Background Image

...

Do You Know What A Pearl Is And What An Opal Is? My Soul When You Came Sauntering To Me First Through Those Sweet Summer Evenings Was Beautiful But With The Pale Passionless Beauty Of A Pearl. Your Love Has Passed Through Me And Now I Feel My Mind Something Like An Opal, That Is, Full Of Strange Uncertain Hues And Colours, Of Warm Lights And Quick Shadows And Of Broken Music.

-James Joyce

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Do You Know What

James Joyce

...

Do You Know What A Pearl Is And What An Opal Is? My Soul When You Came Sauntering To Me First Through Those Sweet Summer Evenings Was Beautiful But With The Pale Passionless Beauty Of A Pearl. Your Love Has Passed Through Me And Now I Feel My Mind Something Like An Opal, That Is, Full Of Strange Uncertain Hues And Colours, Of Warm Lights And Quick Shadows And Of Broken Music.

Views: 10

Topic

More From James Joyce

She Would Follow, Her Dream Of Love, The Dictates Of Her Heart That Told Her He Was Her All In All, The Only Man In All The World For Her For Love Was The Master Guide. Come What Might She Would Be Wild, Untrammelled, Free.

What? Corpus. Body. Corpse. Good Idea The Latin. Stupifies Them First. Hospice For The Dying. They Don't Seem To Chew It; Only Swallow It Down.

And In Spite Of Everything, Ireland Remains The Brain Of The Kingdom. The English, Judiciously Practical And Ponderous, Furnish The Over-stuffed Stomach Of Humanity With A Perfect Gadget--the Water Closet. The Irish, Condemned To Express Themselves In A Language Not Their Own, Have Stamped On It The Mark Of Their Own Genius And Compete For Glory With The Civilized Nations. This Is Then Called English Literature.

The Voices Blend And Fuse In Clouded Silence: Silence That Is Infinite Of Space: And Swiftly, Silently The Sound Is Wafted Over Regions Of Cycles Of Cycles Of Generations That Have Lived.

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.

Shut Your Eyes And See.

You Cannot Eat Your Cake And Have It.

Have Your Cake And Eat It Too

For Myself, I Always Write About Dublin, Because If I Can Get To The Heart Of Dublin I Can Get To The Heart Of All The Cities Of The World. In The Particular Is Contained The Universal.

Ineluctable Modality Of The Visible; At Least That If No More, Thought Through My Eyes. Signatures Of All Things I Am Here To Read.

There Is Only One Thing That Makes Any One Athlete Better Than Another, His Heart. We All Put Our Underwear On Feet First, So We Are All Human.

If There Is Any Difficulty In What I Write, It Is Because Of The Material I Use. The Thought Is Always Simple.

If The Irish Programme Did Not Insist On The Irish Language I Suppose I Could Call Myself A Nationalist. As It Is, I Am Content Torecognize Myself An Exile: And, Prophetically, A Repudiated One.

Desire's Wind Blasts The Thorntree But After It Becomes From A Bramblebush To Be A Rose Upon The Rood Of Time.

Moments Of Their Secret Life Together Burst Like Stars Upon His Memory.

He Asked Himself What Is A Woman Standing On The Stairs In The Shadow, Listening To Distant Music, A Symbol Of. If He Were A Painter He Would Paint Her In That Attitude. Her Blue Felt Hat Would Show Off The Bronze Of Her Hair Against The Darkness And The Dark Panels Of Her Skirt Would Show Off The Light Ones. Distant Music He Would Call The Picture If He Were A Painter.

Michael Robartes Remembers Forgotten Beauty And, When His Arms Wrap Her Round, He Presses In His Arms The Loveliness Which Has Long Faded From The World. Not This. Not At All. I Desire To Press In My Arms The Loveliness Which Has Not Yet Come Into The World.

The Romantic Temper, So Often And So Grievously Misinterpreted And Not More By Others Than By Its Own, Is An Insecure, Unsatisfied, And Impatient Temper Which Sees No Fit Abode Here For Its Ideals And Chooses Therefore To Behold Them Under Insensible Figures. As A Result Of This Choice It Comes To Disregard Certain Limitations. Its Figures Are Blown To Wild Adventures, Lacking The Gravity Of Solid Bodies, And The Mind That Has Conceived Them Ends By Disowning Them.

