James Stephens Quotes

“Curiosity will conquer fear more than bravery will.”

— James Stephens

“Let the past be content with itself, for man needs forgetfulness as well as memory”

— James Stephens

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

— James Stephens

What the heart knows today the head will understand tomorrow

— James Stephens

“It is by love alone that we understand anything”

— James Stephens

“Sleep is an excellent way of listening to an opera.”

— James Stephens

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

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

— James Stephens

“It has occurred to me, brother, that wisdom may not be the end to everything. Goodness and kindness are, perhaps, beyond wisdom. Is it not possible that the ultimate end is music and gaiety and a dance of joy? Wisdom is the oldest of all things. Wisdom is all head and no heart.Behold, brother, you are being crushed under the weight of your head. You are dying of old age while you are yet a child.”

— James Stephens

“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

“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

“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

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

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

“There is a difference between this world and the world of Faery, but it is not immediately perceptible. Everything that is here is there, but the things that are there are better than those that are here. All things that are bright are there brighter. There is more gold in the sun and more silver in the moon of that land. There is more scent in the flowers, more savour in the fruit. There is more comeliness in the men and more tenderness in the women. Everything in Faery is better by this one wonderful degree, and it is by this betterness you will know that you are there if you should ever happen to get there.”

— James Stephens

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

— James Stephens

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

— James Stephens

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

— James Stephens

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

— James Stephens

“Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.”

— James Stephens

“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

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

— James Stephens

“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

“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

“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

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

“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

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

— James Stephens

“A secret is a weapon and a friend.”

— James Stephens

“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

“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

“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

“Men come of age at sixty, women at fifteen.”

— James Stephens

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

— James Stephens

“Women are stronger than men - they do not die of wisdom.”

— James Stephens

“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

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

“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

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

— James Stephens

“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

By having much, you are fitted to have more.

— James Stephens

“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

“A man and a woman may become quite intimate in a quarter of an hour. Almost certainly will they endeavour to explain themselves to each other before many minutes have elapsed; but a man and a man will not do this, and even less so will a woman and a woman, for these are parallel lines which will never meet.”

— James Stephens

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

— James Stephens

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

— James Stephens

“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

“I came to the resolve that the attempt was not only worth trying, but should be tried in the very near future if we wanted at all to keep our flag flying; for I was sure as of my own existence that if another decade was allowed to pass without an endeavour of some kind or another to shake off an unjust yoke, the Irish people would sink into lethargy from which it would be impossible for any patriot ... to arouse them ...”

— James Stephens

Can a spear divine the Eternal Will?

— James Stephens

“I hear a sudden cry of pain! There is a rabbit in a snare.”

— James Stephens

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

— James Stephens