Quote 1
It is a curious thing, do you know, Cranly said dispassionately, how your mind is supersaturated with the religion in which you say you disbelieve. Did you believe in it when you were at school? I bet you did.
I did, Stephen answered.
And were you happier then? Cranly asked softly, happier than you are now, for instance?
Often happy Stephen said, and often unhappy. I was someone else then.
How someone else? What do you mean by that statement?
I mean, said Stephen, that I was not myself as I am now, as I had to become. (5.3.86)
The declaration that Stephen’s transformation was necessary indicates that perhaps the person he is now is who he was somehow destined to be all along.
Quote 2
A restless feeling of guilt would always be present with him: he would confess and repent and be absolved, confess and repent again and be absolved again, fruitlessly. Perhaps that first hasty confession wrung from him by the fear of hell had not been good? Perhaps, concerned only for his imminent doom, he had not had sincere sorrow for his sin? But the surest sign that his confession had been good and that he had had sincere sorrow for his sin was, he knew, the amendment of his life.
– I have amended my life, have I not? he asked himself (4.1.14)
Even at the peak of Stephen’s rigorous religious discipline, he still has doubts that he has done enough. This is typical and unsurprising – after all, even if God himself showed up and said "Hey, Stephen, enough already," he would probably still have doubts. This is the old Stephen we know and love, not the passive, unquestioning dude we’ve seen most of the time in this chapter. His nagging dissatisfaction is what lets us know that Stephen’s destiny doesn’t lie in the religious life.
Quote 3
– Then, said Cranly, you do not intend to become a protestant?
– I said that I had lost the faith, Stephen answered, but not that I had lost self-respect. What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent? (5.3.100)
Stephen still values Catholicism over other religious systems; he recognizes it as "an absurdity" but still holds it above Protestantism. At least Catholicism is a "logical" absurdity. This whole distinction seems a little absurd.
Quote 4
– Heavenly God! cried Stephen's soul, in an outburst of profane joy. (4.3.28)
What a perfect sentence! The seeming contradiction of "Heavenly God" with "profane joy" demonstrates Stephen’s new sense of the spiritual.
Quote 5
– The soul is born, [Stephen] said vaguely, first in those moments I told you of. It has a slow and dark birth, more mysterious than the birth of the body. When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets. (5.1.117)
Stephen explains the risks he sees as inherent in Ireland to Davin, the nationalist. Instead of seeing the Irish revolutionary movement as a potential for artistic inspiration like many of his countrymen do (a good example is W.B. Yeats), he views the condition of Irish life as a pitfall.
Quote 6
– Do you know what Ireland is? asked Stephen with cold violence. Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow. (5.1.118)
Stephen takes his sentiment from the last quote and steps it up a notch in brutality. He claims that Ireland metaphorically devours its own children (a fate he plans to avoid). In short, Ireland’s thwarted sense of nationhood destroys Irishmen.
Quote 7
What are you laughing at? asked Stephen.
You, said Heron. Byron the greatest poet! He's only a poet for uneducated people.
He must be a fine poet! said Boland.
You may keep your mouth shut, said Stephen, turning on him boldly. All you know about poetry is what you wrote up on the slates in the yard and were going to be sent to the loft for. (2.3.32)
Later on…
Nash pinioned his arms behind while Boland seized a long cabbage stump which was lying in the gutter. Struggling and kicking under the cuts of the cane and the blows of the knotty stump Stephen was borne back against a barbed wire fence.
Admit that Byron was no good.
No.
Admit.
No.
Admit.
No. No.
At last after a fury of plunges he wrenched himself free. His tormentors set off towards Jones's Road, laughing and jeering at him, while he, half blinded with tears, stumbled on, clenching his fists madly and sobbing. (2.3.36)
This is a very notable moment – it’s the first time we see Stephen stand up for himself, despite the threat (and eventual reality) of physical violence. Of course, the reason for his rebellion is poetry.