...rapid Motion Through Space Elates One.

Fall If You Will, But Rise You Must.

You Behold In Me, Stephen Said With Grim Displeasure, A Horrible Example Of Free Thought.

Beauty, The Splendour Of Truth, Is A Gracious Presence When The Imagination Contemplates Intensely The Truth Of Its Own Being Or The Visible World, And The Spirit Which Proceeds Out Of Truth And Beauty Is The Holy Spirit Of Joy. These Are Realities And These Alone Give And Sustain Life.

Terence O'ryan Heard Him And Straightway Brought Him A Crystal Cup Full Of The Foaming Ebon Ale Which The Noble Twin Brothers Bungiveagh And Bungardilaun Brew Ever In Their Divine Alevats, Cunning As The Sons Of Deathless Leda. For They Garner The Succulent Berries Of The Hop And Mass And Sift And Bruise And Brew Them And They Mix Therewith Sour Juices And Bring The Must To The Sacred Fire And Cease Not Night Or Day From Their Toil, Those Cunning Brothers, Lords Of The Vat.

British Beatitudes! ... Beer, Beef, Business, Bibles, Bulldogs, Battleships, Buggery And Bishops.

There Is Not Past, No Future; Everything Flows In An Eternal Present.

A Nation Is The Same People Living In The Same Place.

The Swift December Dusk Had Come Tumbling Clownishly After Its Dull Day And, As He Stared Through The Dull Square Of The Window Of The Schoolroom, He Felt His Belly Crave For Its Food. He Hoped There Would Be Stew For Dinner, Turnips And Carrots And Bruised Potatoes And Fat Mutton Pieces To Be Ladled Out In Thick Peppered Flourfattened Sauce. Stuff It Into You, His Belly Counselled Him.

Interpretations Of Interpretations Interpreted.

Alone, What Did Bloom Feel? The Cold Of Interstellar Space, Thousands Of Degrees Below Freezing Point Or The Absolute Zero Of Fahrenheit, Centigrade Or Réaumur: The Incipient Intimations Of Proximate Dawn.

All Fiction Is Autobiographical Fantasy.

You Forget That The Kingdom Of Heaven Suffers Violence: And The Kingdom Of Heaven Is Like A Woman.

A Corpse Is Meat Gone Bad. Well And What's Cheese? Corpse Of Milk.

We Are All Born In The Same Way But We All Die In Different Ways.

In This Life Our Sorrows Are Either Not Very Long Or Not Very Great Because Nature Either Overcomes Them By Habits Or Puts An End To Them By Sinking Under Their Weight. But In Hell The Torments Cannot Be Overcome By Habit, For While They Are Of Terrible Intensity They Are At The Same Time Of Continual Variety, Each Pain, So To Speak, Taking Fire From Another And Re-endowing That Which Has Enkindled It With A Still Fiercer Flame.

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.

There's No Police Like Holmes.

Imagine Some Foul And Putrid Corpse That Has Lain Rotting And Decomposing In The Grave, A Jelly-like Mass Of Liquid Corruption. Imagine Such A Corpse A Prey To Flames, Devoured By The Fire Of Burning Brimstone And Giving Off Dense Choking Fumes Of Nauseous Loathsome Decomposition. And Then Imagine This Sickening Stench, Multiplied A Millionfold And A Millionfold Again From The Millions Upon Millions Of Fetid Carcasses Massed Together In The Reeking Darkness, A Huge And Rotting Human Fungus. Imagine All This, And You Will Have Some Idea Of The Horror Of The Stench Of Hell.

Lord, Heap Miseries Upon Us Yet Entwine Our Arts With Laughters Low.

There's No Friends Like The Old Friends.

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.

I Was Happier Then. Or Was That I? Or Am I Now I? Can't Bring Back Time. Like Holding Water In Your Hand. Would You Go Back To Then? Just Beginning Then. Would You?

