The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.
There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the church's resistance to individual autonomy and the value of human experience.
In this quote, James Joyce expresses the idea that the church is often opposed to any philosophy or belief that emphasizes the individuality and humanity of a person. He suggests that institutions tend to reject ideas that promote personal freedom or human nature, viewing them as contradictions to their doctrines. The quote challenges the reader to consider how organizations prioritize their own beliefs over the unique experiences and perspectives of individuals.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a speech about personal freedom and the importance of individual thought in society.
More from James Joyce
All quotes βI 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.
If he had smiled why would he have smiled? To reflect that each one who enters imagines himself to be the first to enter whereas he is always the last term of a preceding series even if the first term of a succeeding one, each imagining himself to be first, last, only and alone whereas he is neither first nor last nor only nor alone in a series originating in and repeated to infinity.
Gentle lady, do not sing Sad songs about the end of love; Lay aside sadness and sing How love that passes is enough. Sing about the long deep sleep Of lovers that are dead, and how In the grave all love shall sleep: Love is aweary now.
I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.
The movements which work revolutions in the world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant's heart on the hillside.
Similar quotes
An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens . . . There has never been a moment of my life in which I should have relinquished for it the enjoyments of my family, my farm, my friends and books.
Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church is often labeled today as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and swept along by every wind of teaching, look like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards.
Men of patriarchal cultures have been committing heinous acts in the name of their God ever since they created a god for themselves. It seems that the earlier, goddess-oriented, nature-centered religions were far less cruel.
The performance of black American identity feels very different from actually living in a black body. There's a dissonance between inside and outside.
... let everyone regard himself as the steward of God in all things which he possesses.
In our totality we are born of the Earth. Our spirituality itself is earth-derived... If there is no spirituality in the earth, then there is no spirituality in ourselves