The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.
James JoyceRead
Sentimentality is unearned emotion.
Interpretation
Sentimentality refers to emotional responses that lack genuine depth or experience.
James Joyce's quote suggests that sentimentality is an emotional response that is not rooted in true or authentic experiences. It implies that genuine emotions should be earned through real-life experiences rather than superficial feelings, emphasizing the value of authenticity in our emotional expressions.
In practice
In a discussion about art, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of authentic expression.
The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.
I 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.
Our actions seem to have their lucky and unlucky stars, to which a great part of that blame and that commendation is due which is given to the actions themselves.
How could people like these, without words to put to their emotions and passions, manage? They could, at best, only suffer dumbly. Their pains and humiliations would work themselves out in their characters alone: like evil spirits possessing a body, so that the body itself might appear innocent of what it did.
I always had a philosophy which I got from my father. He used to say, 'Listen. God gave to you the gift to play football. This is your gift from God. If you take care of your health, if you are in good shape all the time, with your gift from God no one will stop you, but you must be prepared.'
The unexamined life is not worth living.
It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creeds into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.
EXPLORING the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind, and walking travels both terrains.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.