Ulysses Time Quotes

What does this thought of Stephen's say about the role of language in relation to the past? Can language become eroded, can it become washed up on the beach like heavy sands? Just how much is our relationship to the physical world around us mediated by language? What effect does time have on the language that we use?

This is one of Stephen's thoughts toward the very end of the "Proteus" episode. To what extent do we think of time as something separate from us? To what extent is it a personal concept? What gives time personal meaning and significance? Is it just a set of measurements that help us keep track of our days?

Bloom speculates idly in "The Wandering Rocks." The passage interests us because people tend to think of time largely in relation to themselves. Time seems vertical, meaning that one moment follows the next but we don't think about all the different things that happen in each of those moments. Here, time seems horizontal. Bloom is thinking broadly about what happens all over the world with each ticking of the minute hand on a clock. How is this idea of horizontal time applicable to the chapter of "The Wandering Rocks" at large?

In "Nausicaa," finding that his watch has stopped, Bloom begins to speculate on the nature of time. Considering that most of us don't fully understand how a watch works and that nobody understands how time itself works, in what ways is time a mystery? How can thinking about it change one's perspective on the events in the novel, especially since the novel itself is so carefully mapped out according to time?

In "Nausicaa," this is one of Bloom's thoughts about his daughter Milly's confidence and enthusiasm for life. How can the passage of time make a thing more comprehensible? Why is it harder to imagine death when it's far off but not when we are closer to it? Isn't it unimaginable either way?

In "Oxen of the Sun," the narrator mimics Middle English prose as he speculates on the nature of birth. Obviously, these lines could just as easily have gone in the "Mortality" section, but what we're interested in here is the religious view of time and how it ties into personal conceptions of time. How does the religious view of time differ from the sense of time we get by measuring it on a clock? If it weren't for death, do you think that we would even bother to measure time?

Here are a few of Stephen's profound words in "Oxen of the Sun." What is the difference between time and eternity? When we think in terms of time, what things do we value? How do these values change when we think in terms of eternity? As an artist, Stephen tries to think in terms of eternity, but what does it even mean to think that way?

Here, in the "Ithaca" episode, we note that Joyce plays with Stephen's and Bloom's ages as if it were a math problem. How does his playfulness effect how we think of the relationship between Stephen and Bloom's ages? How would the effect be different if he just gave us their ages straight out?

Why would Stephen and Bloom have different experiences of the past and future based on their different ages? At what age do you think it is that more of your thoughts tend toward the past than toward the future? What role might our senses play in our experience of time (e.g. we smell breakfast, we intuit it's morning; we feel that it's cold, we conclude that the sun has gone down and it's evening)?

This is a clip of Molly's thought from "Penelope" where she is remembering her daughter Milly. What we're interested in here is how having children heightens and changes one's sense of time. How does having a child that resembles you effect how you think of time? Is it more complex than that it just makes you feel old? Does it also make time seem somehow circular, as if things are repeating themselves?