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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.

-James Joyce

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What Birds Were They?

James Joyce

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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.

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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.

Hell Is The Centre Of Evils And, As You Know, Things Are More Intense At Their Centres Than At Their Remotest Points.

You Get A Decent Do At The Brazen Head

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?

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

His Heart Danced Upon Her Movement Like A Cork Upon A Tide.

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

The Pleasures Of Love Lasts But A Fleeting But The Pledges Of Life Outlusts A Lieftime.

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

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

They Lived And Laughed And Loved And Left.

Positive Thinking

But We Are Living In A Sceptical And, If I May Use The Phrase, A Thought-tormented Age: And Sometimes I Fear That This New Generation, Educated Or Hyper-educated As It Is, Will Lack Those Qualities Of Humanity, Of Hospitality, Of Kindly Humour Which Belonged To An Older Day.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Good Puzzle Would Be Cross Dublin Without Passing A Pub.

Saying That A Great Genius Is Mad, While At The Same Time Recognizing His Artistic Worth, Is Like Saying That He Had Rheumatism Or Suffered From Diabetes. Madness, In Fact, Is A Medical Term That Can Claim No More Notice From The Objective Critic Than He Grants The Charge Of Heresy Raised By The Theologian, Or The Charge Of Immorality Raised By The Police.

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

We Are Bound Together By The Sympathy Of Our Antipathies.

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

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.

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.

Thought Is The Thought Of Thought.

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

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.

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

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.

We Were Always Loyal To Lost Causes...success For Us Is The Death Of The Intellect And Of The Imagination. ~ Professor Machugh

I See The Regions Of Snow And Ice, I See The Sharp-eyed Samoiede And The Finn, I See The Seal-seeker In His Boat Poising His Lance, I See The Siberian On His Slight-built Sledge Drawn By Dogs, I See The Porpoise-hunters, I See The Whale-crews Of The South Pacific And The North Atlantic, I See The Cliffs, Glaciers, Torrents, Valleys Of Switzerland - I Mark The Long Winters And The Isolation.

I Confess That I Do Not See What Good It Does To Fulminate Against The English Tyranny While The Roman Tyranny Occupies The Palace Of The Soul.

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

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.

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.

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.

I Desire To Press In My Arms The Loveliness Which Has Not Yet Come Into The World.

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.

The Personality Of The Artist, At First A Cry Or A Cadence Or A Mood And Then A Fluid, And Lambent Narrative, Finally Refines Itself Out Of Existence, Impersonalises Itself, So To Speak. The Aesthetic Image In The Dramatic Form Is Life Purified In And Reprojected From The Human Imagination. The Mystery Of Aesthetic Like That Of Material Creation Is Accomplished. 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.

To Discover The Mode Of Life Or Of Art Whereby My Spirit Could Express Itself In Unfettered Freedom.

Wipe Your Glosses With What You Know.

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.

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?

Signatures Of All Things I Am Here To Read.

Through My Eyes

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.

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

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.

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

Let My Country Die For Me.

Death, A Cause Of Terror To The Sinner, Is A Blessed Moment For Him Who Has Walked In The Right Path.

I Think A Child Should Be Allowed To Take His Father's Or Mother's Name At Will On Coming Of Age. Paternity Is A Legal Fiction.

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

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.

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?

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.

History Is That Nightmare From Which There Is No Awakening.

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?

It Is A Symbol Of Irish Art. The Cracked Looking-glass Of A Servant.

But My Body Was Like A Harp And Her Words And Gestures Were Like Fingers Running Upon The Wires.

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.

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.

A Way A Lone A Last A Loved A Long The Riverrun, Past Eve And Adam's, From Swerve Of Shore To Bend Of Bay, Brings Us By A Commodius Vicus Of Recirculation Back To Howth Castle And Environs.

In Woman's Womb Word Is Made Flesh But In The Spirit Of The Maker All Flesh That Passes Becomes The Word That Shall Not Pass Away. This Is The Postcreation.

