Quotessence
Home / Topics / Ulysses Quotes

Ulysses Quotes

Browse 94 quotes about Ulysses.

Related topics

BookJoyceKnowsMenThinking

Ulysses Quotes

“It is only by imposing a naïve and unexamined aesthetic of their own, [Tzvetan] Todorov proposes, that modern scholars are able to declare so confidently that certain parts of the ancient text could not belong with others: the supposedly primitive narrative is subjected by scholars to tacit laws like the law of stylistic unity, of noncontradiction, of nondigression, of nonrepetition, and by these dim but purportedly universal lights is found to be composite, deficient, or incoherent. If just these four laws were applied respectively to Ulysses, The Sound and the Fury, Tristram Shandy, and Jealousy, each of these novels would have to be relegated to the dustbin of shoddily “redacted” literary scraps.”

BibleUlyssesRobert AlterJames JoyceFaulknerThe Sound And The Fury
Book:The Art of Biblical Narrative
Create image

“We did not get on much further, for in another moment we were caught by a terrific squall from the West that snapped the forestays of the mast so that it fell aft, while all the ship’s gear tumbled about at the bottom of the vessel. The mast fell upon the head of the helmsman in the ship’s stern, so that the bones of his head were crushed to pieces, and he fell overboard as though he were diving, with no more life left in him. “Then Jove let fly with his thunderbolts, and the ship went round and round, and was filled with fire and brimstone as the lightning struck it. The men all fell into the sea; they were carried about in the water round the ship, looking like so many sea-gulls, but the god presently deprived them of all chance of getting home again.”

MythologyGreekOdysseyUlyssesHomer
Book:The odyssey
Create image

“Then we entered the Straits in great fear of mind, for on the one hand was Scylla, and on the other dread Charybdis kept sucking up the salt water. As she vomited it up, it was like the water in a cauldron when it is boiling over upon a great fire, and the spray reached the top of the rocks on either side. When she began to suck again, we could see the water all inside whirling round and round, and it made a deafening sound as it broke against the rocks. We could see the bottom of the whirlpool all black with sand and mud, and the men were at their wits ends for fear. While we were taken up with this, and were expecting each moment to be our last, Scylla pounced down suddenly upon us and snatched up my six best men. I was looking at once after both ship and men, and in a moment I saw their hands and feet ever so high above me, struggling in the air as Scylla was carrying them off, and I heard them call out my name in one last despairing cry. As a fisherman, seated, spear in hand, upon some jutting rock throws bait into the water to deceive the poor little fishes, and spears them with the ox’s horn with which his spear is shod, throwing them gasping on to the land as he catches them one by one—even so did Scylla land these panting creatures on her rock and munch them up at the mouth of her den, while they screamed and stretched out their hands to me in their mortal agony. This was the most sickening sight that I saw throughout all my voyages.”

MythologyGreekOdysseyUlyssesHomer
Book:The odyssey
Create image

“Inside it Scylla sits and yelps with a voice that you might take to be that of a young hound, but in truth she is a dreadful monster and no one—not even a god—could face her without being terror-struck. She has twelve mis-shapen feet, and six necks of the most prodigious length; and at the end of each neck she has a frightful head with three rows of teeth in each, all set very close together, so that they would crunch any one to death in a moment, and she sits deep within her shady cell thrusting out her heads and peering all round the rock, fishing for dolphins or dogfish or any larger monster that she can catch, of the thousands with which Amphitrite teems. No ship ever yet got past her without losing some men, for she shoots out all her heads at once, and carries off a man in each mouth.”

MythologyGreekOdysseyUlyssesHomer
Book:Homer: The Odessey
Create image

“As a young man, I was startled by the popularity of these “misogynistic” portrayals of women in literary works to begin with Nana, Miss Julie, Ulysses, Women, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Now, with some experience in life, I believe that it was fueled more by the true nature of men as arrogant, selfish, unfeeling swine in relationships with women rather than breaking down conventional idealization of women BS. If Circe is still alive, the continents would sink in the blue deep oceans under the weight of the pigs.”

WomenMen And WomenCirceUlyssesMysogynyMysogynisticArrogant MenMiss Julia
Author:Vinko Vrbanic
Create image

“ah yes I know them well who was the first person in the universe before there was anybody that made it all who ah that they dont know neither do I so there you are they might as well try to stop the sun from rising tomorrow the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another 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.”

InspirationalScienceSunSeaStreetsBreastsDishesFlowersMountainsUlyssesSunsetsYesJames JoyceAlamedaHowth HeadLarby SharonsMr Stanhope
Book:Ulysses
Create image

“Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls,'" he's saying, bending over to gaze down into the deli case. His breath is fogging the glass. I'm watching it suddenly. Watching him. "'He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart-'" "'Liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes,'" I say, and I'm sure I sound a little stunned. I'm not used to boys coming into the deli to quote some of my favorite modernist literature. Even I can't resist that. A boy like him, who, from the first moment, seems to love the things I love.”

