From Ulysses Quotes

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

And then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes. ~ James Joyce

The theory of government changes with general progress. ~ Ulysses S. Grant

In the make-up of human beings, intelligence counts for more than our hands, and that is our true strength. ~ Ovid

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

Nina was enjoying the book; the writing was beautiful, the characters were real, the situations were bittersweet, but it was after an hour or so of reading that she came across a line that struck her so forcefully she had to close the book for a moment: "I'm lonely, " the young character Ulysses said, "and I don't know what I'm lonely for. ~ Abbi Waxman

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

If men make war in slavish observance of rules, they will fail. No rules will apply to conditions of war as different as those which exist in Europe and America ... War is progressive, because all the instruments and elements of war are progressive. ~ Ulysses S. Grant

In politics I am growing indifferent - I would like it, if I could now return to my planting and books at home ~ Ulysses S. Grant

The world of literature has everything in it, and it refuses to leave anything out. I have read like a man on fire my whole life because the genius of English teachers touched me with the dazzling beauty of language. Because of them I rode with Don Quixote and danced with Anna Karenina at a ball in St. Petersburg and lassoed a steer in Lonesome Dove and had nightmares about slavery in Beloved and walked the streets of Dublin in Ulysses and made up a hundred stories in The Arabian Nights and saw my mother killed by a baseball in A Prayer for Owen Meany. I've been in ten thousand cities and have introduced myself to a hundred thousand strangers in my exuberant reading career ~ Pat Conroy

You can't just fly into the Great Coat, shoot your way into Bluewater, and take Kai and his father,' I told him.
'Why not?'
'Cause you can't. They'll killl you, for one thing.'
Ulysses scratched his beard. 'Hmm. Need a better plan. ~ Cameron Stracher

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

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

Let us have peace. ~ Ulysses S. Grant

You know how to fire this?" he asked.
Thomas took Ulysses's gun. It looked absurdly large in his thin hands, but he released the safety like a professional. "My father taught me," he explained.
"Good." Ulysses turned to the man kneeling before him. "This boy's in charge now. You'll do as he says. If you don't
as you can see, his father taught him how to shoot you. ~ Cameron Stracher

Ever since the days when such formidable mediocrities as Galsworthy, Dreiser, Tagore, Maxim Gorky, Romain Rolland and Thomas Mann were being accepted as geniuses, I have been perplexed and amused by fabricated notions about so-called "great books." That, for instance, Mann's asinine "Death in Venice," or Pasternak's melodramatic, vilely written "Dr. Zhivago," or Faulkner's corn-cobby chronicles can be considered "masterpieces" or at least what journalists term "great books," is to me the sort of absurd delusion as when a hypnotized person makes love to a chair. My greatest masterpieces of twentieth century prose are, in this order: Joyce's "Ulysses"; Kafka's "Transformation"; Bely's "St. Petersburg," and the first half of Proust's fairy tale, "In Search of Lost Time. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

His presence soon restored confidence. ~ Ulysses S. Grant

James Joyce's Ulysses ~ Pamela Paul

It [Joyce's "Ulysses"] plays on the reader's sympathies to his own undoing unless sleep kindly intervenes and puts a stop to this drain of energy. Arrived at page 135, after making several heroic efforts to get at the book, to "do it justice", as the phrase goes, I fell at last into profound slumber. ~ C. G. Jung

I would suggest the taxation of all property equally, whether church or corporation, exempting only the last resting place of the dead and possibly, with proper restrictions, church edifices. ~ 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

Grant deserves an honored place in American history, second only to Lincoln for what he did for the freed slaves. He got the big issues right during his presidency even if he bungled many of the small ones. The historian Richard N. Currant who also saw Grant as the most underrated American president wrote "by backing radical reconstruction as best he could he made a greater effort to secure the constitutional rights of blacks than did any other president between Lincoln and Lyndon B. Johnson". In the words of Frederick Douglass, "that sturdy old roman, Benjamin Butler, made the negro a contraband, Abraham Lincoln made him a free man and General Ulysses S. Grant made him a citizen". ~ Ron Chernow

Ulysses is son to Laertes, but he is father to Telemachus, husband to Penelope, lover of Calypso, companion in arms of the Greek warriors around Troy, and King of Ithaca. He was subjected to many trials, but with wisdom and courage came through them all ... he is a complete man as well, a good man. ~ James Joyce

To B-major or B-minor: that is the question. Consider that the major and minor chords are separated by the smallest tonal step which is one half-step carrying in its pitch the gravity of all humanity which needs the major to recognize its relative, inherent tragedy which once given expression seeks the resurrection that only the major can procreate which self-expression gives beauty to the harmony of the major which then confirms the whole truth of the tragic minor saga which overcomes the hidden hand of destiny in the great ellipse of being and the greater cosmic void of nothingness which passage of time has sadly destined to be replayed in the same octave of the ineluctable modality of the audible which ellipse with such a simple twist resonates as infinity which is both meaningless beyond all human capacity for understanding but which holds within it the ubiquitous mystic beauty and truth of the pulsing human heart. ~ David B. Lentz

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

In respect of the recurrent emergence of the theme of sex in the minds of [Joyce's] characters, it must always be remembered that his locale was Celtic and his season spring. ~ John Munro Woolsey

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

You say that like she edited Ulysses," I said. "I don't care!" said my friend. "It was a No. 1 best-seller!" VII. ~ Keith Gessen

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 use the term 'clerk' as an insult is simply a banal vulgarity; Pessoa and Svevo, however would have welcomed it as a just attribute of the poet. The latter does not resemble Achilles or Diomedes, ranting on their war-chariots, but is more like Ulysses, who knows that he is no one. He manifests himself in this revelation of impersonality that conceals him in the prolixity of things, as travelling erases the traveller in the confused murmur of the street. ~ Claudio Magris

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

I appreciate the fact, and am proud of it, that the attentions I am receiving are intended more for our country than for me personally. ~ Ulysses S. Grant

England and the United States are natural allies, and should be the best of friends. ~ Ulysses S. Grant

As far back as Yossarian could recall, he explained to Clevinger with a patient smile, somebody was always hatching a plot to kill him. There were people who cared for him and people who didn't, and those who hated him were out to get him. They hated him because he was Assyrian. But they couldn't touch him, he told Clevinger, because he had a sound mind in a pure body and was as strong as an ox. They couldn't touch him because he was Tarzan, Mandrake, Flash Gordon. He was Bill Shakespeare. He was Cain, Ulysses, the Flying Dutchman; he was Lot in Sodom, Deirdre of the Sorrows, Sweeney in the nightingales among trees. He was miracle ingredient Z-247. He was -
Crazy!" Clevinger interrupted, shrieking. "That's what you are! Crazy!" "immense. I'm a real slam-bang, honest-to-goodness, three-fisted humdinger. I'm a bona fide Supraman."
"Superman?" Clevinger cried. "Superman?"
Supraman," Yossarian corrected. ~ Joseph Heller

Stephen picks up on Armstrong's pier, and calls Kingstown pier "a disappointed bridge" (2.22). He's joking about the fact that Ireland wanted to be connected to continental Europe but ended up being extremely isolated. ~ James Joyce

Because the great thing about fairy tales and folk tales is that there is no authentic text. It's not like the text of Paradise Lost or James Joyce's Ulysses, and you have to adhere to that exact text. ~ Philip Pullman

Be just before you are generous. ~ James Joyce

We're teachers, and we have a commitment." "Commitment to what-to live and die in this hellhole, when we can leave and live like other people? ~ 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

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