God spoke to you by so many voices, but you would not hear.

— James Joyce

He is cured by faith who is sick of fate.

— James Joyce

He laughed to free his mind from his mind's bondage.

— James Joyce

He laughed to free his mind from his minds' bondage.

— James Joyce

He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glasses.

— James Joyce

He looked down the slope and, at the base, in the shadow of the wall of the Park, he saw some human figures lying. Those venal and furtive loves filled him with despair. He gnawed the rectitude of his life; he felt that he had been outcast from life’s feast.

— James Joyce

Her antiquity in preceding and surviving succeeding tellurian generations: her nocturnal predominance: her satellite dependence: her luminary reflection: her constancy under all her phases, rising and setting by her appointed times, waxing and waning: the forced invariability of her aspect: her indeterminate response to in affirmative interrogation: her potency over effluent and refluent waters: her power to enamor, to mortify, to invest with beauty, to render insane, to incite to and aid delinquency: the tranquil inscrutability of her visage: the credibility of her isolated dominant resplendent propinquity: her omens of tempest and of calm: the stimulation of her light, her motion and her presence: the admonition of her craters, her arid seas, her silence: her splendor, when visible: her attraction, when invisible.

— James Joyce

Here's gumbos. Where mistier swaddled, where miscues lodge none, where mysteries pour kind on, O sleepy! So be yet!

— James Joyce

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 pressure, darker than the swoon of sin, softer than sound or odor.

— James Joyce

Her room was warm and lightsome. A huge doll sat with her legs apart in the copious easy-chair beside the bed. He tried to bid his tongue speak that he might seem at ease, watching her as she undid her gown, noting the proud conscious movements of her perfumed head. As he stood silent in the middle of the room she came over to him and embraced him gaily and gravely. Her round arms held him firmly to her and he, seeing her face lifted to him in serious calm and feeling the warm calm rise and fall of her breast, all but burst into hysterical weeping. Tears of joy and relief shone in his delighted eyes and his lips parted though they would not speak. She passed her tinkling hand through his hair, calling him a little rascal.—Give me a kiss, she said. His lips would not bend to kiss her. He wanted to be held firmly in her arms, to be caressed slowly, slowly, slowly. In her arms he felt that he had suddenly become strong and fearless and sure of himself. But his lips would not bend to kiss her. With a sudden movement she bowed his head and joined her lips to his, and he read the meaning of her movements in her frank uplifted eyes. It was too much for him. He closed his eyes, surrendering himself to her, body and mind, conscious of nothing in the world but the dark pressure of her softly parting lips. They pressed upon his brain as upon his lips as though they were the vehicle of a vague speech; and between them, he felt an unknown and timid pressure, darker than the swoon of sin, softer than sound or odor.

— James Joyce