In the year in which Joyce's works finally come out of copyright, UCD will mark the special period of time from his birthday on February 2nd until Bloomsday on June 16th, with a journey through his quotes. Each day, travel with us as we uncover a new phrase, some familiar, some overlooked. You can also keep up with our updates by following @UCDJamesJoyce on twitter or the #joycequotes hashtag.
- 02 Feb -
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed - Ulysses
- 03 Feb -
If Ireland is to become a new Ireland she must first become European - Exiles
- 06 Feb - Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger - Dubliners - “Araby”
- 07 Feb - He crossed under Tommy Moore's roguish finger. They did right to put him up over a urinal: meeting of the waters - Ulysses
- 08 Feb - Suck was a queer word - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- 09 Feb -
Hello! Kinch here. Put me on to Edenville. Aleph, alpha: nought, nought, one - Ulysses
- 10 Feb - Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis - Dubliners “The Sisters”
- 13 Feb - What do you mean...by prating about beauty and the imagination in this miserable God-forsaken island? No wonder the artist retired within or behind his handiwork after having perpetrated this country - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- 14 Feb -
Good puzzle would be cross Dublin without a pub - Ulysses
- 15 Feb -
There was no doubt about it: if you wanted to succeed you had to go away. You could do nothing in Dublin. Dubliners - “A Little Cloud”
- 16 Feb - Mkgnao!..Mrkgnao, the cat cried...Mrkrgnao! the cat said loudly - Ulysses
- 17 Feb
- Poor Parnell! he cried loudly. My dead king! A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- 20 Feb - West Briton! - Dubliners - “The Dead”
- 21 Feb -
He gets the plums and I the plumstones - Ulysses
- 22 Feb -
Each man writes his own sin into Dorian Gray (Wilde's most celebrated novel)...He who discovers it has committed it. - “Oscar Wilde: The Poet of Salomé”
- 23 Feb -
Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came from. Perhaps she would never see again those familiar objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided - Dubliners - “Eveline”
- 24 Feb -
a disappointed bridge - Ulysses
- 27 Feb - I called you naughty boy because I do not like that other world - Ulysses
- 28 Feb - 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. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires - Dubliners - “Araby”
- 29 Feb
- He was a rich country gentleman, Stephen said, with a coat of arms and landed estate at Stratford and a house in Ireland yard, a bill promoter, a tithefarmer. Why did he not leave her his best bed if he wished her to snore away the rest of her nights in peace? (Ulysses)
- 01 Mar - —Hell! Hell! Hell! Hell! Hell! - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- 02 Mar - Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves - Ulysses
- 05 Mar -
It is called a tundish in Lower Drumcondra, said Stephen laughing, where they speak the best English - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- 06 Mar - Nother dying come home father - Ulysses
- 07 Mar -
What is home without Plumtree's potted meat? Incomplete. What a stupid ad! - Ulysses
- 08 Mar - He heard the choir of voices in the kitchen echoed and multiplied through an endless reverberation of the choirs of endless generations of children: and heard in all the echoes an echo also of the recurring note of weariness and pain. All seemed weary of life even before entering upon it - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- 09 Mar - I feel a ton better since I landed again in dear dirty Dublin - Dubliners - “A Little Cloud”
- 12 Mar -
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 - Finnegans Wake
- 13 Mar -
The rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in a mirror, he said. If Wilde were only alive to see you! - Ulysses
- 14 Mar -
Why is it that words like these seem to me so dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name? - Dubliners - “The Dead”
- 15 Mar -
We can't change the country. Let us change the subject - Ulysses
- 16 Mar -
come bag to Moy Eireann! - Finnegans Wake
- 16 Mar -
A child Conmee saved from pandies.
I.I and I.I.
