The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.
James JoyceRead
I wanted real adventures to happen to myself. But real adventures, I reflected, do not happen to people who remain at home: they must be sought abroad.
Interpretation
Real adventures require active pursuit rather than passive waiting at home.
In this quote, James Joyce emphasizes the idea that true adventure and excitement in life do not simply come to those who stay in their comfort zones. Instead, one must actively seek out experiences and opportunities outside their familiar surroundings to truly embrace the fullness of life and its adventures.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a travel blog encouraging readers to explore new places.
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.
I have ever been prone to seek adventure and to investigate and experiment where wiser men would have left well enough alone.
Soon enough his head would be swimming with tales of derring-do and high adventure, tales of beautiful maidens kissed, of evildoers shot with pistols or fought with swords, of bags of gold, of diamonds as big as the tip of your thumb, of lost cities and of vast mountains, of steam-trains and clipper ships, of pampas, oceans, deserts, tundra.
To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the most pleasant sensations in the world. You are surrounded by adventure.
Straddling the top of the world, one foot in China and the other in Nepal, I cleared the ice from my oxygen mask, hunched a shoulder against the wind, and stared absently down at the vastness of Tibet.
The test of an adventure is that when you're in the middle of it, you say to yourself "Oh now I've got myself into an awful mess; I wish I were sitting quietly at home. And the sign that something's wrong with you is when you sit quietly at home wishing you were out having lots of adventure.
On Mount Everest it feels as if you are in the womb, but on K2 you are always out on the edge.
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