The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.
James JoyceRead
History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects a struggle against the burdens of the past and a desire for awakening to a better reality.
James Joyceβs quote captures a profound sense of disillusionment with history, portraying it as a 'nightmare' that one wishes to escape. This idea suggests that the collective experiences and traumas of the past can weigh heavily on the present, and there is a yearning for enlightenment, clarity, and a fresh start free from historical burdens.
Themes
HistoryNightmareAwakeningDisillusionmentPast
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on historical trauma, I used this quote to emphasize the need to confront the past.
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.
James JoyceRead
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.
James JoyceRead
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.
James JoyceRead
I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.
James JoyceRead
The movements which work revolutions in the world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant's heart on the hillside.
James JoyceRead
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Like one who has eaten and drunk too much and vomits painfully and then feels better, so did the restless man wish he could rid himself with one terrific heave of these pleasures, of these habits of this entirely senseless life.
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Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think heβs honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but heβs great in the eyes of others.
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But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there.
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The night is darkening round me, _x000D_ The wild winds coldly blow; _x000D_ But a tyrant spell has bound me _x000D_ And I cannot, cannot go. _x000D_ The giant trees are bending _x000D_ Their bare boughs weighed with snow; _x000D_ The storm is fast descending, _x000D_ And yet I cannot go. _x000D_ Clouds beyond clouds above me, _x000D_ Wastes beyond wastes below; _x000D_ But nothing drear can move me; _x000D_ I will not, cannot go.
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Religion is doing; a man does not merely think his religion or feel it, he 'lives' his religion as much as he is able, otherwise it is not religion but fantasy or philosophy.
G. I. GurdjieffRead