Quotes & Sayings About Ulysses

The book [Joyce's "Ulysses"] can just as well be read backwards, for it has no back and no front, no top and no bottom. Everything could easily have happened before, or might have happened afterwards. You can read any of the conversations just as pleasurably backwards, for you don't miss the point of the gags. Every sentence is a gag, but taken together they make no point. You can also stop in the middle of a sentence
the first half still makes sense enough to live by itself, or at least seems to. The whole work has the character of a worm cut in half, that can grow a new head or a new tail as required. — C. G. Jung

James Joyce's Ulysses — Pamela Paul

It will be all right if it turns out all right. — Ulysses S. Grant

Political novice Ulysses S. Grant was the first of six Union veterans to become president, five of whom were born in Ohio. The 23rd Ohio Infantry Regiment alone produced Maj. Gen. Rutherford B. Hayes and Maj. William McKinley. Former Brig. Gen. Benjamin Harrison defeated Grover Cleveland in 1888 partly because — Thomas R. Flagel

Happy he who like Ulysses has made a great journey. — Joachim Du Bellay

It is possible that the question of a conflict between races may come up in the future, as did that between freedom and slavery before. The condition of the colored man within our borders may become a source of anxiety, to say the least. But he was brought to our shores by compulsion, and he now should be considered as having as good a right to remain here as any other class of our citizens. — Ulysses S. Grant

If you think of all the enduring stories in the world, they're of journeys. Whether it's 'Don Quixote' or 'Ulysses,' there's always this sense of a quest - of a person going away to be tested, and coming back. — Robyn Davidson

In [Bloom's] having managed to sustain his curiosity about the people and the world around him after thirty-eight years of familiarity and routine that ought to have dulled and dampened it; and above all in the abiding capacity for empathy, for moral imagination, that is the fruit of an observant curiosity like Bloom's, I found, as if codified, a personal definition of heroism.
Ulysses struck me, most of all, as a book of life; every sentence, even those that laid bare the doubt, despair, shame, or vanity of its characters, seemed to have been calibrated to assert, in keeping with the project of the work as a whole, the singularity and worth of even the most humdrum and throwaway of human days. Michael Chabon — Michael Chabon

Inner beauty lasts longer than the more obvious seductions, so throw away the miniskirt and thigh-length boots. — Ulysses Brave

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

A year or so earlier I had been to the Sky River Rock Festival in rural Washington, where a dosen stone-broke freaks from Seattle Liberation Front had assembled a sound system that carried every small note of an acoustic guitar - even a cough or the sound of a boot drooping on the stage - to half-deaf acid victims huddled under bushes a half mile away.
But the best technicians available to the National DAs' convention in Vegas apparently couldn't handle it. Their sound system looked like something Ulysses S. Grant might have triggered up to addres his troops during the Siege of Vicksburg. The voices from up front crackled with a fuzzy, high-pitched urgency, and the delay was just enough to keep the words disconcertingly out of phaze with the speaker's gestures. (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, p. 73) — Hunter S. Thompson

To take so much punctuation in one hit initially sounds audacious, but perhaps the thief thought no one would notice as most readers never get that far into Ulysses - you will recall the theft of chapter sixty-two from Moby-Dick, where no one noticed? — Jasper Fforde

On the whole, I don't like reading long books. I'm not a fan of 'Ulysses.' And I haven't quite finished 'War and Peace.' — Vikram Seth

As time passes, people, even of the South, will begin to wonder how it was possible that their ancestors ever fought for or justified institutions which acknowledged the right of property in man. — Ulysses S. Grant

People who shop at Barnes and Noble voted Ulysses the best novel of the last century, and who's to tell them different? There was a point when I would have liked to, but apparently that's just because I'm a bitch. — Dale Peck

The friend in my adversity I shall always cherish most. I can better trust those who have helped to relieve the gloom of my dark hours than those who are so ready to enjoy with me the sunshine of my prosperity. — Ulysses S. Grant

And Ulysses stopped his ears against the siren's song for it was death. — V.E Schwab