I Am Tomorrow, Or Some Future Day, What I Establish Today. I Am Today What I Established Yesterday Or Some Previous Day.

Writing In English Is The Most Ingenious Torture Ever Devised For Sins Committed In Previous Lives. The English Reading Public Explains The Reason Why.

Every Life Is In 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.

Tenors Get Women By The Score.

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.

And When All Was Said And Done The Lies A Fellow Told About Himself Couldn't Probably Hold A Proverbial Candle To The Wholesale Whoppers Other Fellows Coined About Him.

Signatures Of All Things I Am Here To Read.

Through My Eyes

What Kind Of Liberation Would That Be To Forsake An Absurdity Which Is Logical And Coherent And To Embrace One Which Is Illogical And Incoherent?

He Found In The World Without As Actual What Was In His World Within As Possible.

The Intellectual Imagination! With Me All Or Not At All. Non Serviam!

Her Image Had Passed Into His Soul For Ever And No Word Had Broken The Holy Silence Of His Ecstasy. Her Eyes Had Called Him And His Soul Had Leaped At The Call. To Live, To Err, To Fall, To Triumph, To Recreate Life Out Of Life! A Wild Angel Had Appeared To Him, The Angel Of Mortal Youth And Beauty, An Envoy From The Fair Courts Of Life, To Throw Open Before Him In An Instant Of Ecstasy The Gates Of All The Ways Of Error And Glory. On And On And On And On!

Poetry, Even When Apparently Most Fantastic, Is Always A Revolt Against Artifice, A Revolt, In A Sense, Against Actuality. It Speaks Of What Seems Fantastic And Unreal To Those Who Have Lost The Simple Intuitions Which Are The Test Of Reality; And, As It Is Often Found At War With Its Age, So It Makes No Account Of History, Which Is Fabled By The Daughters Of Memory.

My Intention Was To Write A Chapter Of The Moral History Of My Country And I Chose Dublin For The Scene Because That City Seemed To Me The Centre Of Paralysis.

As I Am. As I Am. All Or Not At All.

Full Many A Flower Is Born To Blush Unseen.

O, Dread And Dire Word. Eternity! What Mind Of Man Can Understand It?

I Could Call My Wandering Thoughts Together. I Had Hardly Any Patience With The Serious Work Of Life Which, Now That It Stood Between Me And My Desire, Seemed To Me Child's Play, Ugly Monotonous Child's Play.

Heart Of My Heart, Were It More, More Would Be Laid At Your Feet.

What Is Better Than To Sit At The End Of The Day And Drink Wine With Friends, Or Substitutes For Friends?

The End Of The Day

Shaw's Works Make Me Admire The Magnificent Tolerance And Broadmindedness Of The English.

Have Read Little And Understood Less.

For The Years, He Felt, Had Not Quenched His Soul, Or Hers.

Beware The Horns Of A Bull, The Heels Of The Horse, And The Smile Of An Englishman.

Deal With Him, Hemingway!

There Is An Atmosphere Of Spiritual Effort Here. No Other City Is Quite Like It. I Wake Early, Often At 5 O'clock, And Start Writing At Once.

My Mouth Is Full Of Decayed Teeth And My Soul Of Decayed Ambitions.

Her Name Sprang To My Lips At Moments In Strange Prayers And Praises Which I Myself Did Not Understand. My Eyes Were Often Full Of Tears (i Could Not Tell Why) And At Times A Flood From My Heart Seemed To Pour Itself Out Into My Bosom. I Thought Little Of The Future. I Did Not Know Whether I Would Ever Speak To Her Or Not Or, If I Spoke To Her, How I Could Tell Her Of My Confused Adoration.

The Movements Which Work Revolutions In The World Are Born Out Of The Dreams And Visions In A Peasant's Heart On The Hillside.

White Wine Is Like Electricity. Red Wine Looks And Tastes Like A Liquified Beefsteak.

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.

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!

What Was After The Universe? Nothing. But Was There Anything Round The Universe To Show Where It Stopped Before The Nothing Place Began?

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.

I Hear The Ruin Of All Space, Shattered Glass And Toppled Masonry, And Time One Livid Final Flame.

