"I have the words already. What I am seeking is the perfect order of words in the sentence. You can see for yourself how many different ways they might be arranged."
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Quote collection
James Joyce quotes (page 4 of 17)
323 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America."
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"I've been working hard on [Ulysses] all day," said Joyce. Does that mean that you have written a great deal?" I said. Two sentences," said Joyce. I looked sideways but Joyce was not smiling. I thought of [French novelist Gustave] Flaubert. "You've been seeking the mot juste?" I said. No," said Joyce. "I have the words already. What I am seeking is the perfect order of words in the sentence."
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"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."
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"Every jackass going the roads thinks he has ideas."
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"The object of the artist is the creation of the beautiful. What the beautiful is is another question."
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"All things are inconstant except the faith in the soul, which changes all things and fills their inconstancy with light."
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"Winds of May, that dance on the sea, Dancing a ring-around in glee From furrow to furrow, while overhead The foam flies up to be garlanded, In silvery arches spanning the air, Saw you my true love anywhere? Welladay! Welladay! For the winds of May! Love is unhappy when love is away!"
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"Some people believe that we go on living in another body after death, that we lived before. They call it reincarnation. That we all lived before on the earth thousands of years ago or on some other planet. They say we have forgotten it. Some say they remember their past lives."
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"I have left my book, I have left my room, For I heard you singing Through the gloom."
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"Masturbation! The amazing availability of it!"
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"By an epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or memorable phrase of the mind itself. He believed it was for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme care (saving them for later use, that is), seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and evanescent of moments."
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"Beware the horns of a bull, the heels of the horse, and the smile of an Englishman."
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"The pleasures of love lasts but a fleeting but the pledges of life outlusts a lieftime."
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"You cannot eat your cake and have it."
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"I shall write a book some day about the appropriateness of names. Geoffrey Chaucer has a ribald ring, as is proper and correct, and Alexander Pope was inevitably Alexander Pope. Colley Cibber was a silly little man without much elegance and Shelley was very Percy and very Bysshe."
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"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."
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"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 forever when you have given it. It will be yours always. That is to give."
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"Wipe your glasses with what you know."
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"And then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes."
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