The 80 best famous phrases of James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (Dublin, February 2, 1882 - Zurich, January 13, 1941) was known for being one of the most influential and striking writers of the last century, causing equal parts fascination and controversy, as was the case with his novels Ulysses and Finnegans Wake (listed as one of the funniest and strangest books in literature), turning it into the most avant-garde writer of the Anglo-Saxon modernist literary movement.

In this article we want to pay tribute to this great writer by showing the best phrases that he left behind him.

• We recommend you read: "The 80 best phrases about Art"

Famous quotes and reflections by James Joyce

These phrases will make you reflect on failures and how to turn them into reasons to succeed, as well as looking for inspiration anywhere.

1. Close your eyes and see.

We do not always observe things with our eyes, but with our hearts.

2. Errors are thresholds for discovery. (Ulises)

Take them as lessons to improve in the future.

3. Geniuses don't make mistakes. Their mistakes are always voluntary and cause some discovery.

Do not be afraid to make mistakes, because they can bring something good.

4. I have put up so many riddles and riddles that the novel will keep teachers busy for centuries, arguing about what I meant. That is the only way to ensure immortality. (reference to Ulysses)

A writer will always live in his stories.

5. What is the reason that words like these are so clumsy and cold to me? Could it be that there is no word tender enough to describe you? (Dubliners)

Sometimes we can't find the right words to describe someone we love.

6. He wanted to cry in silence, but not for himself: for the words, so beautiful and sad, like the music.

There are words that make us sad, especially if someone important to us says them.

7. History is a nightmare from which we are trying to wake up.

Reference to the weight and darkness of history.

8. The dried leaves cover the path of memories in abundance.

Metaphor about the longing and melancholy of memories.

9. Believe that you run away and meet yourself. The longest way is the shortest way home.

It is common to get away from ourselves and then find ourselves.

10. Now is the perfect time. Now is the time. (Portrait of the teenage artist)

What matters is what we do in the now.

11. I am afraid of those big words that make us so unhappy.

Words have the power to encourage us, but also to hurt us deeply.

12. You talk to me about language, country and religion. Those are the networks I have to try to escape from.

Referring to their adversity on the issues that caused them the most problems in their life.

13. Our journey through life is marked by these sad resources and, if we had to be thinking about them all the time, we would not find the courage to finish our work among the living. (Dubliners)

Don't settle, especially if you want and want to do something else with your life.

14. Nations have their egos, as do individuals.

A phrase that is self explanatory.

15. Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of art. It is the part that schools do not know how to recognize.

All artists have their own way of seeking adrenaline.

16. Love is a bloody bummer, especially when it is also coupled with lust.

When those two elements are there, it is difficult to escape from the person who provokes them.

17. No, he already had the words. It is the order of those words that I have been looking for.

Talking about writer's block.

18. The colors depend on the light one sees.

Everyone sees life differently.

19. There is no heresy or philosophy so hateful to the Church as the human being.

Because human nature is unstoppable.

20. Love loves to love love.

Love is just love.

21. My childhood bows beside me. Too far for me to rest a hand on it for once lightly. (Ulises)

Never put aside that inner child that helps you enjoy life.

22. Everything is too expensive when it is not needed.

Will it be true or will it be the other way around?

23. There is no past or future, everything flows in an eternal present.

The present is every day that we live.

24. He was destined to learn his own wisdom apart from others or to learn the wisdom of others for himself, wandering among the snares of the world.

Always learn from those who cross your path or what you find on your way.

25. Since we can't change countries, let's change the subject.

You will never change where you come from.

26. A nation is many people who live in the same place.

A nation is made up of its inhabitants.

27. In your heart there is something wiser than wisdom.

What's in your heart

28. His soul fell slowly into sleep. (Dubliners)

Falling in a dream, without really falling.

29. My body was like a harp and his words and gestures were like fingers running on the strings.

Beautiful metaphor about the impact of that loved one on us.

30. All the seas of the world fell on his heart.

Narration that indicates despair in the character.

31. Your battles have inspired me. Not the obvious material battles, but the ones you have fought and won behind your forehead.

The most motivating battles are those that are won against inner demons.

32. You forget that the kingdom of heaven suffers with violence, and the kingdom of heaven is like a woman. (Exiles)

Exile Fragment.

33. Then she showed him her pale face, like that of a helpless animal. His eyes gave her no sign of love or goodbye or gratitude. (Dubliners)

Fragment of Dubliners.

34. You will not be the owner of others nor will you be their slave. (Ulises)

Something very important to keep in mind.

35.I think I would meet Nora's fart anywhere. You could find her in a room full of farts.

A fun way to recognize a person.

36. Men are governed by the lines of intellect, women by the curves of emotion.

Do you think this is true?

37. You intend to put that idea into my head, but I warn you that I do not take my ideas from others.

Be stubborn to avoid getting ideas you don't need.

38. Better to go boldly into the next world at the height of a passion than to wither away, fatally consumed by life.

Dying does not always mean literal death, but living unhappy.

39. The beauty of music has to be heard twice.

We never feel like stopping listening to music.

40. We walk through ourselves, finding thieves, ghosts, giants, old people, young people, wives, widows, siblings in love. But always finding ourselves.

At the end of the road, there will always be us.

41. Delicate is my conscience like Chinese silk: my heart as soft as cottage cheese.

Metaphor about your feelings and the way you process them.

