“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 mi...”
0 likes
Author detail
James Stephens, born in Dublin, Ireland, was an Irish novelist and poet. His father died when Stephens was two years old, and his mother remarried when he was six years old. He attended school with his adoptive brothers, Thomas and Richard Collins, before graduating as a solicitor's clerk. By the early 1900s Stephens was increasingly inclined to socialism and the Irish language (he spoke and wrote Irish) and by 1912 was a dedicated Irish Republican. He was a close friend of the 1916 leader, Thomas MacDonagh, who was then editor of *The Irish Review* and deputy headmaster in St Enda's, and later manager of the Irish Theatre. His growing nationalism brought a schism with his adoptive family, but probably won him his job as registrar in the National Gallery of Ireland, where he worked from 1915-25, having previously had an ill-paid job with a firm of solicitors. Stephens produced many retellings of Irish myths which are marked by a rare combination of humour and lyricism. He also wrote several original novels (*The Crock of Gold*, *Etched in Moonlight*, *Demi-Gods*) based loosely on Irish wonder tales. Stephens began his career as a poet under the tutelage of poet and painter Æ (George William Russell). Stephens's first book of poems, *Insurrections*, was published in 1909. His last book, *Kings and the Moon*, published in 1938, was also a volume of verse. Stephens's influential account of the 1916 Easter Rising, *Insurrection in Dublin*, describes the effect of the deaths by execution of his friend Thomas MacDonagh and others as being "like watching blood oozing from under a door". MacDonagh was the first of the leaders who was tried and shot. Stephens later lived between Paris, London and Dublin. During the 1930s he was a friend of James Joyce. During the last decade of his life, Stephens found a new audience through a series of broadcasts on the BBC. Source: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Stephens_(author)
Quotes
Showing 1-19 of 19
“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 mi...”
0 likes
“When a woman speaks to a man about the love she feels for another man, she is not liked.”
0 likes
“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.”
0 likes
“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 evi...”
0 likes
“A woman is a branchy tree and man a singing wind; and from her branches carelessly he takes what he can find.”
0 likes
“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.”
0 likes
“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.”
0 likes
“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.”
0 likes
“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?”
0 likes
“Finality is death. Perfection is finality. Nothing is perfect. There are lumps in it.”
0 likes
“Chaos is the first condition. Order is the first law. Continuity is the first reflection. Quietude is the first happiness.”
0 likes
“Let the past be content with itself, for man needs forgetfulness as well as memory.”
0 likes
“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...”
0 likes
“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 sp...”
0 likes
“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.”
0 likes
“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.”
0 likes
“Quietness is the beginning of virtue. To be silent is to be beautiful. Stars do not make a noise.”
0 likes
“A sword, a spade, and a thought should never be allowed to rust.”
0 likes
“Under all wrongdoing lies personal vanity or the feeling that we are endowed and privileged beyond our fellows.”
0 likes