Other than the Irish friends I so treasure in my life, there is nothing that warms my heart from the land of green more than a bit of James Joyce. Some favorite quotes from Ulysses on this St. Patrick’s Day:

Art has to reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring.
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The movements which work revolutions in the world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant’s heart on the hillside. For them the earth is not an exploitable ground but the living mother.
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A
 man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
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And I can’t resist one nod to romance, Joyce’s description of a woman’s scent:

It’s like a fine fine veil or web they have all over the skin, fine like what do you call it gossamer, and they’re always spinning it out of them, fine as anything, like rainbow colours without knowing it. Clings to everything she takes off.