James Joyce

(558 votes)   What did that mean, to kiss? You put your face up like that to say goodnight and then his mother put her face down. That was to kiss. His mother put her lips on his cheek; her lips were soft and they wetted his cheek; and they made a tiny little noise: kiss. Why did people do that with their two faces?

James Joyce
1882-1941, Irish Author

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(416 votes)   All things are inconstant except the faith in the soul, which changes all things and fills their inconstancy with light, but though I seem to be driven out of my country as a misbeliever I have found no man yet with a faith like mine.

James Joyce
1882-1941, Irish Author

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(284 votes)   A man's errors are his portals of discovery.

James Joyce
1882-1941, Irish Author

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(275 votes)   Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not.

James Joyce
1882-1941, Irish Author

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(271 votes)   Mistakes are the portals of discovery.

James Joyce
1882-1941, Irish Author

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(252 votes)   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.

James Joyce

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(232 votes)   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.

James Joyce
1882-1941, Irish Author

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(220 votes)   Love (understood as the desire of good for another) is in fact so unnatural a phenomenon that it can scarcely repeat itself, the soul being unable to become virgin again and not having energy enough to cast itself out again into the ocean of another's soul.

James Joyce
1882-1941, Irish Author

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(211 votes)   Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America.

James Joyce
1882-1941, Irish Author

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(205 votes)   He comes into the world God knows how, walks on the water, gets out of his grave and goes up off the Hill of Howth. What drivel is this?

James Joyce
1882-1941, Irish Author

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

James Joyce
1882-1941, Irish Author

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(191 votes)   No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination.

James Joyce
1882-1941, Irish Author

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(189 votes)   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.

James Joyce
1882-1941, Irish Author

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(183 votes)   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.

James Joyce
1882-1941, Irish Author

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(183 votes)   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.

James Joyce
1882-1941, Irish Author

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