Does not the passage of Moses and the Israelites into the Holy Land yield incomparably more poetic variety than the voyages of Ulysses or Aeneas? — Abraham Cowley

Beauty: it curves, curves are beauty. Shapely goddesses, Venus, Juno: curves the world admires. — James Joyce

Our great modern Republic. May those who seek the blessings of its institutions and the protection of its flag remember the obligations they impose. — Ulysses S. Grant

Hold fast to the Bible as the sheet-anchor of your liberties; write its precepts in your hearts, and practice them in your lives. — Ulysses S. Grant

Be just before you are generous. — James Joyce

Ulysses He ... saw the dark tangled curls of his bush floating, floating hair of the stream around the limp father of thousands, a languid flatong flower. — James Joyce

Retreat? NO. I propose to attach at daylight and whip them. — Ulysses S. Grant

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

To maintain peace in the future it is necessary to be prepared for war. — Ulysses S. Grant

The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on. — Ulysses S. Grant

I thought how little interest the men before me had in the results of the war, and how little knowledge they had of "what it was all about. — Ulysses S. Grant

The long-continued and useful public service and eminent purity of character of the deceased ex-President will be remembered. — Ulysses S. Grant

I care not if I live but a day and a night, so long as my deeds live after me. — James Joyce

Being a nerd, which is to say going to far and caring too much about a subject, is the best way to make friends I know. For me, the spark that turns an acquaintance into a friend has usually been kindled by some shared enthusiasm like detective novels or Ulysses S. Grant. — Sarah Vowell

In one particular chapter in Ulysses, James Joyce imitates every major writing style that's been used by English and American writers over the last 700 years - starting with Beowulf and Chaucer and working his way up through the Renaissance, the Victorian era and on into the 20th century. — Frederick Lenz

And Ulysses stopped up his ears against the siren's song," recited Victor, pulling the plugs from his own ears as Serena collapsed to the dirt lot, "for it was death. — V.E Schwab

The problem for us was to move forward to a decisive victory, or our cause was lost. — Ulysses S. Grant

But my later experience has taught me two lessons: first, that things are seen plainer after the events have occurred; second, that the most confident critics are generally those who know the least about the matter criticised. — Ulysses S. Grant

When I saw "Ulysses" on Georgie's bedside table and Tom Finch's name written on it in a scrawl so like my old man's, I felt that I wanted to read it as a preparation for what's about to happen to us all. I understand where the brawny part of my father and I come from - Bill. I'm not saying bill's not smart, but my old man is a pretty intelligent guy and that kind of intellect came from tome Finch. I want to turn the pages he turned. But honestly I'm actually finding it hard. I think that the whole world has lied and nobody has read the book completely. It's a conspiracy up there with Roswell. — Melina Marchetta

I never heard him abuse an enemy. Some of the cruel things said about President Lincoln, particularly in the North, used to pierce him to the heart; but never in my presence did he evince a revengeful disposition. — Ulysses S. Grant

When I wrote 'Your Republic Is Calling You,' it was Franz Kafka's writing that I had most in mind, and James Joyce's 'Ulysses.' Entirely out of the blue, Kafka's characters receive an order to go somewhere, and when they try to comply, they never quite manage it. Ki-yong in 'Your Republic Is Calling You' is precisely that sort of character. — Kim Young-ha

Whatever there is of greatness in the United States, or indeed in any other country, is due to labor. The laborer is the author of all greatness and wealth. Without labor there would be no government, no leading class, and nothing to preserve. — Ulysses S. Grant

I think perhaps the greatest book ever written was Ulysses by James Joyce. — Frederick Lenz

Now, anyway, we knew who was which blood type.
In addition to the beating he'd received from Chloe, Max was also starting to blister up (type A). The McKinley twins were hiding from us - they clearly had the paranoia (type AB). Ulysses was chattering to himself in Spanish, a rapid-fire monologue that made me pretty sure he had the paranoia type - type AB - as well as the twins.
Batiste had type B, the blood type that exhibited no symptoms, as did Alex, Jake, and Sahalia (sterility and reproductive failure - hooray!).
"We have to get them clean," Brayden said.
"You think?" I sort of shouted at him (type O). — Emmy Laybourne

