His soul had loved to muse in secret on this desire. He had seen himself, a young and silent-mannered priest, entering a confessional swiftly, ascending the altarsteps, incensing, genuflecting, accomplishing the vague acts of the priesthood which pleased him by reason of their semblance of reality and of their distance from it.

— James Joyce

James Joyce Quotes

A side eye at my Hamlet hat.

— James Joyce

No one wanted him; he was outcast from life’s feast.

— James Joyce

To be a shoefitter in Mansfield’s was my love’s young dream, the darling joys of sweet buttonhooking, to lace up crisscrossed to kneelength the dressy kid footwear satinlined, so incredibly small, of Clyde Road ladies.

— James Joyce

Said religion was not a lying-in hospital. Mother indulgent. Said I have a queer mind and have read too much. Not true. Have read little and understood less. Then she said I would come back to faith because I had a restless mind. This means to leave church by back door of sin and re-enter through the skylight of repentance. Cannot repent. Told her so and asked for sixpence. Got threepence.

— James Joyce

He was trembling now with annoyance. Why did she seem so abstracted? He did not know how he could begin. Was she annoyed, too, about something? If she would only turn to him or come to him of her own accord! To take her as she was would be brutal. No, he must see some ardour in her eyes first. He longed to be master of her strange mood.

— James Joyce

In her lay a Godframed Godgiven preformed possibility which thou hast fructified with thy modicum of man’s work.

— James Joyce

Epi oinopa ponton.

— James Joyce

Thalatta! Thalatta!

— James Joyce

Sometimes a fever gathered within him and led him to rove alone in the evening along the quiet avenue. The peace of the gardens and the kindly lights in the windows poured a tender influence into his restless heart. The noise of children at play annoyed him and their silly voices made him feel, even more keenly than he had felt at Clongowes, that he was different from others. He did not want to play. He wanted to meet in the real world the unsubstantial image which his soul so constantly beheld.

— James Joyce

Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the man with my voice and my eyes and a ghost-woman with ashes on her breath. They clasped and sundered, did the coupler’s will.

— James Joyce

The cheers died away in the soft grey air. He was alone. He was happy and free; but he would not be anyway proud with Father Dolan. He would be very quiet and obedient: and he wished that he could do something kind for him to show him that he was not proud.

— James Joyce

Father Bernard Vaughan’s sermon first. Christ or Pilate? Christ, but don’t keep us all night over it.

— James Joyce

Alternation of sad human ineffectiveness with vast inhuman cycles of activity chilled him and he forgot his own human and ineffectual grieving.

— James Joyce

He felt above him the vast indifferent dome and the calm processes of the heavenly bodies; and the earth beneath him, the earth that had borne him, had taken him to her breast.

— James Joyce

O, you poor fellow! Out there in the rain all that time! I forgot that.

— James Joyce

Our end is the acquisition of knowledge.

— James Joyce

Art has to reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual essences.

— James Joyce

I believe you’re a good fellow but you have yet to learn the dignity of altruism and the responsibility of the human individual.

— James Joyce

The sad quiet greyblue glow of the dying day came through the window and the open door, covering over and allaying quietly a sudden instinct of remorse in Stephen’s heart. All that had been denied them had been freely given to him, the eldest: but the quiet glow of evening showed him in their faces no sign of rancour.

— James Joyce

I admire the mind of man independent of all religions.

— James Joyce
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