Oh Ireland My First And Only Love Where Christ And Caesar Are Hand In Glove!

Better Pass Boldly Into That Other World, In The Full Glory Of Some Passion, Than Fade And Wither Dismally With Age.

(...) You Cruel Creature, Little Mite Of A Thing With A Heart The Size Of A Fullstop.

When One Reads These Strange Pages Of One Long Gone One Feels That One Is At One With One Who Once.

Under Cover Of Her Silence He Pressed Her Arm Closely To His Side; And, As They Stood At The Hotel Door, He Felt That They Had Escaped From Their Lives And Duties, Escaped From Home And Friends And Run Away Together With Wild And Radiant Hearts To A New Adventure.

His Eyes Were Dimmed With Tears And, Looking Humbly Up To Heaven, He Wept For The Innocence He Had Lost.

Never Let Us Do Wrong, Because Our Opponents Did So. Let Us, Rather, By Doing Right, Show Them What They Ought To Have Done, And Establish A Rule The Dictates Of Reason And Conscience, Rather Than Of The Angry Passions.

Ireland Sober Is Ireland Stiff.

The Important Thing Is Not What We Write But How We Write, And In My Opinion The Modern Writer Must Be An Adventurer Above All, Willing To Take Every Risk, And Be Prepared To Founder In His Effort If Need Be. In Other Words We Must Write Dangerously

Whatever Else Is Unsure In This Stinking Dunghill Of A World A Mother's Love Is Not.

The Men That Is Now Is Only All Palaver And What They Can Get Out Of You.

The Irish Are People Who Will Never Have Leaders, For At The Great Moment They Always Desert Them. They Have Produced One Skeleton--parnell--never A Man.

I Will Tell You What I Will Do And What I Will Not Do. I Will Not Serve That In Which I No Longer Believe, Whether It Calls Itself My Home, My Fatherland, Or My Church: And I Will Try To Express Myself In Some Mode Of Life Or Art As Freely As I Can And As Wholly As I Can, Using For My Defense The Only Arms I Allow Myself To Use -- Silence, Exile, And Cunning.

To Learn One Must Be Humble. But Life Is The Great Teacher.

Love Between Man And Man Is Impossible Because There Must Not Be Sexual Intercourse And Friendship Between Man And Woman Is Impossible Because There Must Be Sexual Intercourse.

Frequent And Violent Temptations Were A Proof That The Citadel Of The Soul Had Not Fallen And That The Devil Raged To Make It Fall.

What's In A Name? That Is What We Ask Ourselves In Childhood When We Write The Name That We Are Told Is Ours.

Men Are Governed By Lines Of Intellect - Women: By Curves Of Emotion.

The Demand That I Make Of My Reader Is That He Should Devote His Whole Life To Reading My Works.

When The Short Days Of Winter Came, Dusk Fell Before We Had Well Eaten Our Dinners. When We Met In The Street The Houses Had Grown Sombre. The Space Of Sky Above Us Was The Colour Of Ever-changing Violet And Towards It The Lamps Of The Street Lifted Their Feeble Lanterns. The Cold Air Stung Us And We Played Till Our Bodies Glowed. Our Shouts Echoed In The Silent Street.

He Passes, Struck By The Stare Of Truculent Wellington But In The Convex Mirror Grin Unstruck The Bonham Eyes And Fatchuck Cheekchops Of Jollypoldy The Rixdix Doldy.

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.

Though Their Life Was Modest, They Believed In Eating Well.

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.

No One Would Think He'd Make Such A Beautiful Corpse.

Life Is The Great Teacher.

Every Physical Quality Admired By Men In Women Is In Direct Connection With The Manifold Functions Of Women For The Propagation Of The Species.

If It Is Thus, I Ask Emphatically Whence Comes This Thusness.

The Supreme Question About A Work Of Art Is Out Of How Deep A Life Does It Spring.

I Should Tell You That Honestly, On My Honour Of A Nearwicked, I Always Think In A Wordworth's Of That Primed Favourite Continental Poet, Daunty, Gouty And Shopkeeper, A.g., Whom The Generality Admoyers In This That Is And That This Is To Come.