UlyssesOffalJames JoyceLiterature Quote
Book:Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food & Love
Create image

“A picture is worth a thousand words, but the way I paint I'm going to need to contact an editor. Even if I were to abstractly paint the phrase "I love you," it would be the visual equivalent of Joyce's Ulysses. -James Lee Schmidt and Jarod Kintz”

LoveLifeWritingArtHumorArtistLiteratureRelationshipsBooksPaintingPaintAbstractWriterWriteI Love YouSurrealInstagram QuotesPictureUlyssesInstaquoteVisualEditJames JoyceEditorInstagram Quote
Book:liQUID PROse QUOtes
Create image

“The Housefly I’m just a little pesky thing, Flying to eke out a living. So round and round and round I hiss, And fill the air with busy bliss. Of hand and swatter steering clear, I venture to light on crumbs and beer. In salad days I was a Grecian king. War and famine make me sing. How much they’d like to whack me flat, With a newspaper or even a baseball bat. Splat!”

BostonUlyssesDedalusLentzBloomsday
Book:Bloomsday: A Tragicomedy
Create image

“In one particular chapter in Ulysses, James Joyce imitates every major writing style that's been used by English and American writers over the last 700 years - starting with Beowulf and Chaucer and working his way up through the Renaissance, the Victorian era and on into the 20th century.”

WayWritingYearsLastsUsedCenturyStyleParticularMajorsStartingErasChapters20th CenturyRamaRenaissanceVictorianJoyceAmerican WriterUlyssesWriting StyleVictorian EraChaucer
Author:Frederick Lenz
Create image

“After all, there is such a thing as looking like a gentleman. There are men whose class no dirt or rags can hide, any more than they could Ulysses. I have seen such men in plenty among workmen, too; but, on the whole, the gentleman--by whom I do not mean just now the rich--have the superiority in that point. But not, please God, forever. Give us the same air, water, exercise, education, good society, and you will see whether this "haggardness," this "coarseness" (etc., for the list is too long to specify), be an accident, or a property, of the man of the people.”

PeopleMenGivingMeanLongWholeWaterClassForeverRichAirHe ManExercisePleasePropertyAccidentsListsPlentyGentlemanEtcDirtSuperiorityRagsWorkmenUlysses
Author:Charles Kingsley
Create image

“Does not the passage of Moses and the Israelites into the Holy Land yield incomparably more poetic variety than the voyages of Ulysses or Aeneas?”

DoeLandHolyBibleVarietyPoeticYieldPassagesMosesVoyagesUlyssesHoly LandAeneas
Book:The Works of Mr. Abraham Cowley ...: Consisting of Those which Were Formerly Printed, and Those which He Design'd for the Press, Publish'd Out of the Author's Original Copies ; with The Cutter of Coleman-street
Create image

“... A La Recherche du Temps Perdu is like a beautiful hand with long fingers reaching out to pluck a perfect fruit, without error,for the accurate eye knows well it is growing just there on the branch, while Ulysses is the fumbling of a horned hand in darkness after a doubted jewel.”

KnowsWellsLongHandsEyeBeautifulPerfectDarknessGrowingErrorsFingersFruitBranchesReachingReach OutAccurateJewelsDoubtedPluckUlysses
Book:The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews
Create image

“I managed to get my copy of Ulysses through safely this time. I rather wish I had never read it. It gives me an inferiority complex. When I read a book like that and then come back to my own work, I feel like a eunuch who has taken a course in voice production.”

GivingFeelsBookCoursesWishVoiceMy OwnTakenGive MeComplexesProductionsCopiesInferiorityUlyssesInferiority ComplexEunuchs
Book:The complete works of George Orwell
Create image

“To live with the work and the letters of James Joyce was an enormous privilege and a daunting education. Yes, I came to admire Joyce even more because he never ceased working, those words and the transubstantiation of words obsessed him. He was a broken man at the end of his life, unaware that Ulysses would be the number one book of the twentieth century and, for that matter, the twenty-first.”

MenFirstsBookEndsMatterWould BeNumbersCenturyBrokenLettersTwentiesPrivilegeEnormousAdmireObsessedTwentieth CenturyJoyceUlyssesBroken ManTransubstantiation
Author:Edna O'Brien
Create image

“Both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are inexhaustible. They are celebrations of the ordinary, compelling reactions to philosophical elitism about "the good life". I hope to examine both of them further, doing more justice to Joycean comedy than I did in my "invitation" to the Wake, and trying to understand how the extraordinary stylistic innovations, particularly the proliferation of narrative forms, enable Joyce to "see life foully" from a vast number of sides.”

TryingFormSidesJusticeNumbersComedyOrdinaryInnovationPhilosophicalExtraordinaryReactionsNarrativeGood LifeCelebrationCompellingInvitationsProliferationElitismJoyceUlyssesFinnegans Wake
Author:Philip Kitcher
Create image