Life often presents you with difficult choices. But who made up the rules? Why choose at all? — Ulysses Brave

One day in Auschwitz, the writer Primo Levi recited a canto of Dante's Inferno to a companion, and the poem about hell reached out from six hundred years before to roll back Levi's despair and his dehumanization. It was the canto about Ulysses, and though it ends tragically, it contains the lines You were not made to live like animals But to pursue virtue and know the world which he recited and translated to the man walking with him. — Rebecca Solnit

We must be careful what we read, and not, like the sailors of Ulysses, take bags of wind for sacks of treasure. — John Lubbock

Of this trinity of classic heroes - Ulysses, Aeneas, and Achilles - Ulysses is the least obnoxious. — William A. Quayle

He pilfered a copy of Ulysses, but it was possibly the one book he did not finish. 'What's the point of it? I suspect it was a bit of a joke by Joyce. He just kept his mouth shut as people read into it more then there was. Pseudo-intellectuals love to drop the name Ulysses as their favorite book. I refused to be intellectually bullied into finishing it. — Michael Finkel

The censors have always had a field day with James Joyce, specifically with 'Ulysses,' but also with his other writings. The conventional wisdom is that this is because of sexually explicit passages (and there certainly are those). I have always thought that what the critics hated and feared about Joyce is his cry for human freedom. — Karen DeCrow

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

To live with the work and the letters of James Joyce was an enormous privilege and a daunting education. Yes, I came to admire Joyce even more because he never ceased working, those words and the transubstantiation of words obsessed him. He was a broken man at the end of his life, unaware that Ulysses would be the number one book of the twentieth century and, for that matter, the twenty-first. — Edna O'Brien

I will raid the arsenal and start a war to end slavery. — Ulysses S. Grant

The men of the Ulysses had no need to stand in shame ... many had found, or were finding, that the point of no return was not necessarily the edge of the precipice: it could be the bottom of the valley, the beginning of the long climb up the far slope, and when a man had once begun that climb he never looked back to that other side. — Alistair MacLean

The pity is that the public will demand and find a moral in my book, or worse they may take it in some serious way, and on the honour of a gentleman, there is not one single serious word in it. — James Joyce

My judgment now is that he was vacillating and undecided in his actions. — Ulysses S. Grant

I know only two tunes. One of them is 'Yankee Doodle' the other isn't. — Ulysses S. Grant

After the magical act accomplished by Joyce with Ulysses, perhaps we are getting away from it. — Raymond Queneau

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. — Alfred Tennyson

Why was the host (victim predestined) sad?
He wished that a tale of a deed should be told of a deed not by him should by him not be told. — James Joyce

We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
"Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson — Alfred Tennyson

They used to drive a stake of wood through his heart in the grave. As if it wasn't broken already. Yet sometimes they repent too late.
Ulysses — James Joyce

James Joyce is a cul-de-sac. [Ulysses is] ... an example how literature branched out and went into, lost itself in nowhere, no man's land. — Werner Herzog

Cheap cigars come in handy; they stifle the odor of cheap politicians. — Ulysses S. Grant

The most confident critics are generally those who know the least about the matter criticized. — Ulysses S. Grant

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

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

They even say that an altar dedicated to Ulysses , with the addition of the name of his father, Laertes , was formerly discovered on the same spot, and that certain monuments and tombs with Greek inscriptions, still exist on the borders of Germany and Rhaetia . — Tacitus

The coincidences turn up down to the smallest details. There is, for instance, a character who has covered the mirrors with handkerchiefs. Apparently this happens somewhere in Ulysses, too. And they said, Ah! This is where he got that. Where I got it was when I was in a hotel in Panama and I had washed my handkerchiefs and spread them on the windows and the mirrors to dry - they almost look pressed when they're peeled away that way - a Panamanian friend came in and said, "All the mirrors are covered. Who's dead? What's happened?" I said, "No, I'm just drying my handkerchiefs." Then I found the same incident in McTeague in what? 1903 or 1905, whenever McTeague was written. This always strikes me as dangerous - finding "sources. — William Gaddis