I Done Me Best When I Was Let. Thinking Always If I Go All Goes. A Hundred Cares, A Tithe Of Troubles And Is There One Who Understands Me? One In A Thousand Of Years Of The Nights? All Me Life I Have Been Lived Among Them But Now They Are Becoming Lothed To Me. And I Am Lothing Their Little Warm Tricks. And Lothing Their Mean Cosy Turns. And All The Greedy Gushes Out Through Their Small Souls. And All The Lazy Leaks Down Over Their Brash Bodies. How Small It's All! And Me Letting On To Meself Always. And Lilting On All The Time.

He Drew Forth A Phrase From His Treasure And Spoke It Softly To Himself: A Day Of Dappled Seaborne Clouds.

Hold To The Now, The Here, Through Which All Future Plunges To The Past.

Ulysses He ... Saw The Dark Tangled Curls Of His Bush Floating, Floating Hair Of The Stream Around The Limp Father Of Thousands, A Languid Flatong Flower.

People Trample Over Flowers, Yet Only To Embrace A Cactus.

The Philosophic Mind Inclines Always To An Elaborate Life--the Life Of Goethe Or Of Leonardo Da Vinci; But The Life Of The Poet Isintense--the Life Of Blake Or Of Dante--taking Into Its Centre The Life That Surrounds It And Flinging It Abroad Again Amid Planetary Music.

An Irishman Needs Three Things : Silence, Cunnning, And Exile.

What Birds Were They? (...) He Listened To The Cries: Like The Squeak Of Mice Be- Hind The Wainscot : A Shrill Twofold Note. But The Notes Were Long And Shrill And Whirring, Unlike The Cry Of Vermin, Falling A Third Or A Fourth And Trilled As The Flying Beaks Clove The Air. Their Cry Was Shrill And Clear And Fine And Falling Like Threads Of Silken Light Unwound From Whirring Spools.

And The First Till Last Alshemist Wrote Over Every Square Inch Of The Only Foolscap Available, His Own Body, Till By Its Corrosive Sublimation One Continuous Present Tense Integument Slowly Unfolded All Marryvoising Moodmoulded Cyclewheeling History.

The Artist... Standing In The Position Of Mediator Between The World Of His Experience And The World Of His Dreams - 'a Mediator, Consequently Gifted With Twin Faculties, A Selective Faculty And A Reproductive Faculty.' To Equate These Faculties Was The Secret Of Artistic Success.

When I Die Dublin Will Be Written On My Heart.

You Ask Me Why I Don’t Love You, But Surely You Must Believe I Am Very Fond Of You And If To Desire To Possess A Person Wholly, To Admire And Honour That Person Deeply, And To Seek To Secure That Person’s Happiness In Every Way Is To “love” Then Perhaps My Affection For You Is A Kind Of Love. I Will Tell You This That Your Soul Seems To Me To Be The Most Beautiful And Simple Soul In The World And It May Be Because I Am So Conscious Of This When I Look At You That My Love Or Affection For You Loses Much Of Its Violence.

The Apprehensive Faculty Must Be Scrutinised In Action.

You Made Me Confess The Fears That I Have. But I Will Tell You Also What I Do Not Fear. I Do Not Fear To Be Alone Or To Be Spurned For Another Or To Leave Whatever I Have To Leave. And I Am Not Afraid To Make A Mistake, Even A Great Mistake, A Lifelong Mistake And Perhaps As Long As Eternity Too.

Your Battles Inspired Me - Not The Obvious Material Battles But Those That Were Fought And Won Behind Your Forehead.

I've Put In So Many Enigmas And Puzzles That It Will Keep The Professors Busy For Centuries Arguing Over What I Meant, And That's The Only Way Of Insuring One's Immortality.

Mistakes Are The Portals Of Discovery.

Love Loves To Love Love.

The End He Had Been Born To Serve Yet Did Not See Had Led Him To Escape By An Unseen Path And Now It Beckoned To Him Once More And A New Adventure Was About To Be Opened To Him.

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.

I Care Not If I Live But A Day And A Night, So Long As My Deeds Live After Me.

