Ulysses Quotes

• How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Life, Shining, Age

  'Ulysses' (1842) l. 6

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• Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.

  James Joyce

  Inspirational, Life, Running

  James Joyce, General Press (2016). “Ulysses”, p.329, GENERAL PRESS

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• Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Strong, Taken, Heart

  "Ulysses" l. 65 (1842)

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• And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Stars, Poetry, Desire

  "Ulysses" l. 30 (1842)

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• Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.

  James Joyce

  Food, Heart, Fowl

  Ulysses (1922) p. 53

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• You know people are always putting Ulysses in the top 10 books ever written but I doubt that any of those people were really moved by it.

  Roddy Doyle

  Book, People, Doubt

  "Overlong, overrated and unmoving: Roddy Doyle's verdict on James Joyce's Ulysses" by Angelique Chrisafis, www.theguardian.com. February 10, 2004.

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• The sax solo as we know it today would not exist without Gerry Rafferty. His 1978 soft-rock classic 'Baker Street' has to be the 'Ulysses' of rock & roll saxophone, giving the entire chorus over to Raphael Ravenscroft's sax solo, creating one of the Seventies' most enduringly creepy sounds.

  Rob Sheffield

  Rocks, Creating, Giving

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• My favorite books are actually very complicated - 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', 'Ulysses'.

  James Patterson

  Book, Years, Solitude

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• [Ulysses is] the work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.

  Virginia Woolf

  Funny, Pimples, Insult

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• Every few years, I think, 'Maybe now I'm finally smart enough or sophisticated enough to understand 'Ulysses.'' So I pick it up and try it again. And by page 10, as always, I'm like, 'What the hell?'

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Smart, Thinking, Years

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• The head coach don't want no sissies, so he reads to us from something called Ulysses.

  Allan Sherman

  Want, Sissy, Coaches

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• I'm not sure which I dislike more: 'Ulysses' or the James Joyce estate. Admittedly, a few people have got some pleasure from 'Ulysses', but against that, you have to weigh the millions of lives that have been ruined by the futile attempts to read it.

  Kevin Myers

  Book, People, Language

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• You should approach Joyce's Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.

  William Faulkner

  Baptists, Old Testament, Should

  "William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12". Interview with Jean Stein, www.theparisreview.org. 1956.

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• Trying to imagine E. M. Forster, who found Ulysses indecorous, at a London performance of Lenny Bruce—to which in fact he was once taken. Trying to imagine the same for a time-transported Nathaniel Hawthorne—who during his first visit to Europe was even shocked by the profusion of naked statues.

  David Markson

  Taken, Europe, Trying

  David Markson (2007). “The Last Novel”, p.57, Counterpoint

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• I read the book [My Life by Bill Clinton] completely. And I think it compares very favorably with Ulysses S. Grant's gold standard of presidential autobiographies.

  Dan Rather

  Book, Thinking, Presidential

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• Though people may read more into Ulysses than I ever intended, who is to say that they are wrong: do any of us know what we are creating?Which of us can control our scribblings? They are the script of one's personality like your voice or your walk

  James Joyce

  Voice, Creating, People

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• When Ulysses hears his own story sung by an epic poet and then he reveals his identity and the poet wants to continue singing, Ulysses isn't interested any longer. That's very astonishing.

  Raymond Queneau

  Epic, Singing, Identity

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• I used to carry a copy of Ulysses with me everywhere just in case I was knocked down by a bus. It seemed more important than having clean underwear.

  Craig Raine

  Clean Underwear, Important, Used

  "Genius or fallen idol?". Interviews with Sam Jones, www.theguardian.com. February 10, 2004.

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• Happy the man who, like Ulysses, has made a fine voyage, or has won the Golden Fleece, and then returns, experienced and knowledgeable, to spend the rest of his life among his family!

  Joachim du Bellay

  Life, Knowledge, Men

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• I would rather go to bed with Lillian Russell stark naked than Ulysses S Grant in full military regalia.

  Mark Twain

  Marriage, Military, Ulysses's Grant

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• Happy he who like Ulysses has made a great journey.

  Joachim du Bellay

  Journey, Great Journeys, Made

  Les Regrets Sonnet 31 (1558)

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• After all, there is such a thing as looking like a gentleman. There are men whose class no dirt or rags can hide, any more than they could Ulysses. I have seen such men in plenty among workmen, too; but, on the whole, the gentleman--by whom I do not mean just now the rich--have the superiority in that point. But not, please God, forever. Give us the same air, water, exercise, education, good society, and you will see whether this "haggardness," this "coarseness" (etc., for the list is too long to specify), be an accident, or a property, of the man of the people.

  Charles Kingsley

  Mean, Exercise, Men

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• I'll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall; I'll slay more gazers than the basalisks; I'll play the orator as well as Nestor, Decieve more slily that Ulysses could, And like a Sinon, take another Troy. I can add colors to the chameleon, Change shapes with Proteus for advantages And set the murderous Machiavel to school. Can I do this, and cannot get a crown? Tut! were it further off, I'll pluck it down.

  William Shakespeare

  School, Color, Play

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• A glorious place, a glorious age, I tell you! A very Neon renaissance - And the myths that actually touched you at that time - not Hercules, Orpheus, Ulysses and Aeneas - but Superman, Captain Marvel, and Batman.

  Tom Wolfe

  Time, Aeneas, Age

  Tom Wolfe (2008). “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”, p.46, Macmillan

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• Constant Penelope sends to thee, careless Ulysses.
  Write not again, but come, sweet mate

  Ovid

  Sweet, Writing, Lovers

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