James Augustine Aloysius Joyce

2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941

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Place of birth: Dublin, Ireland
Most famous book: Ulysses
Interesting facts:

  • He is considered one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde
  • He suffered from cynophobia and astraphobia
  • Renown psychiatrist Carl Jung had concluded that both Joyce’s daughter Lucia, as well as Joyce himself, had schizofrenia
  • He was gifted musically, being able to sing, compose, as well as play the piano and the guitar, a fact that along with his profound love for music, has influenced his writing

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20 Beautiful James Joyce Quotes:

1.”There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.”

2.”Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.”

3.”Does nobody understand?”

4.”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.”

5.”Time is, time was, but time shall be no more.”

6.”We are an unfortunate priest-ridden race and always were and always will be tell the end of the chapter…. A priest-ridden Godforsaken race.”

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7.”I want to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book.”

8.”Full many a flower is born to blush unseen.”

9.”Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves.”

10.”Man and woman, love, what is it? A cork and a bottle.”

11.”Life is the great teacher.”

12.”First we feel. Then we fall.”

13.”Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.”

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14.”Can’t bring back time. Like holding water in your hand.”

15.”Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.”

16.”There’s many a true word spoken in jest.”

17.”Why is it that words like these seem dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?”

18.”Ask no questions and you’ll hear no lies.”

19.”Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.”

20.”First kiss does the trick. The propitious moment. Something inside them goes pop.”

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