An Improper Art Aims At Exciting In The Way Of Comedy The Feeling Of Desire But The Feeling Which Is Proper To Comic Art Is The Feeling Of Joy.

So You Need Hardly Spell Me How Every Word Will Be Bound Over To Carry Three Score And Ten Toptypsical Readings Throughout The Book Of Doublends Jined.

Do You Know What A Pearl Is And What An Opal Is? My Soul When You Came Sauntering To Me First Through Those Sweet Summer Evenings Was Beautiful But With The Pale Passionless Beauty Of A Pearl. Your Love Has Passed Through Me And Now I Feel My Mind Something Like An Opal, That Is, Full Of Strange Uncertain Hues And Colours, Of Warm Lights And Quick Shadows And Of Broken Music.

He Lived At A Little Distance From His Body, Regarding His Own Acts With Doubtful Side-glances. He Had An Odd Autobiographical Habit Which Led Him To Compose In His Mind From Time To Time A Short Sentence About Himself Containing A Subject In The Third Person And A Verb In The Past Tense.

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?

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.

What Did It Avail To Pray When He Knew His Soul Lusted After Its Own Destruction?

Does Nobody Understand?

Drugs Age You After Mental Excitement. Lethargy Then. Why? Reaction. A Lifetime In A Night. Gradually Changes Your Character.

The Studious Silence Of The Library ... Thought Is The Thought Of Thought. Tranquil Brightness.

I Am Quite Content To Go Down To Posterity As A Scissors And Paste Man For That Seems To Me A Harsh But Not Unjust Description

The Mouth Can Be Better Engaged Than With A Cylinder Of Rank Weed.

Away! Away! The Spell Of Arms And Voices: The White Arms Of Roads, Their Promise Of Close Embraces And The Black Arms Of Tall Ships That Stand Against The Moon, Their Tale Of Distant Nations. They Are Held Out To Say: We Are Alone. Come. And The Voices Say With Them: We Are Your Kinsmen. And The Air Is Thick With Their Company As They Call To Me, Their Kinsman, Making Ready To Go, Shaking The Wings Of Their Exultant And Terrible Youth... 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.

The Heaventree Of Stars Hung With Humid Nightblue Fruit.

I Am A Worker, A Tombstone Mason, Anxious To Pleace Averyburies And Jully Glad When Christmas Comes His Once Ayear.

The Mocker Is Never Taken Seriously When He Is Most Serious.

White Pudding And Eggs And Sausages And Cups Of Tea! How Simple And Beautiful Was Life After All!

His Heart Danced Upon Her Movements Like A Cork Upon A Tide. He Heard What Her Eyes Said To Him From Beneath Their Cowl And Knew That In Some Dim Past, Whether In Life Or Revery, He Had Heard Their Tale Before.

Wipe Your Glosses With What You Know.

Christopher Columbus, As Everyone Knows, Is Honored By Posterity Because He Was The Last To Discover America.

It Soared, A Bird, It Held Its Flight, A Swift Pure Cry, Soar Silver Orb It Leaped Serene, Speeding, Sustained, To Come, Don't Spin It Out Too Long Long Breath He Breath Long Life, Soaring High, High Resplendent, Aflame, Crowned, High In The Effulgence Symbolistic, High, Of The Ethereal Bosom, High, Of The High Vast Irradiation Everywhere All Soaring All Around About The All, The Endlessnessnessness.

Our Souls, Shamewounded By Our Sins, Cling To Us Yet More, A Woman To Her Lover Clinging, The More The More. She Trusts Me, Her Hand Gentle, The Longlashed Eyes. Now Where The Blue Hell Am I Bringing Her Beyond The Veil? Into The Ineluctable Modality Of The Ineluctable Visuality. She, She, She. What She?

Ask No Questions And You'll Hear No Lies.

Her Lips Touched His Brain As They Touched His Lips, As Though They Were A Vehicle Of Some Vague Speech And Between Them He Felt An Unknown And Timid Preasure, Darker Than The Swoon Of Sin, Softer Than Sound Or Odor.

