Quote

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.

James Joyce

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James Joyce
Age: 58 †
Born: 1882
Born: February 2
Died: 1941
Died: January 13
Author
Father
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Prosaist
Teacher
Writer
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce
Like
Behinds
Paring
Creation
Handiwork
Beyond
Refining
Behind
Fingernails
Existence
Refined
Within
Indifferent
Artist
Invisible
Art
Remains

More quotes by James Joyce

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[A writer is] a priest of eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life.
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His eyes were dimmed with tears and, looking humbly up to heaven, he wept for the innocence he had lost.
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This race and this country and this life produced me, he said. I shall express myself as I am.
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I care not if I live but a day and a night, so long as my deeds live after me.
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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.
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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.
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I'll tickle his catastrophe.
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Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.
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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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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.
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Your battles inspired me - not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead.
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[...] a darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend.
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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.
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Love loves to love love.
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But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.
James Joyce
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...rapid motion through space elates one.
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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.
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You cannot eat your cake and have it.
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People trample over flowers, yet only to embrace a cactus.
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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.
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