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.
We don't have to expect everything from those who govern us; that would be juvenile.
The true inner self must be drawn up like a jewel from the bottom of the sea, rescued from confusion, from indistinction, from immersion in the common, the nondescript, the trivial, the sordid, the evanescent.
Our plans never turn out as tasty as reality.
God keeps the entire Universe in order, and still finds time to take a personal interest in you and me.
It had been a humdrum couple of days, reaffirming his belief in reincarnation: everything was so boring that this could not be the first time he'd experienced it.
Can there be in our age any peace that is not honorable, any war that is not dishonorable?
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