When I Makes Tea I Makes Tea, As Old Mother Grogan Said. And When I Makes Water I Makes Water.

The Object Of The Artist Is The Creation Of The Beautiful. What The Beautiful Is Is Another Question.

Once Upon A Time And A Very Good Time It Was There Was A Moocow Coming Down Along The Road And This Moocow That Was Coming Down Along The Road Met A Nicens Little Boy Named Baby Tuckoo

Once Upon A Time

Ulysses Is Son To Laertes, But He Is Father To Telemachus, Husband To Penelope, Lover Of Calypso, Companion In Arms Of The Greek Warriors Around Troy, And King Of Ithaca. He Was Subjected To Many Trials, But With Wisdom And Courage Came Through Them All.... He Is A Complete Man As Well, A Good Man.

One Of The Things I Could Never Get Accustomed To In My Youth Was The Difference I Found Between Life And Literature.

Sentimentality Is Unearned Emotion.

A Classical Style... Is The Syllogism Of Art, The Only Legitimate Process From One World To Another. Classicism Is Not The Manner Of Any Fixed Age Or Of Any Fixed Country; It Is A Constant State Of The Artistic Mind. It Is A Temper Of Security And Satisfaction And Patience.

A Dim Antagonism Gathered Force Within Him And Darkened His Mind As A Cloud Against Her Disloyalty: And When It Passed, Cloudlike, Leaving His Mind Serene And Dutiful Towards Her Again, He Was Made Aware Dimly And Without Regret Of A First Noiseless Sundering Of Their Lives.

Very Gratefully, With Grateful Appreciation, With Sincere Appreciative Gratitude, In Appreciatively Grateful Sincerity Of Regret, He Declined.

He Could Not Feel Her Near Him In The Darkness Nor Hear Her Voice Touch His Ear. He Waited For Some Minutes Listening. He Could Hear Nothing: The Night Was Perfectly Silent. He Listened Again: Perfectly Silent. He Felt That He Was Alone.

Every Night As I Gazed Up At The Window I Said Softly To Myself The Word Paralysis. It Had Always Sounded Strangely In My Ears, Like The Word Gnomon In The Euclid And The Word Simony In The Catechism. But Now It Sounded To Me Like The Name Of Some Maleficent And Sinful Being. It Filled Me With Fear, And Yet I Longed To Be Nearer To It And To Look Upon Its Deadly Work.

The Artist, Like The God Of The Creation, Remains Within Or Behind Or Beyond Or Above His Handiwork, Invisible, Refined Out Of Existence, Indifferent, Paring His Fingernails.

If Ireland Is To Become A New Ireland She Must First Become European.

If He Had Smiled Why Would He Have Smiled? To Reflect That Each One Who Enters Imagines Himself To Be The First To Enter Whereas He Is Always The Last Term Of A Preceding Series Even If The First Term Of A Succeeding One, Each Imagining Himself To Be First, Last, Only And Alone Whereas He Is Neither First Nor Last Nor Only Nor Alone In A Series Originating In And Repeated To Infinity.

I Came In At Half Past Eleven. Since Then I Have Been Sitting In An Easy Chair Like A Fool. I Could Do Nothing. I Hear Nothing But Your Voice. I Am Like A Fool Hearing You Call Me 'dear.' I Offended Two Men Today By Leaving Them Coolly. I Wanted To Hear Your Voice, Not Theirs. When I Am With You I Leave Aside My Contemptuous, Suspicious Nature. I Wish I Felt Your Head On My Shoulder.

I Have Left My Book, I Have Left My Room, For I Heard You Singing Through The Gloom.

The State Is Concentric, But The Individual Is Eccentric.

Always See A Fellows Weak Point In His Wife.

I Fear Those Big Words, Stephen Said, Which Make Us So Unhappy.

That Ideal Reader Suffering From An Ideal Insomnia.

I Wanted Real Adventures To Happen To Myself. But Real Adventures, I Reflected, Do Not Happen To People Who Remain At Home: They Must Be Sought Abroad.

She Respected Her Husband In The Same Way As She Respected The General Post Office, As Something Large, Secure And Fixed: And Though She Knew The Small Number Of His Talents She Appreciated His Abstract Value As A Male.

