# James Joyce - Quotes: 111 - Author page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce ## Books - [A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce/a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man.md) — 23 quotes - [Dubliners](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce/dubliners.md) — 14 quotes - [Finnegans Wake](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce/finnegans-wake.md) — 24 quotes - [Ulysses](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce/ulysses.md) — 51 quotes ## Recently added quotes > Pity is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the sufferer. Terror is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the secret cause. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce/a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man/pity-is-the.md) > Where was his boyhood now? Where was the soul that had hung back from her destiny, to brood alone upon the shame of her wounds and in her house of squalor and subterfuge to queen it in faded cerements and in wreaths that withered at the touch? Or where was he? > > He was alone. He was unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the sea-harvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight and gayclad lightclad figures of children and girls and voices childish and girlish in the air. > > A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still, gazing out to sea. She seemed like one whom magic had changed into the likeness of a strange and beautiful seabird. Her long slender bare legs were delicate as a crane's and pure save where an emerald trail of seaweed had fashioned itself as a sign upon the flesh. Her thighs, fuller and soft-hued as ivory, were bared almost to the hips, where the white fringes of her drawers were like feathering of soft white down. Her slate-blue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist and dovetailed behind her. Her bosom was as a bird's, soft and slight, slight and soft as the breast of some dark-plumaged dove. But her long fair hair was girlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her face. > > She was alone and still, gazing out to sea; and when she felt his presence and the worship of his eyes her eyes turned to him in quiet sufferance of his gaze, without shame or wantonness. Long, long she suffered his gaze and then quietly withdrew her eyes from his and bent them towards the stream, gently stirring the water with her foot hither and thither. The first faint noise of gently moving water broke the silence, low and faint and whispering, faint as the bells of sleep; hither and thither, hither and thither; and a faint flame trembled on her cheek. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce/a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man/where-was-his.md) > 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. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce/a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man/his-heart-danced.md) > Beauty expressed by the artist cannot awaken in us an emotion which is kinetic or a sensation which is purely physical. It awakens, or ought to awaken, or induces, or ought to induce, an esthetic stasis, an ideal pity or an ideal terror, a stasis called forth, prolonged, and at last dissolved by what I call the rhythm of beauty. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce/a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man/beauty-expressed-by-the.md) > To merge his life in the common tide of other lives was harder for him than any fasting or prayer, and it was his constant failure to do this to his own satisfaction which caused in his soul at last a sensation of spiritual dryness together with a growth of doubts and scruples. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce/a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man/to-merge-his.md) > 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. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce/a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man/the-artist-like.md) > Heavenly God! cried Stephen's soul, in an outburst of profane joy. > > He turned away from her suddenly and set off across the strand. His cheeks were aflame; his body was aglow; his limbs were trembling. On and on and on and on he strode, far out over the sands, singing wildly to the sea, crying to greet the advent of the life that had cried to him. > > 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! [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce/a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man/heavenly-god-cried.md) > His mind, emptied of theory and courage, lapsed back into a listless peace. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce/a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man/his-mind-emptied.md) > It wounded him to think that he would never be but a shy guest at the feast of the world's culture and that the monkish learning, in terms of which he was striving to forge out an esthetic philosophy, was held no higher by the age he lived in than the subtle and curious jargons of heraldry and falconry. p. 189 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce/a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man/it-wounded-him.md) > — Then, said Cranly, you do not intend to become a protestant?— I said that I had lost the faith, Stephen answered, but not that I had lost self-respect. 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? [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce/a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man/then-said-cranly.md) > 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. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce/a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man/welcome-o-life.md) > It is a curious thing, do you know, Cranly said dispassionately, how your mind is supersaturated with the religion in which you say you disbelieve. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-joyce/a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man/it-is-a-curious.md)