A.E, I, O, U. - Ulysses
- 20 Mar -
Dublin was a new and complex sensation - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- 21 Mar -
I dont like books with a Molly in them - Ulysses
- 22 Mar - it was equally certainly a pleasant turn of the populace which gave him as sense of those normative letters the nickname Here Comes Everybody - Finnegans Wake
- 23 Mar - silence, exile, and cunning - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- 26 Mar - Once you are dead you are dead. That last day idea. Knowing them all up out of their graves. Come forth, Lazarus! And he came fifth and lost the job. Get up! Last day! Then every fellow mousing around for his liver and his lights and the rest of his traps. Find damn all of himself that morning - Ulysses
- 27 Mar -Tennyson a poet! Why, he’s only a rhymester! - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- 28 Mar - 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. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires - Dubliners - Araby
- 29 Mar - O, rocks! She said. Tell us in plain words - Ulysses
- 30 Mar - I pace the path above the rocks, in sable silvered, hearing Elsinore's tempting flood - Ulysses
- 02 Apr - Mendelssohn was a jew and Karl Marx and Mercandente and Spinoza. And the Saviour was a jew and his father was a jew. Your God - Ulysses
- 03 Apr - The song seemed to be in the old Irish tonality and the singer seemed uncertain both of his words and of his voice. The voice made plaintive by distance and by the singer's hoarseness faintly illuminated the cadence of the air with words expressing grief - Dubliners: "The Dead"
- 04 Apr - I am still always having a wish on all my extremities - Finnegans Wake
- 05 Apr - To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life! - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- 06 Apr - Kraahraark! Hellohellohello amawfullyglad kraark awfullygladaseeagain hellohello amawf krpthsth. Remind you of the voice like the photograph reminds you of the face - Ulysses
- 09 Apr - Hear! Calls! Everywhair! - Finnegans Wake
- 10 Apr - Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount strand? - Ulysses
- 11 Apr - 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... - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- 12 Apr - Dis and dat and dese and dose! Your crackling out of your turn, my Moonster firefly, like always. And 2 R.N. and Long-horns Connacht, stay off my air! - Finnegans Wake
- 13 Apr - It would have diverted, if ever seen, the shuddersome spectacle of this semidemented zany amid the inspissated grime of his glaucous den making believe to read his usylessly unreadable Blue Book of Eccles - Finnegans Wake
- 16 Apr - Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does anybody really? - Ulysses
- 17 Apr - The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush - Ulysses
- 18 Apr - Wild nights, yes. He and I together - Exiles
- 19 Apr - The proteiform graph is a polyhedron of scripture - Finnegans Wake
- 20 Apr - So be it. 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 - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- 23 Apr - Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, stone hpes praying with upcast eyes old Ireland's hearts and hands - Ulysses
- 24 Apr - But, Holy Saltmartin, why can't you beat time? - Finnegans Wake
- 25 Apr - The bard's noserag! A new art colour for our Irish poets: snotgreen. You can almost taste it, can't you? - Ulysses
- 26 Apr - The Irish, even when they break the hearts of those who sacrifice their lives for their country, never fail to show a great reverence for the dead - “Fenianism: The Last Fenian”
- 27 Apr - It seems history is to blame - Ulysses
- 30 Apr - History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake - Ulysses
- 01 May - Finn no more! - Finnegans Wake
- 02 May - Our national epic has yet to be written, Dr Sigerson says. Moore is the man for it - Ulysses
- 03 May - 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 - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- 04 May - Loud, heap miseries upon us yet entwine our arts with laughters low! - Finnegans Wake
- 07 May - An ounceworth of onions for a pennyawealth of sobs - Finnegans Wake
- 08 May - O, father forsaken, Forgive your son! - Ecce Puer
- 10 May - No more pain. Wake no more. Nobody owns - Ulysses
- 11 May - The Mookse and The Gripes - Finnegans Wake
- 14 May 2012 - The ree the ra the ree the ra the roo. Lord, I mustn’t lilt here - Ulysses
- 15 May 2012 - He would create proudly out of the freedom and power of his soul, as the great artificer whose name he bore, a living thing, new and soaring and beautiful, impalpable, imperishable - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- 16 May 2012 - He proves by algebra that Hamlet’s grandson is Shakespeare’s grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own father - Ulysses
- 17 May 2012 - First we feel. Then we fall - Finnegans Wake
- 18 May 2012 - She was a figure of the womanhood of her country, a batlike soul waking to the consciousness of itself in darkness and secrecy and loneliness - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- 21 May 2012 - God's real name was God - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- 22 May 2012 - That is God….A shout in the street - Ulysses
- 23 May 2012 - Who’s he when he’s at home? - Ulysses
- 24 May 2012 - The Gracehoper was always jigging ajog, hoppy on akkant of his joyicity - Finnegans Wake
- 25 May 2012 - bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoodenenthurnuk! - Finnegans Wake
- 28 May 2012 - Language of flowers. They like it because no-one can hear - Ulysses
- 29 May 2012 - the Irish literary theatre must now be considered the property of the rabblement of the most belated race in Europe - The Day of the Rabblment
- 30 May 2012 - Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- 31 May 2012 - What is that word known to all men? - Ulysses
- 01 June 2012 - Shite and onions! - Gas from a Burner
- 04 June 2012 - Draumcondra’s Dreamcountry where the betterlies blow - Finnegans Wake
- 05 June 2012 - He could not feel her near him in the darkness nor her voice touch his ear. He waited for some minutes listening. He could hear nothing: the night was perfectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent. He felt that he was alone - A Painful Case
- 06 June 2012 - Ineluctable modality of the visible - Ulysses
- 07 June 2012 - The silent cock shall crow at last. The west shall shake the east awake. Walk while ye have the night for morn, lightbreakfastbringer, morroweth whereon every past shall full fost sleep. Amain - Finnegans Wake
- 08 June 2012 - Bury the dead. Say Robinson Crusoe was true to life. Well then Friday buried him. Every Friday buries a Thursday if you come to look at it - Ulysses
- 11 June 2012 - Thank you. How grand we are this morning! - Ulysses
- 12 June 2012 - There’s a split in the infinitive from to have to have been to will be - Finnegans Wake
- 13 June 2012 - His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead - Dubliners: “The Dead”
- 14 June 2012 - Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- 15 June 2012 - and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes - Ulysses