Life Is Too Short To Read A Bad Book.

Life Is Too Short

Every Age Must Look For Its Sanction To Its Poetry And Philosophy, For In These The Human Mind, As It Looks Backward Or Forward, Attains To An Eternal State.

[...] A Darkness Shining In Brightness Which Brightness Could Not Comprehend.

In The Particular Is Contained The Universal.

And If He Had Judged Her Harshly? If Her Life Were A Simple Rosary Of Hours, Her Life Simple And Strange As A Bird's Life, Gay In The Morning, Restless All Day, Tired At Sundown? Her Heart Simple And Willful As A Bird's Heart?

Time's Ruins Build Eternity's Mansions.

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.

Love Me. Love My Umbrella.

Mr Leopold Bloom Ate With Relish The Inner Organs Of Beasts And Fowls. He Liked Thick Giblet Soup, Nutty Gizzards, A Stuffed Roast Heart, Liverslices Fried With Crustcrumbs, Fried Hencods' Roes. Most Of All He Liked Grilled Mutton Kidneys Which Gave To His Palate A Fine Tang Of Faintly Scented Urine.

Poetry, Even When Apparently Most Fantastic, Is Always A Revolt Against Artifice, A Revolt, In A Sense, Against Actuality.

Phall If You But Will, Rise You Must: And None So Soon Either Shall The Pharce For The Nunce Come To A Setdown Secular Phoenish.

My Heart Is Quite Calm Now. I Will Go Back.

One Great Part Of Every Human Existence Is Passed In A State Which Cannot Be Rendered Sensible By The Use Of Wideawake Language, Cutanddry Grammar And Goahead Plot.

The Artist Who Could Disentangle The Subtle Soul Of The Image From Its Mesh Of Defining Circumstances Most Exactly And 're-embody' It In Artistic Circumstances Chosen As The Most Exact For It In Its New Office, He Was The Supreme Artist.

People Could Put Up With Being Bitten By A Wolf But What Properly Riled Them Was A Bite From A Sheep.

Every Jackass Going The Roads Thinks He Has Ideas.

Human Society Is The Embodiment Of Changeless Laws Which The Whimsicalities And Circumstances Of Men And Women Involve And Overwrap. The Realm Of Literature Is The Realm Of These Accidental Manners And Humours--a Spacious Realm; And The True Literary Artist Concerns Himself Mainly With Them.

Gentle Lady, Do Not Sing Sad Songs About The End Of Love; Lay Aside Sadness And Sing How Love That Passes Is Enough. Sing About The Long Deep Sleep Of Lovers That Are Dead, And How In The Grave All Love Shall Sleep: Love Is Aweary Now.

I Did Not Know Whether I Would Ever Speak To Her Or Not Or, If I Spoke To Her, How I Could Tell Her Of My Confused Adoration. But My Body Was Like A Harp And Her Words And Gestures Were Like Fingers Running Upon The Wires.

This Race And This Country And This Life Produced Me, He Said. I Shall Express Myself As I Am.

In The Name Of Annah The Allmaziful, The Everliving, The Bringer Of Plurabilities, Haloed Be Her Eve, Her Singtime Sung, Her Rill Be Run, Unhemmed As It Is Uneven!

God Made Food; The Devil The Cooks.

Masturbation! The Amazing Availability Of It!

I Will Not Say Nothing. I Will Defend My Church And My Religion When It Is Insulted And Spit On.

A Wild Angel Had Appeared To Him, The Angel Of Mortal Youth And Beauty, An Envoy From The Fair Courts Of Life, To Throw Open Before Him In An Instant Of Ecstasy The Gates Of All The Ways Of Error And Glory.

Thanks Be To God We Lived So Long And Did So Much Good.

A Man's Errors Are His Portals Of Discovery.

I Am, A Stride At A Time. A Very Short Space Of Time Through Very Short Time Of Space.

He Wanted To Cry Quietly But Not For Himself: For The Words, So Beautiful And Sad, Like Music.

Trending Author

Maurice Chevalier

Category