I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“I have often though about what I would do out here if I were stricken by a serious illness, if I broke a leg, cut myself badly, or had an attack of appendicities. Almost as quickly as the thought came, I dismissed it. Why worry about something that isn't? Worrying about something that might happen is not a healthy pastime. A man's a fool to live his life under a shadow like that. Maybe that's how an ulcer begins.”
Source: One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey
“I have often thought, during these conferences, about the comment that Maurice Maignan, one of the first companions of Ozanam, made after a retreat: "One thought strikes me. All the means of sanctification which the preacher proposes and develops require a strong soul...I will not profit from exercises designed for strong souls. O my God, show me the exercises designed for feeble souls. Would the saints have forgotten or disdained them? Yet even if the saints did not think of these poor souls, who are nevertheless most numerous, You, Lord, my mercy, have not abandoned them. You Yourself, Good Master, have burdened Yourself with them. I know that better than anyone. I am one of those souls, and I bless You for having revealed to the weak and the little ones what You do not always accord to the valiant and the strong.”
Source: I Believe in Love: A Personal Retreat Based on the Teaching of St. Thérèse of Lisieux
“I have often thought how little I should like to have to prove organic evolution in a court of law.”
“I have often thought how strange it is that men can at once and the same moment cheerfully consign our sex to lives either of narrowest toil or senseless luxury and vanity, and then sneer at the smallness of our aims, the pettiness of our thoughts, the puerility of our conversation!”
Source: The Duties of Women: A Course of Lectures
“I have often thought I would have been quite happy as a spider.Even a spider has the right to a mate.”
“I Have often thought if the minds of men were laid open, we should see but little difference between that of the wise man and that of the fool. There are infinite reveries, numberless extravagances, and a perpetual train of vanities which pass through both. The great difference is, that the first knows how to pick and cull his thoughts for conversation, by suppressing some, and communicating others; whereas the other lets them all indifferently fly out in words.”
Source: Works, including the whole contents of Bp. Hurd's edition: withletters and other pieces not found in any previous collection; and Macaulay's essay on his life and works
“I have often thought it was very arrogant to suppose you could make a film for anybody but yourself.”
“I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs in the world, considering us as a civilized and a Christian country, that we deny the advantages of learning to women.”
Source: The works of Daniel De Foe [ed.] by W. Hazlitt
“I have often thought that however learned you may talk about it, one knows nothing but what he learns from his own experience.
[Ger., Da dacht ich oft: schwatzt noch so hoch gelehrt,
Man weiss doch nichts, als was man selbst erfahrt.]”
“I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system.”
Source: The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature
“I have often thought that if heaven had given me choice of my position and calling, it should have been on a rich spot of earth, well watered, and near a good market for the productions of the garden. No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden. Such a variety of subjects, some one always coming to perfection, the failure of one thing repaired by the success of another, and instead of one harvest a continued one through the year.”
Source: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, contin
“I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the term - meaning that the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much time and effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching - there would be a vast improvement in total output. The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster.”
“I have often thought that less is expected of the president of a great corporation than of an American wife.”
Source: Book of common sense etiquette
“I have often thought that my work with wildlife taught me the meaning of patience, and my work with the big trees taught me the meaning of humility, and my work with the ice has taught me the meaning of mortality.”
“I have often thought that nothing would do more extensive good at small expense than the establishment of a small circulating library in every county, to consist of a few well-chosen books, to be lent to the people of the country under regulations as would secure their safe return in due time.”
Source: Jefferson: Writings
“I have often thought that the aim of port is to give you a good and durable hangover, so that during the next day you should be reminded of the splendid occasion the night before.”
“I have often thought that the best Christians are found in the worst of times.”
Source: Grace Abounding with Other Spiritual Autobiographies
“I have often thought that the difference between a cult and a religion is an IRS ruling.”
“I have often thought that the nature of women was interior to that of men in general, but superior in particular.”
“I have often thought that there has rarely passed a life of which a judicious and faithful narrative would not be useful; for not only every man has, in the mighty mass of the world, great numbers in the same condition with himself, to whom his mistakes and miscarriages, escapes and expedients, would be of immediate and apparent use; but there is such a uniformity in the state of man, considered apart from adventitious and separable decorations and disguises, that there is scarce any possibility of good or ill but is common to human kind.”
Source: The Life and Writings of Samuel Johnson...
“I have often thought that unselfishness combined in one word more of the teachings of the Bible than any other in the language.”
“I have often thought that Walter Mitty had it in him to be more than a hen-pecked loser. Instead of living it up as a flamboyant daredevil in his dreams, he could have chosen to be a responsible man in real life, going about his work with dignity, and people may just have treated him with respect. Did his failures in life lead him to seek solace in daydreams or did his wandering mind stand in the way of his potential success? One must have triggered the other, and then it would have been both working together. An empty life drives you to fantasies of fulfilment, which then form a deadly, vicious circle which can turn you into a cartoon, as it did poor Mitty. Or lead you to ruin like Madame Bovary.”
Source: The Reengineers
“I have often thought that when I do die it will be of sheer boredom.”
Source: And Yet...: Essays
“I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had.”
“I have often thought the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it comes upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: This is the real me!.”
“I have often thought upon death, and I find it the least of all evils.”
Source: The works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England, in five volumes
“I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children, and what an inhuman world without the aged.”
Source: Samuel Taylor Coleridge - The Major Works
“I have often thought with wonder of the great goodness of God; and my soul has rejoiced in the contemplation of His great magnificence and mercy. May He be blessed for ever! For I see clearly that He has not omitted to reward me, even in this life, for every one of my good desires.”
