The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.
James JoyceRead
People trample over flowers, yet only to embrace a cactus.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that people often overlook beauty and kindness in favor of painful or harsh experiences.
James Joyce's quote highlights a paradox of human behavior, where individuals often neglect the gentle and beautiful aspects of life, represented by flowers, in favor of the more challenging and painful aspects, symbolized by a cactus. This reflects a tendency to seek out suffering or difficulty, perhaps in the pursuit of what one believes to be meaningful or profound, despite the availability of simpler pleasures that can bring joy.
Themes
FlowersCactusBeautyPainHuman BehaviorSuffering
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about appreciating life's simple pleasures, this quote can illustrate how we overlook what truly matters.
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.
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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.
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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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