I love cats. I love their grace and their elegance. I love their independence and their arrogance, and the way they lie and look at you, summing you up, surely to your detriment, with that unnerving, unwinking, appraising stare."
by Joyce Stranger
"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."
by James Joyce
"I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree."
by Joyce Kilmer
"I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree."
by Joyce Kilmer
"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 mortality."
by James Joyce
"If Shakespeare had to go on an author tour to promote
Romeo and Juliet
, he never would have written
Macbeth
."
by Dr. Joyce Brothers
"If you are faced with an unpleasant person or situation that you can do nothing about, bless the situation. Bless the person and know and believe some good will come from it. . . . All of us have seen good come out of disaster . . . the 'blessing in disguise.' When you expect good to come from negativity, it will. What you think about, you bring about."
by Joyce Duco
"If you explore beneath shyness or party chit-chat, you can sometimes turn a dull exchange into an intriguing one. I've found this to be particularly true in the case of professors or intellectuals, who are full of fascinating information, but need encouragement before they'll divulge it."
by Joyce Carol Oates
"In love there are things --- bodies and words."
by Joyce Carol Oates
"Joyce is a poet and also an elephantine pedant."
by George Orwell
"Jesus was a bachelor and never lived with a woman. Surely living with a woman is one of the most difficult things a man has to do, and he never did it."
by James Joyce
"Marriage is not just spiritual communion, it is also remembering to take out the trash."
by Dr. Joyce Brothers
"Mistakes are the portals of discovery."
by James Joyce
"Night, Night. Tellmetale of stem or stone. Beside the rivering waters of hitherandthithering waters of the Night!"
by James Joyce
"No matter how much pressure you feel at work, if you could find ways to relax for at least five minutes every hour, you'd be more productive."
by Joyce Brothers
"Studies indicate that the one quality all successful people have is persistence. They're willing to spend more time accomplishing a task and to perservere in the face of many difficult odds. There's a very positive relationship between people's ability to accomplish any task and the time they're willing to spend on it."
by Joyce
"The best proof of love is trust."
by Joyce Brothers
"The person interested in success has to learn to view failure as a healthy, inevitable part of the process of getting to the top."
by Joyce
"The world at large does not judge us by who we are and what we know it judges us by what we have."
by Joyce Brothers
"Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home."
by James Joyce
"Those who have easy, cheerful attitudes tend to be happier than those with less pleasant temperaments, regardless of money, making it, or success."
by Joyce
"Those who have easy, cheerful attitudes tend to be happier than those with less pleasant temperaments, regardless of money, 'making it', or success."
by Dr. Joyce Brothers
"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."
by James Joyce
"When people say there is too much violence in my books, what they are saying is there is too much reality in life."
by Joyce Carol Oates
"When you're 50 you start thinking about things you haven't thought about before. I used to think getting old was about vanity-but actually it's about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial."
by Joyce Carol Oates
"Why dont you write books people can read"
by Nora Joyce, to her husband James
"Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins commited in previous lives."
by James Joyce
"When you're 50 you start thinking about things you haven't thought about before. I used to think getting old was about vanity -- but actually it's about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial."
by Joyce Carol Oates
"'Psychologists/sociologists/criminologists studied prison inmates who committed especially brutal/sadistic crimes to humans like rape/torture/murder. One common factor in almost all of these sadistic crimes was a background of animal abuse and torture in these criminals' youths, adolescence or early childhood. Because of these and many similar findings, abuse of animals is viewed as a predictor of vicious crimes against people!'"
by Dr. Joyce Brothers
"No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination."
by 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."
by James Joyce
"When I heard the word stream uttered with such a revolting primness, what I think of is urine and not the contemporary novel. And besides, it isn't new, it is far from the dernier cri. Shakespeare used it continually, much too much in my opinion, and there's Tristam Shandy, not to mention the Agamemnon."
by James Joyce
"For good and evil, man is a free creative spirit. This produces the very queer world we live in, a world in continuous creation and therefore continuous change and insecurity."
by Joyce Cary
"While you have a thing it can be taken from you... but when you give it, you have given it. No robber can take it from you. It is yours then for ever when you have given it. It will be yours always. That is to give."
by James Joyce
"Heart of my heart, were it more, More would be laid at your feet."
by James Joyce
"If your energy is as boundless as your ambition, total commitment may be a way of life you should seriously consider."
by Joyce Brothers
"I look upon life as a gift from God. I did nothing to earn it. Now that the time is coming to give it back, I have no right to complain."
by Joyce Cary
"Before your dreams can come true, you have to have those dreams."
by Joyce Brothers
"When the Irishman is found outside of Ireland in another environment, he very often becomes a respected man. The economic and intellectual conditions that prevail in his own country do not permit the development of individuality. No one who has any self-respect stays in Ireland, but flees afar as though from a country that has undergone the visitation of an angered Jove."
by James Joyce
"Exile as a mode of genius no longer exists; in place of Joyce we have the fragments of work appearing in Index on Censorship."
by Nadine Gordimer
"Mother is putting my new secondhand clothes in order. She prays now, she says, that I may learn in my own life and away from home and friends what the heart is and what it feels. Amen. So be it. 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."
by James Joyce
"Saying that a great genius is mad, while at the same time recognizing his artistic worth, is like saying that he had rheumatism or suffered from diabetes. Madness, in fact, is a medical term that can claim no more notice from the objective critic than he grants the charge of heresy raised by the theologian, or the charge of immorality raised by the police."