Source: The Life of St. Teresa of Avila
“I have often thought, says Sir Roger, it happens very well that Christmas should fall out in the middle of Winter.”
“I have often told my students that perhaps the “lucky” ones in life are those who have been forced to face things in their lives that we all hope we will never have to face – things such as losing a job, the death of a loved one, divorce, bankruptcy, illness. Once you have handled any of those things, you emerge a much stronger person… They have discovered the security is not having things; it’s handling things.”
Source: Feel the Fear 20th (twentieth) edition Text Only
“I have often told you that I am that little fish who swims about under a shark and, I believe, lives indelicately on its offal. Anyway, that is the way I am. Life moves over me in a vast black shadow and I swallow whatever it drops with relish, having learned in a very hard school that one cannot be both a parasite and enjoy self-nourishment without moving in worlds too fantastic for even my disordered imagination to people with meaning.”
“I have often tried to imagine how I might have acted differently. Always I end up in the same place.”
Source: The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality
“I have often tried to tell the story of a place through people there.”
“I have often urged my young friends, when faced with an adversary, to "play polo" with him; i.e., not to go at him bald-headed but to ride side by side with him and gradually edge him off your track. Never lose your temper with him. If you are in the right there is no need to, if you are in the wrong you can't afford to.”
Source: Playing the Game: A Baden-Powell Compendium
“I have often walked down this street before but the pavement never held my star before... all at once I'm three stories high, knowing I'm on the street where it lives.”
“I have often wanted to drown my troubles, but I can't get my wife to go swimming.”
“I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty... but I am too busy thinking about myself.”
“I have often wished in the past few years that my mom were here to help me as I raised my own teenage son. As a girl, with my own mom, I thought I knew it all; now I know better. Somewhere, I know my mom is smiling.”
“I have often wished in vain,' said she, 'for another's judgment to appeal to when I could scarcely trust the direction of my own eye and head, they having been so long occupied with the contemplation of a single object as to become almost incapable of forming a proper idea respecting it.'
'That,' replied I, 'is only one of many evils to which a solitary life exposes us.”
Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
“I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate.”
Source: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
“I have often witnessed this at hospital billing counters, where salaried or reasonably well to do people typically have a health insurance to take care of their bills, while a common man loses out. In such a pesky situation, these commoners are compelled to either take loans or sell their personal assets to be able to afford a reasonable medical treatment. Lack of home insurance has always been another concern. People lose out on their entire life’s savings when their homes get whisked away due to calamities.”
“I have often wondered and even laughed at those who fancied that everything had been so consummately and absolutely investigated by an Aristotle or a Galen or some other mighty name, that nothing could by any possibility be added to their knowledge.”
“I have often wondered at the extreme fecundity of the press, and how it comes to pass that so many heads on which nature seemed to have inflicted the curse of barrenness should teem with voluminous productions.”
“I have often wondered before, and now particularly I wonder: What, after all, is the highest price one should pay for life? How much should one pay, how much is too much? As they teach in schools nowadays: "The dearest thing a man has is life, he lives but once." That means cling to life at any cost. The camps helped many of us to reach the conclusion that betrayal, the ruin of good and helpless people, is too high a price. Life isn't worth it. But as for the fawning, the flattery, the lies, people in the camp differed. Some said these were an acceptable price, and perhaps they were right.
But what about this price - to save one's life at the cost of surrendering everything that gives it color, flavor, and sparkle? To get a life of digestion, breathing, muscular and mental activity, and nothing more? To become a walking husk of a man - isn't that an exuberant price? It would be a mockery. Should I pay it? (chapter 22)”
Source: Cancer Ward
“I have often wondered how anyone who does not read, by which I mean daily, having some book going all the time, can make it through life. Indeed if I were required to make a sharp division in the very nature of people, I would be tempted to make it there: readers and nonreaders of books... It is astonishing how the presence or absence of this habit so consistently characterizes an individual in other respects; it is as though it were a kind of barometer of temperament, of personality, even of character. Aside from that, for me it constituted something like sanity insurance.”
Source: The Last Ship: A Novel
“I have often wondered how empathetic women have the courage to repeatedly expose themselves to trauma—entering animal labs, factory farms, and slaughterhouses to witness and record insidious treatment of nonhuman animals—while maintaining a semblance of emotional and psychological equilibrium. Authors in this anthology provide an answer: empathic people face misery head-on, not only to bring about much-needed change but as a means of coping. In a world where unconscionable violence and pervasive injustices are the norm, they have come to see activism as the lesser of two miseries. These women have found that their only hope for peace of mind is to walk straight into that pervasive misery and work for change”
Source: Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice
“I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.”
Source: Meditations
“I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than on the opinions of others.”
Source: Stoic Six Pack: Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Golden Sayings, Fragments and Discourses of Epictetus, Letters from a Stoic and The Enchiridion
“I have often wondered how they manage to get return envelopes which miss, by one-quarter of an inch, fitting the blank you are supposed to return. They say, "Please fill out and return the enclosed envelope," and the enclosed envelope is always one-quarter of an inch too small.”
“I have often wondered how this circumpolar stars between the Drago and the Lion came to be known as the Great Bear. The ancient Egyptians called them the Unwearied Ones or the Rowers of the Ships of Ra. I prefer the Plough or the Wain or even the Big Dipper. The name of the Septriones, the proud walkers, grips the imagination, but the Great Bear is a plain misnomer.”
Source: Journey Through Europe