James Stephens Quotes

#1. To work is nothing; the king on his throne, the priest kneeling before the Holy Altar, all people in all places had to work, but no person at all need be a servant.

James Stephens

#2. What the heart knows today the head will understand tomorrow

James Stephens

#3. After a lie truth bursts out, and it is no longer the radiant and serene goddess knew or hoped for - it is a disease, it is a moral syphilis and will ravage until the body in which it can dwell has been purged.

James Stephens

#4. To understand the theory which underlies all things is not sufficient. Theory is but the preparation for practice.

James Stephens

#5. Curiosity will conquer fear more than bravery will.

James Stephens

#6. A woman is a branchy tree and man a singing wind; and from her branches carelessly he takes what he can find.

James Stephens

#7. My three-thousand mile walk through Ireland convinced me of one thing - the possibility of organising a proper movement for the independence of my native land.

James Stephens

#8. Because our lives are cowardly and sly, Because we do not dare to take or give, Because we scowl and pass each other by, We do not live; we do not dare to live.

James Stephens

#9. To ask questions can become the laziest and wobbliest occupation of a mind, but when you must yourself answer the problem that you have posed, you will meditate your question with care and frame it with precision.

James Stephens

#10. Life runs to death as its goal, and we should go towards that next stage of experience either carelessly as to what must be, or with a good, honest curiosity as to what may be.

James Stephens

#11. I would think Until I found Something I can never find; - Something Lying On the ground, In the bottom Of my mind.

James Stephens

#12. Women and birds are able to see without turning their heads, and that is indeed a necessary provision for they are both surrounded by enemies.

James Stephens

#13. We get wise by asking questions, and even if these are not answered we get wise, for a well-packed question carries its answer on its back as a snail carries its shell.

James Stephens

#14. Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.

James Stephens

#15. When a woman speaks to a man about the love she feels for another man, she is not liked.

James Stephens

#16. Quietness is the beginning of virtue. To be silent is to be beautiful. Stars do not make a noise.

James Stephens

#17. The trouble of the king becomes the trouble of the subject, for how shall we live if judgement is withheld, or if faulty decisions are promulgated?

James Stephens

#18. A poem is a revelation, and it is by the brink of running water that poetry is revealed to the mind.

James Stephens

#19. A Leprecaun without a pot of gold is like a rose without perfume, a bird without a wing, or an inside without an outside.

James Stephens

#20. Let the past be content with itself, for man needs forgetfulness as well as memory

James Stephens

#21. A secret is a weapon and a friend.

James Stephens

#22. Men come of age at sixty, women at fifteen.

James Stephens

#23. God did not need any assistance, but man did; bitterly he wanted it, and the giving of such assistance was the proper business of a woman.

James Stephens

#24. Under all wrongdoing lies personal vanity or the feeling that we are endowed and privileged beyond our fellows.

James Stephens

#25. Any fool can wash himself, but every wise man knows that it is an unnecessary labour, for nature will quickly reduce him to a natural and healthy dirtiness again.

James Stephens

#26. Can a spear divine the Eternal Will?

James Stephens

#27. Knowledge, may it be said, is higher than magic and is more to be sought. It is quite possible to see what is happening and yet not know what is forward, for while seeing is believing, it does not follow that either seeing or believing is knowing.

James Stephens

#28. In that wide struggle which we call Progress, evil is always the aggressor and the vanquished, and it is right that this should be so, for without its onslaughts and depredations humanity might fall to a fat slumber upon its cornsacks and die snoring.

James Stephens

#29. We are washed both on coming into the world and on going out of it, and we take no pleasure from the first washing nor any profit from the last.

James Stephens

#30. Is it not possible that the ultimate end is gaiety and music and a dance of joy?

James Stephens

#31. You must be fit to give before you can be fit to receive.

James Stephens

#32. By having much, you are fitted to have more.

James Stephens

#33. In truth we do not go to Faery, we become Fairy, and in the beating of a pulse we may live for a year or a thousand years.

James Stephens

#34. Finality is death. Perfection is finality. Nothing is perfect. There are lumps in it, said the Philosopher.

James Stephens

#35. The inexorable compulsion of all things is towards health or destruction, life or death, and we hasten our joys or our woes to the logical extreme. It is urgent, therefore, that we be joyous if we wish to live.

James Stephens

#36. A sword, a spade, and a thought should never be allowed to rust.

James Stephens

#37. If men understood domestic economy half as well as women do, then their political economy and their entire consequent statecraft would not be the futil muddle which it is.

James Stephens

#38. The duty of a lyrical poet is not to express or explain, it is to intensify life.

James Stephens

#39. There is no tragedy more woeful than the victory of hate, nor any attainment so hopelessly barren as the sterility of that achievement; for hate is finality, and finality is the greatest evil which can happen in a world of movement.

James Stephens

#40. Man works outwardly and inwardly - after rest, he has energy; after energy, he needs repose; so, when we have given instruction for a time, we need instruction and must receive it, or the spirit faints and wisdom herself grows bitter.

James Stephens

#41. The toxin generates the anti-toxin. The end lies concealed in the beginning. All bodies grow around a skeleton. Life is a petticoat about death.

James Stephens

#42. Tell me your past, my beloved, for a man is his past, and is to be known by it.

James Stephens

#43. Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before, but in saying exactly what you think yourself.

James Stephens

#44. Sleep is an excellent way of listening to an opera.

James Stephens

#45. It is by love alone that we understand anything

James Stephens

#46. Chaos is the first condition. Order is the first law. Continuity is the first reflection. Quietude is the first happiness.

James Stephens

#47. But outside of the North of Ireland there is no religious question, and in the North it is fundamentally more political than religious.

James Stephens

#48. I hear a sudden cry of pain! There is a rabbit in a snare.

James Stephens

#49. There are more worlds than one, and in many ways they are unlike each other. But joy and sorrow, or, in other words, good and evil,are not absent in their degree from any of the worlds, for wherever there is life there is action, and action is but the expression of one or other of these qualities.

James Stephens

#50. The mysteries of death and birth occupy women far more than is the case with men, to whom political and mercantile speculations are more congenial.

James Stephens

#51. Women are stronger than men - they do not die of wisdom.

James Stephens