James Joyce was born on 2 February 1882 in Dublin, Ireland. Born as James Augustine Aloysius Joyce in a modest Catholic family, he was sent to a boarding school at the age of six.
In, 1892 he left school, as his father was unable to pay the fees. In 1893, he got accepted by the Belvedere College where he studied, until he joined the University of Dublin in 1898. He studied English, French and Italian. Joyce was a serious reader, writer and language lover. At a young age he read Dante and Aristotle, and as an autodidact, he taught himself Norwegian so he could read Henrik Ibsen’s works. In 1900, he wrote a review about Insen’s When We Dead Awaken which compelled the author to send Joyce a thank you note. Besides Norwegian, Joyce went on to speak and read 17 languages such as Sanskrit, Danish, Arabic and Greek among them.
After he graduated in Dublin, Joyce moved to Paris with the hope of pursuing his further studies. However, his mother fell sick and he left Paris and came back to Dublin. In 1904, James Joyce and his girlfriend – Nora Barnacle – moved to Italy, in the city of Trieste. They spent most part of their lives in Italy and Paris.
James Joyce Short Biography
In 1914, at a time when Irish nationalism was at its peak with national identity becoming a discussion in every walk of life, Joyce published Dubliners, followed by A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in 1916, which has been voted by the Modern Library as the third best novel every written. In 1922, Ulysses was published, after it was serialized in The Little Review magazine. His final novel, Finnegans Wake was published in 1938, three years before he passed away.
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James Joyce made an enormous contribution to English Literature and especially the modernist movement. His works have been praised and ranked as the finest in literature. Together with the authors of The Lost Generation, he invented new style of writing and structures in order to paint the human and cultural experience during and after World War I.
Joyce works have contributed to the development of literature and to the novel as an art form, especially the model of stream of consciousness. We, as readers, should devote our time and life to reading his works.
James Joyce Brillant Quotes
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
Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.
James Joyce
Nations have their ego, just like individuals.
James Joyce
Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.
James Joyce
Satan, really, is the romantic youth of Jesus re-appearing for a moment.
James Joyce
Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance.
James Joyce
The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.
James Joyce
No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination.
James Joyce
The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole Life to reading my works.
James Joyce
The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you.
James Joyce
There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.
James Joyce
Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.
James Joyce
Well and what’s cheese? Corpse of milk.
James Joyce
My words in her mind: cold polished stones sinking through a quagmire.
James Joyce
When I die Dublin will be written in my heart.
James Joyce
Ireland sober is Ireland stiff.
James Joyce
You forget that the kingdom of heaven suffers violence: and the kingdom of heaven is like a woman.
James Joyce
Your battles inspired me – not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead.
James Joyce
Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother’s love is not.
James Joyce
Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.
James Joyce
A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what’s cheese? Corpse of milk.
James Joyce
A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
James Joyce
A man’s errors are his portals of discovery.
James Joyce
Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse.
James Joyce
And then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes.
James Joyce
My mouth is full of decayed teeth and my soul of decayed ambitions.
James Joyce
Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America.
James Joyce
He found in the world without as actual what was in his world within as possible.
James Joyce
Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
James Joyce
I fear those big words which make us so unhappy.
James Joyce
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.
James Joyce
I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of insuring one’s immortality.
James Joyce
If Ireland is to become a new Ireland she must first become European.
James Joyce
Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.
James Joyce
Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.
James Joyce
Men are governed by lines of intellect – women: by curves of emotion.
James Joyce
I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.
James Joyce
A nation is the same people living in the same place.
James Joyce