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

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.

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.

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.

Life Is Too Short To Read A Bad Book.

Life Is Too Short

Why Is It That Words Like These Seem Dull And Cold? Is It Because There Is No Word Tender Enough To Be Your Name?

When A Man Is Born...there Are Nets Flung At It To Hold It Back From Flight. You Talk To Me Of Nationality, Language, Religion. I Shall Try To Fly By Those Nets.

Mistakes Are The Portals Of Discovery.

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

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.

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

My Puns Are Not Trivial. They Are Quadrivial

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

Evening Had Fallen. A Rim Of The Young Moon Cleft The Pale Waste Of Sky Line, The Rim Of A Silver Hoop Embedded In Grey Sand: And The Tide Was Flowing In Fast To The Land With A Low Whisper Of Her Waves, Islanding A Few Last Figures In Distant Pools.

When I Heard The Word ''stream'' Uttered With Such A Revolting Primness, What I Think Of Is Urine And Not The Contemporary Novel. And Besides, It Isn't New, It Is Far From The Dernier Cri. Shakespeare Used It Continually, Much Too Much In My Opinion, And There's Tristam Shandy, Not To Mention The "agamemnon."

And Yet Her Name Was Like A Summons To All My Foolish Blood.

I Am Not Likely To Die Of Bashfulness But Neither Am I Prepared To Be Crucified To Attest The Perfection Of My Art. I Dislike To Hear Of Any Stray Heroics On The Prowl For Me.

Have Read Little And Understood Less.

The Incompatibility Of Aquacity With The Erratic Originality Of Genius.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

All Things Are Inconstant Except The Faith In The Soul, Which Changes All Things And Fills Their Inconstancy With Light.

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

Fall If You Will, But Rise You Must.

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.

It Was Cold Autumn Weather, But In Spite Of The Cold They Wandered Up And Down The Roads Of The Park For Nearly Three Hours. They Agreed To Break Off Their Intercourse; Every Bond, He Said, Is A Bond To Sorrow.

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.

Love Loves To Love Love.

I Think I Would Know Nora's Fart Anywhere. I Think I Could Pick Hers Out In A Roomful Of Farting Women.

Absence, The Highest Form Of Presence.

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.

There's Many A True Word Spoken In Jest.

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.

First, In The History Of Words There Is Much That Indicates The History Of Men, And In Comparing The Speech Of To-day With That Ofyears Ago, We Have A Useful Illustration Of The Effect Of External Influences On The Very Words Of A Race.

Our Souls, Shame-wounded By Our Sins, Cling To Us Yet More, A Woman To Her Lover Clinging, The More The More.

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

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.

The State Is Concentric, But The Individual Is Eccentric.

Ireland Is The Old Sow That Eats Her Farrow.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Tenors Get Women By The Score.

Stately, Plump Buck Mulligan Came From The Stairhead, Bearing A Bowl Of Lather On Which A Mirror And A Razor Lay Crossed.

Gazing Up Into The Darkness I Saw Myself As A Creature Driven And Derided By Vanity; And My Eyes Burned With Anguish And Anger.

All Fiction Is Autobiographical Fantasy.

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.

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

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

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

Sentimentality Is Unearned Emotion.

And Jesus Was A Jew Too. Your God. He Was A Jew Like Me. And So Was His Father.

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

Love Me. Love My Umbrella.

Any Object, Intensely Regarded, May Be A Gate Of Access To The Incorruptible Eons Of The Gods.

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

Your Mind Will Give Back To You Exactly What You Put Into It.

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

A Woman Loses A Charm With Every Pin She Takes Out.

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

There Was No Doubt About It: If You Wanted To Succeed You Had To Go Away. You Could Do Nothing In Dublin.

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

God Made Food; The Devil The Cooks.

