The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.
There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the church's resistance to individual autonomy and the value of human experience.
In this quote, James Joyce expresses the idea that the church is often opposed to any philosophy or belief that emphasizes the individuality and humanity of a person. He suggests that institutions tend to reject ideas that promote personal freedom or human nature, viewing them as contradictions to their doctrines. The quote challenges the reader to consider how organizations prioritize their own beliefs over the unique experiences and perspectives of individuals.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a speech about personal freedom and the importance of individual thought in society.
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.
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.
Similar quotes
Though the most beautiful creature were waiting for me at the end of a journey or a walk; though the carpet were of silk, the curtains of the morning clouds; the chairs and sofa stuffed with cygnet's down; the food manna, the wine beyond claret, the window opening on Winander Mere, I should not feel -or rather my happiness would not be so fine, as my solitude is sublime.
Have you no hope at all? And do you really live with the thought that when you die, you die, and nothing remains?" "Yes," I said.
The right to have access to every building in the city by private motorcar in an age when everyone possesses such a vehicle is actually the right to destroy the city.
How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.
It is our responsibility to explain to the public how an often unpredictable system of justice is one that serves a productive, civilized, but always evolving, society.
Blind hate against the enemy creates a forceful impulse that cracks the boundaries of natural human limitations, transforming the soldier in an effective, selective and cold killing machine. A people without hate cannot triumph against the adversary.