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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.

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
Exciting
Joy
Comedy
Improper
Feeling
Aesthetics
Desire
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Proper
Art
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Comic

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He drew forth a phrase from his treasure and spoke it softly to himself: A day of dappled seaborne clouds.
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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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Too excited to be genuinely happy
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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.
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History is that nightmare from which there is no awakening.
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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.
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Sentimentality is unearned emotion.
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I desire to press in my arms the loveliness which has not yet come into the world.
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O cold ! O shivery ! It was your ambrosial beauty. Forget, forgive. Kismet. Let me off this once.
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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.
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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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Lord, heap miseries upon us yet entwine our arts with laughters low.
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You behold in me, Stephen said with grim displeasure, a horrible example of free thought.
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A man's errors are his portals of discovery.
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To discover the mode of life or of art whereby my spirit could express itself in unfettered freedom.
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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.
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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
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Life is the great teacher.
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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.
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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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