Making friendships outside your immediate community will bring fresh perspectives on life. It is always more difficult to eat a friend. — Ulysses Brave

I managed to get my copy of Ulysses through safely this time. I rather wish I had never read it. It gives me an inferiority complex. When I read a book like that and then come back to my own work, I feel like a eunuch who has taken a course in voice production. — George Orwell

An artist is the magician put among men to gratify
capriciously
their urge for immortality. The temples are built and brought down around him, continuously and contiguously, from Troy to the fields of Flanders. If there is any meaning in any of it, it is in what survives as art, yes even in the celebration of tyrants, yes even in the celebration of nonentities. What now of the Trojan War if it had been passed over by the artist's touch? Dust. A forgotten expedition prompted by Greek merchants looking for new markets. A minor redistribution of broken pots. But it is we who stand enriched, by a tale of heroes, of a golden apple, a wooden horse, a face that launched a thousand ships
and above all, of Ulysses, the wanderer, the most human, the most complete of all heroes
husband, father, son, lover, farmer, soldier, pacifist, politician, inventor and adventurer ... — Tom Stoppard

Although a soldier by profession, I have never felt any sort of fondness for war, and I have never advocated it, except as a means of peace. — Ulysses S. Grant

It does look like a very good exercise. But what is the little white ball for? — Ulysses S. Grant

A customs man at JFK had asked them to open the suitcases (in case they were smuggling in Indian fruits or sweets, perhaps). 'Ulysses!' the large bespectacled disbelieving customs man had said. 'Are you a student?' Ananda had nodded, though he was in the equivalent of high school. 'I wouldn't read Ulysses unless I was a student!' said the customs man, shutting the suitcase after his glimpse into the tantalising freemasonry of studenthood. A potentially incendiary book then - on the verge of being, but not quite, contraband. And near-unreadable. Ananda — Amit Chaudhuri

he had sixty thousand as good soldiers as ever trod the earth; better than any European soldiers, because they not only worked like a machine but the machine thought. European armies know very little what they are fighting for, and care less. — Ulysses S. Grant

What happend to her? To Miranda?'
Ulysses shrugged. 'What happens to most children. She got sick, and never got better.'
'And your wife?'
'The same.'
'But you said you were married,' said Will, glancing down at Ulysses's ring, smooth and lustrous in the half-light.
'I'll always be married. But it'll be the next world when I see her again. — Cameron Stracher

Leave the matter of religion to the family altar the church and the private school supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate. — Ulysses S. Grant

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

The Colors, The Iliad, Ulysses, Metamorphosis, the Theban plays, The Draconic Labels, Anabasis, and restricted works like The Count of Monte Cristo, Lord of the Flies, Lady Casterly's Penance, 1984, and The Great Gatsby. I — Pierce Brown

Far away in the west the sun was setting and the last glow of all
too fleeting day lingered lovingly on sea and strand, on the proud
promontory of dear old Howth guarding as ever the waters of the bay, on
the weedgrown rocks along Sandymount shore and, last but not least, on the
quiet church whence there streamed forth at times upon the stillness the
voice of prayer to her who is in her pure radiance a beacon ever to the
stormtossed heart of man, Mary, star of the sea. — James Joyce

The war was not won by any single individual, be it Abraham Lincoln or Ulysses S. Grant. The Union, as a whole, triumphed. The national army, fielding over two million men in toto, led by legions of staff, company, field, and general officers; a correspondingly potent navy; and a far more powerful economy than its adversary were all needed to ultimately subdue the Confederacy. — Joseph A. Rose

All secret oath-bound political parties are dangerous to any nation, no matter how pure or how patriotic the motives and principles which first bring them together. — Ulysses S. Grant

It was my fortune, or misfortune, to be called to the office of Chief Executive without any previous political training. — Ulysses S. Grant

In 1922 everything changed again. The Eskimo pie was invented; James Joyce's Ulysses was printed in Paris; snow fell on Mauna Loa, Hawaii; Babe Ruth signed a three-year contract with the New York Yankees; Eugene O'Neill was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama; Frederick Douglass's home was dedicated as a national shrine; former heavyweight champion of the world Jack Johnson invented the wrench ... — Bernice L. McFadden