by James Joyce
"You forget that the kingdom of heaven suffers violence: and the kingdom of heaven is like a woman."
by James Joyce
"James Joyce is right about history being a nightmare-- but it may be that nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped in history and history in trapped in them."
by James Baldwin
"History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."
by James Joyce
"An Irishman needs three things : silence, cunnning, and exile."
by James Joyce
"A #2 pencil and a dream can take you anywhere."
by Joyce A. Myers
"The worst cynicism: a belief in luck."
by Joyce Carol Oates
"God is a character, a real and consistent being, or He is nothing. If God did a miracle He would deny His own nature and the universe would simply blow up, vanish, become nothing."
by Joyce Cary
"Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world, a mother's love is not."
by James Joyce
"If you're still hanging onto a dead dream of yesterday, laying flowers on its grave by the hour, you cannot be planting the seeds for a new dream to grow today."
by Joyce Chapman
"A tide began to surge beneath the calm surface of Stephen's friendliness. This race and this country and this life produced me, he said. I shall express myself as I am. Try to be one of us, repeated Davin. In your heart you are an Irishman but your pride is too powerful. My ancestors threw off their language and took another, Stephen said. They allowed a handful of foreigners to subject them. Do you fancy that I am going to pay in my own life and person debts they made? What for? For our freedom, said Davin. No honourable and sincere man, said Stephen, has given up to you his life and his youth and his affections from the days of Wolfe Tone to those of Parnell, but you sold him to the enemy or failed him in need or reviled him and left him for another. And you invite me to be one of you. I'd see you damned first. They died for their ideals, Stevie, said Davin. Our day will come yet, believe me. Stephen, following his own thought, was silent for an instant... When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets ... Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow."
by James Joyce
"I THINK that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the sweet earth's flowing breast; A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray; A tree that may in summer wear A nest of robins in her hair; Upon whose bosom snow has lain; Who intimately lives with rain. Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree."
by Joyce Kilmer
"Progress everywhere today does seem to come so very heavily disguised as Chaos."
by Joyce Grenfell
"There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being."
by James Joyce
"Our civilization, bequeathed to us by fierce adventurers, eaters of meat and hunters, is so full of hurry and combat, so busy about many things which perhaps are of no importance, that it cannot but see something feeble in a civilization which smiles as it refuses to make the battlefield the test of excellence."
by James Joyce
"There is a rule in sailing where the more maneuverable ship should give way to the less maneuverable craft. I think this is sometimes a good rule to follow in human relationships as well."
by Joyce Brothers
"An individual's self-concept is the core of his personality. It affects every aspect of human behavior: the ability to learn, the capacity to grow and change . . . . A strong, positive self-image is the best possible preparation for success in life."
by Joyce Brothers
"Lawrence had done it in a way, and Joyce. But I think it's an important thing to do now and then, to describe the sex act as our descent, or adventure, into a primordial or strange world, having very little to do with how we look in suits or what our educations have been. It's a well of darkness, as it were, that leaves you refreshed."
by John Updike
"Success is a state of mind. If you want success, start thinking of yourself as a success."
by Joyce Brothers
"Being taken for granted can be a compliment. It means that you've become a comfortable, trusted person in another person's life."
by Joyce Brothers
"Nothing is accidental in the universe -- this is one of my Laws of Physics -- except the entire universe itself, which is Pure Accident, pure divinity."
by Joyce Carol Oates
"To get anywhere in life, you have to bite off more than you can chew, and chew like crazy!"
by Joe Joyce
"A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk."
by James Joyce
"And the first till last alshemist wrote over every square inch of the only foolscap available, his own body, till by its corrosive sublimation..."
by James Joyce
"Amen. So be it. 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 ..."
by James Joyce
"By an epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind..."
by James Joyce
"—Dead! says Alf. He's no more dead than you are. —Maybe so, says Joe. They took the liberty of burying him this morning anyhow."
by James Joyce
"For good and evil, man is a free creative spirit. This produces the very queer world we live in, a world in continuous creation and therefore ..."
by Joyce Cary
"For me, the principal fact of life is the free mind. For good and evil, man is a free creative spirit. This produces the very queer world we l..."
by Joyce Cary
"He winged away on a wildgoup's chase across the kathartic ocean and made synthetic ink and sensitive paper for his own end out of his wit's wa..."
by James Joyce
"—I am the resurrection and the life. That touches a man's inmost heart. —It does, Mr Bloom said...."
by James Joyce
"I am not likely to die of bashfulness but neither am I prepared to be crucified to attest the perfection of my art. I dislike to hear of any s..."
by James Joyce
"—He's a cultured allroundman, Bloom is, he said seriously. He's not one of your common or garden ... you know ... There's a touch of the art..."
by James Joyce
"I can entertain the proposition that life is a metaphor for boxing—for one of those bouts that go on and on, round following round, jabs, mi..."
by Joyce Carol Oates
"If the Irish programme did not insist on the Irish language I suppose I could call myself a nationalist. As it is, I am content to recognize m..."
by James Joyce
"It is important to note that multiculturalism does not share the postmodernist stance. Its passions are political; its assumptions empirical; ..."
by Joyce Appleby
"Not the least vital of the problems which confront our country is the problem of her attitude towards those of her children who, having left h..."
by James Joyce
"O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea and the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda g..."
by James Joyce
"Religion is organized to satisfy and guide the soul—politics does the same thing for the body."
by Joyce Cary


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