All Moanday, Tearday, Wailsday, Thumpsday, Frightday, Shatterday.

That Ideal Reader Suffering From An Ideal Insomnia.

I Am Damnably Sick Of Italy, Italian And Italians, Outrageously, Illogically Sick.... I Hate To Think That Italians Ever Did Anything In The Way Of Art.... What Did They Do But Illustrate A Page Or So Of The New Testament! They Themselves Think They Have A Monopoly In The Line. I Am Dead Tired Of Their Bello And Bellezza.

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

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.

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

When I Die Dublin Will Be Written On My Heart.

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.

A Man's Errors Are His Portals Of Discovery.

I'd Love To Have The Whole Place Swimming In Roses

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

Quotation Marks Quotato Marks! Bah!

Quotation Marks

[a Writer Is] A Priest Of Eternal Imagination, Transmuting The Daily Bread Of Experience Into The Radiant Body Of Everliving Life.

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 Light Music Of Whiskey Falling Into Glasses Made An Agreeable Interlude.

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.

O Cold ! O Shivery ! It Was Your Ambrosial Beauty. Forget, Forgive. Kismet. Let Me Off This Once.

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.

Ireland Sober Is Ireland Stiff.

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

Ask No Questions And You'll Hear No Lies.

No Pen, No Ink, No Table, No Room, No Time, No Quiet, No Inclination.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Always See A Fellows Weak Point In His Wife.

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

There's No Police Like Holmes.

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.

Each Lost Soul Will Be A Hell Unto Itself, The Boundless Fire Raging In Its Very Vitals.

Broken Heart. A Pump After All, Pumping Thousands Of Gallons Of Blood Every Day. One Fine Day It Gets Bunged Up And There You Are... Old Rusty Pumps: Damn The Thing Else. The Resurrection And The Life. Once You Are Dead You Are Dead.

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.

The Sacred Pint Alone Can Unbind The Tongue.

Theologians Consider That It Was The Sin Of Pride, The Sinful Thought Conceived In An Instant: Non Serviam: I Will Not Serve. That Instant Was His [lucifer's] Ruin.

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

Redheaded Women Buck Like Goats.

Stately, Plump Buck Mulligan Came From The Stairhead, Bearing A Bowl Of Lather On Which A Mirror And A Razor Lay Crossed. A Yellow Dressinggown, Ungirdled, Was Sustained Gently Behind Him By The Mild Morning Air. He Held The Bowl Aloft And Intoned: ----introibo Ad Altare Dei.

Pity Is The Feeling Which Arrests The Mind In The Presence Of Whatesoever Is Grave And Constant In Human Sufferings And Unites It With The Human Sufferer.

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.

Every Bond Is A Bond To Sorrow.

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

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

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.

Let Us Leave Theories There And Return To Here's Hear.

Love, Yes. Word Known To All Men.

Children Must Be Educated By Love, Not Punishment.

Secrets, Silent, Stony Sit In The Dark Palaces Of Both Our Hearts: Secrets Weary Of Their Tyranny: Tyrants Willing To Be Dethroned.

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.

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?

Wipe Your Glasses With What You Know.

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.

The Supreme Question About A Work Of Art Is Out Of How Deep A Life Does It Spring. Paintings Of Moreau Are Paintings Of Ideas. The Deepest Poetry Of Shelley, The Words Of Hamlet Bring Our Mind Into Contact With The Eternal Wisdom; Plato's World Of Ideas. All The Rest Is The Speculation Of Schoolboys For Schoolboys.

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.

What's Yours Is Mine And What's Mine Is My Own.

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.

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.

Does Nobody Understand?

Stephen Jerked His Thumb Towards The Window, Saying: — That Is God. Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee! — What? Mr Deasy Asked. — A Shout In The Street, Stephen Answered, Shrugging His Shoulders.

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

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.

Places Remember Events.

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.

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

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George Edward Moore

Manfred Von Richthofen

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