I only knew what was in my mind, and I wished to express it clearly — Ulysses S. Grant

We haven't time to spare to hear whether it was between Italy and Sicily that he ran into a storm or somewhere outside the world we know-when every day we're running into our own storms, spiritual storms, and driven by vice into all the troubles that Ulysses ever knew. — Seneca The Younger

I read the story and reread the story, but I still could not find the universality that the little Irishman had spoken of. All I saw in the story was some Irishmen meeting in a room and talking politics. What had that to do with America, especially with my people? It was not until years later that I saw what he meant ... I began to listen, to listen closely to how they talked about their heroes, to how they talked about the dead and how great the dead had once been. I heard it everywhere. — Ulysses S. Grant

The will of the people is the best law. — Ulysses S. Grant

There's no easy way to say this, so I'€ll just say it: We're no longer No. 1. Today, we're No. 2. Yes, it's official. The Chinese economy just overtook the United States economy to become the largest in the world. For the first time since Ulysses S. Grant was president, America is not the leading economic power on the planet. — Stephen F. Hayes

Small children can be startled by the most mundane of noises. A car door from a distance can sound like the sky falling down when heard for the very first time. — Ulysses Brave

Lee's army will be your objective point. Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also. — Ulysses S. Grant

In 1856 ... I preferred the success of a candidate whose election would prevent or postpone secession, to seeing the country plunged into a war the end of which no man could foretell. With a Democrat elected by the unanimous vote of the Slave States, there could be no pretext for secession for four years ... I therefore voted for James Buchanan as President. — Ulysses S. Grant

To pass the time, I made valiant strides in my effort to read Ulysses, but feared I was losing the war. A hundred pages in, I was getting the sneaking suspicion that James Joyce might have been an asshole, and by Nebraska I was in a foul mood. — B. Justin Shier

Forget physics, forget organic chem, forget reading James Joyce's Ulysses - organizing your time is one of the biggest challenges you'll face in your academic career. — Stefanie Weisman

Pascal," said Dr. Meescham, "had it that since it could not be proven whether God existed, one might as well believe that he did, because there was everything to gain by believing and nothing to lose. This is how it is for me. What do I lose if I choose to believe? Nothing!"
"Take this squirrel, for instance. Ulysses. Do I believe he can type poetry? Sure, I do believe it. There is much more beauty in the world if I believe such a thing is possible. — Kate DiCamillo

Sometimes great, banned works defy the censor's description and impose themselves on the world - 'Ulysses,' 'Lolita,' the 'Arabian Nights.' — Salman Rushdie

Someday, if we won, if humanity survived, we'd be in the history books. Me and Jake and Rachel and Cassie and Tobias and Ax. They'd be household names, like generals from World War II or the Civil War. Patton and Eisenhower, Ulysses Grant and Robert E. Lee. Kids would study us in school. Bored, probably.
And then the teacher would tell the story of Marco. I'd be a part of history. What I was about to do. Some kid would laugh. Some kid would say, "Cold, man. That was really cold."
I had to do it, kid. It was a war. It's the whole point, you stupid, smug, smirking little jerk! Don't you get it?
It was the whole point. We hurt the innocent in order to stop the evil. Innocent Hork-Bajir. Innocent Taxxons. Innocent human-Controllers. How else to stop the Yeerks? How else to win?
No choice, you punk. We did what we had to do.
"Cold, man. The Marco dude? He was just cold. — Katherine Applegate

Ah, you know my weaknesses
my children and my horses. — Ulysses S. Grant

Ulysses could have done with a good editor. 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

My family is American, and has been for generations, in all its branches, direct and collateral — Ulysses S. Grant

The fact is I think I am a verb instead of a personal pronoun. A verb is anything that signifies to be; to do; or to suffer. I signify all three. — Ulysses S. Grant

No, it did a lot of other things, too.
[turning down fan who asked to kiss the hand that wrote Ulysses — James Joyce