42. People put up with being bitten by a wolf but what really upset them was being bitten by a sheep. (Ulises)

Sometimes people do not want to see that the enemy is in their close ones.

43. Desire prompts us to possess, to move towards something.

Desire is our greatest motivation.

44. When the soul of a man is born in this country, he comes across some nets thrown to retain it, to prevent its escape.

Ties are bad for us, including those that come from the place of origin.

45. They lived and laughed and loved and left.

Live, laugh, love and go.

46. I will be tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some day before.

Whatever you do, make it to be a better person.

47. He had a strange autobiographical habit that led him to compose in his mind a short sentence about himself, with the subject in the third person and the predicate in the past tense. (Dubliners)

It is not bad that from time to time we have our own autobiographical habit.

48. The tragic emotion, indeed, is a face that looks in two directions: towards terror and towards pity, and both are phases of it.

The dualities that inhabit the tragedy.

49. Death, which is a cause of terror for the sinner, is a moment of blessing for the one who has walked the straight path.

Not everyone has the same conception of death.

50. Can we close the heart against deeply felt affection? Should we close it?

It is counterproductive to shut down to any emotion, since that is what keeps us alive.

51. My mouth is full of decayed teeth and my soul is filled with decayed ambitions.

A vision of the importance James places on things.

52. Life is too short to read a bad book.

Enjoy every book you read.

53. But now it sounded like a bad and sinful thing to me. He scared me, and yet I longed to observe his evil work closely. (Dubliners)

Sometimes the things that we fear or reject most cause us a wicked curiosity.

54. You will have seen that I use the word paralyze. I mean that tragic emotion is static. Or rather that dramatic emotion is. The feelings excited by an impure art are kinetic, desire and repulsion.

Have you ever analyzed that fear tends to paralyze?

55. And see how now I am punished! Hell holds no terrors for me. This is my condition.

Each one has the ability to make their own hell.

56. Terror is the feeling that paralyzes the mind in the presence of everything that is grave and constant in human suffering and unites it with the secret cause.

Terror has the ability to completely demotivate us.

57. Powerful minds have penetrating eyes.

Have you ever met someone with piercing eyes?

58. Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance.

An interesting insight into the famous English writer.

59. The young life breathes on the glass, the world that was not comes to go, a child sleeps, an old man leaves, oh renegade father, forgive your son. (Poem)

One of Joyce's poems.

60. The time is, the time was, but the time will no longer be.

The life of time.

61. Persecutions, he says, the history of the world is full of them. Perpetuating national hatred between nations.

Talking about the dark side of history, perpetrated by people's racist actions.

62. I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a major mistake, a lifetime mistake, perhaps as long as eternity itself.

There is no need to fear mistakes, as they can turn into something else.

63. I will no longer serve what I do not believe in, be it my home, my country or my religion.

Never owe loyalty to what you don't believe in.

64. I am proud to be an emotionalist.

There is nothing wrong with feeling deeply.

65. So I kiss her because she is beautiful. And what is a woman? A work of nature, too, like a stone, or a flower, or a bird. A kiss is an act of homage. (Exiles)

Analysis on the charm of a woman.

66. Men's actions are the best interpreters of their thoughts.

Actions are the reflection of what lives in our thoughts.

67. He had the impression that he had been hunted. He seemed to see friends gossiping and laughing. (Dubliners)

A bit of paranoia that sometimes we feel around us.

68. Anything that a person mentions, any phrase said, from a simple, seemingly innocent comment, to a deep philosophical thought, meets two conditions: it is the manifestation of a thought, but also the inevitable expression of emotion.

Everything in this life is emotionally charged.

69. Love still softly listens how sad his voice always calls me always without an answer while the rain falls now as then.

Referring to the sadness of an unrequited love.

70. It is this race and this country and this life that have produced me -he said-, I have to express myself as I am. (Portrait of the teenage artist)

Never stop being who you are, even if that is not to the liking of others.

71. I will try to express myself in some way in life and art, as freely as possible, as fully as possible, using for my defense the only weapons that I allow myself to use: silence, exile and cunning.

A great example that we must take.

72. Drugs age you after mental turmoil.

Although many say that it is a unique experience, drugs only destroy you.

73. Writing in English is the most ingenious torture method ever created to atone for sins committed in previous lives.

A fun reference to the English language.

74. We are generous people but we must also be fair.

We can neither be that good nor that bad.

75. Yet instinct suggested that she stay free, not marry. You know, as soon as you got married, you're done. (Dubliners)

For many, marriage is the same as a jail.

76. Your mother brings you into the world; she takes you first inside her body. What do we know about her feelings? But whatever it is, what she feels is at least something true.

A great reference to the love of mothers.

77. Only the blinding instant of passion - free passion, not self-conscious, irresistible - that is the only way out by which we can flee from the misery of what the slaves call life.

We all need moments to surrender to passion.

78. The darkness is in our souls, isn't it? More piping. Our soul, wounded shamed by our sins, clings more and more to us.

We all carry something dark in our backpack.

79. I don't want to know or believe. I do not mind. I do not want you in the darkness of belief, but in ceaseless, living, hurtful doubt.

What hurts us the most, sometimes, is doubting.

80. The force, the hatred, the history, all that. That is not life for men and women, insults and hatred. And everyone knows that it is precisely the opposite of what life really is.

To live, we must leave hurt and pain behind.