The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.
James JoyceRead
No one would think he'd make such a beautiful corpse.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the unexpected beauty found in death and the human condition.
James Joyce's quote suggests that there is an irony in how people perceive beauty and identity, particularly in life and death. The statement implies that one's value or aesthetic may not be recognized until after their life has ended, leading to deeper reflections on mortality, legacy, and the complexity of human existence.
Themes
DeathBeautyMortalityIdentityIrony
In practice
Example use cases
During a memorial service, to reflect on how people often appreciate the deceased's beauty and spirit more after they have passed.
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.
James JoyceRead
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.
James JoyceRead
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
Similar quotes
More than its utilitarian and technocratic transparency, it is the opaque ambivalence of its oddities that makes the city livable.
Michel De CerteauRead
There are those, I know, who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is the American dream.
Archibald MacleishRead
I cheat him, I deceive him, yet the world does not sink in sulphur-colored mists. Madness conquers. I can no longer put my mosaics together. I just cry and laugh.
Anais NinRead
The metaphor is so obvious. Easter Island isolated in the Pacific Ocean β once the island got into trouble, there was no way they could get free. There was no other people from whom they could get help. In the same way that we on Planet Earth, if we ruin our own [world], we won't be able to get help.
Jared DiamondRead
It must really be a lonelier journey than anyone could imagine. Cutting through absolute darkness, encountering nothing but the occasional hydrogen atom. Flying blindly into the abyss, believing therein lie the answers to the mysteries of the universe.
Makoto ShinkaiRead
The greed of gain has no time or limit to its capaciousness. Its one object is to produce and consume. It has pity neither for beautiful nature nor for living human beings. It is ruthlessly ready without a moment's hesitation to crush beauty and life.
Rabindranath TagoreRead