James Joyce Quotes

I have to have some of my voice because I have my own experiences that I lived through.

How different a creature is man in society and man in solitude!

Make time in your life to listen to your own voice. Do not let it get drowned out by others. Your voice is yours and yours alone. Stay in touch with it and use it.

We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and -- in spite of True Romance magazines -- we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely -- at least, not all the time -- but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.

Once more I realize that solitude is my element, and the reason is that extreme awareness of other people (all naturally solitary people must feel this) precludes awareness of one's self, so after a while the self no longer knows that it exists.

We have the ability to make the connection, make the time to pray and meditate. We have to find our inner voice that will guide us. But we can only find it if we get quiet.

It's easy to hear the voices of others and often very difficult to hear your own. Every person you meet is going to want something different from you. The question is: what do you want for yourself?

If you're not prepared to give some truly independent thought to what this world is all about, then what is the point of being alive?

One must be truly able to say I in order to know the mystery of the Thou in its whole truth.

--then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder.

We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and - in spite of True Romance magazines - we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way.

We live as we dream - alone.

Solitude is such a potential thing. We hear voices in solitude, we never hear in the hurry and turmoil of life; we receive counsels and comforts, we get under no other condition.

We hear only our own voices, still echoes returning to our emptiness.

Surely no mere mortal who has at all gone down into himself will ever pretend that his slightest thought or act solely originates in his own defined identity.

For every seeing soul, there are two absorbing facts - I, and the abyss.

My art is rooted in a single reflection: why am I not as others are? ... my art gives meaning to my life.

I am entirely alone. I and my shadow fill the universe.

Every man is grave alone.

I have been asked, politely and not so politely, why I am myself. This is an accounting any woman will be called on to give if she asserts her will.

I've always felt kind of like an outsider, even when I was very successful back in the old days. Even then. I kind of enjoyed it, really.

Before tomorrow, make a list of your traits. Make YOUR list - who you are and why. Then ask yourself this question: where did it come from? Are you the way you are because it is what you want... or what they want? Are you a product of your imagination or someone else's? Think about it.

And so I learned what solitude really was. It was raw material - awesome, malleable,older than men or worlds or water. And it was merciless - for it let a man become precisely what he alone made of himself.

On him does death lie heavily, who, but too well known to all, dies to himself unknown.