I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“I realized that in order to touch the woman behind the grandmother I knew, the one who never spoke in a direct way about her past, I had to bring the pain of the past into the landscape of the present.”
Source: Black Dog of Fate: An American Son Uncovers His Armenian Past
“I realized that in refusing to take a vow man was drawn into temptation, and that to be bound by a vow was like a passage from libertinism to a real monogamous marriage. 'I believe in effort, I do not want to bind myself with vows' is the mentality of weakness and betrays a subtle desire for the thing to be avoided. Or where can be the difficulty in making a final decision? I vow to flee from the serpent which I know will bite me, I do not simply make an effort to flee from him. I know that mere effort may mean certain death. Mere effort means ignorance of the certain fact that the serpent is bound to kill me. The fact, therefore, that I could rest content with an effort only means that I have not yet clearly realized the necessity of definite action. 'But supposing my views are changed in the future, how can I bind myself by a vow?' Such a doubt often deters us. But that doubt also betrays a lack of clear perception that a particular thing must be renounced. That is why Nishkulanand has sung:
'Renunciaton without aversion is not lasting.'
Where therefore the desire is gone, a vow of renunciation is the natural and inevitable fruit.”
“I realized that in those nine seasons I started out at about 225 pounds and I felt, you know, full figured fabulous woman but in those seasons I gained 75 pounds up to over 300 pounds all in front of the nation.”
“I realized that influence was inextricably linked to impact — the more influence you had, the more impact you could create. . . . The ability to make things go viral felt like the closest that we could get to having a human superpower.”
“I realized that it doesn’t have to be your bloodline to show you, love—love is love—and it comes naturally, regardless of the role they play in your life.”
Source: Dying on The Inside and Suffocating on The Outside
“I realized that it is these two things that staying with regrets offers: It can become the seed of compassion and empathy so that you can stand in the shoes of other people because you'er feeling exactly what they feel. And it spurs you on to help people in the future rather than hurt them.”
Source: Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better
“I realized that it is these two things that staying with regrets offers: It can become the seed of compassion and empathy so that you can stand in the shoes of other people because you're feeling exactly what they feel. And it spurs you on to help people in the future rather than hurt them.”
Source: Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better
“I realized that it was great to have a job, but it didn't have anything remotely to do with what I was striving for, so why was I doing it?”
“I realized that it was not Ko-san, now safely ditched for ever, but Ko-san's mother who stood in need of pity and consideration. She must still live on in this hard unpitying world, but he, once he had jumped [in battle], had jumped beyond such things. The case could well have been different, had he never jumped; but he did jump; and that, as they say, is that. Whether this world's weather turns out fine or cloudy no more worries him; but it matters to his mother. It rains, so she sits alone indoors thinking about Ko-san. And now it's fine, so she potters out and meets a friend of Ko-san's. She hangs out the national flag to welcome the returned soliders, but her joy is made querulous with wishing that Ko-san were alive. At the public bath-house, some young girl of marriageable age helps her to carry a bucket of hot water: but her pleasure from that kindness is soured as she thinks if only I had a daughter-in-law like this girl. To live under such conditions is to live in agonies. Had she lost one out of many children, there would be consolation and comfort in the mere fact of the survivors. But when loss halves a family of just one parent and one child, the damage is as irreparable as when a gourd is broken clean across its middle. There's nothing left to hang on to. Like the sergeant's mother, she too had waited for her son's return, counting on shriveled fingers the passing of the days and nights before that special day when she would be able once more to hang on him. But Ko-san with the flag jumped resolutely down into the ditch and still has not climbed back.”
Source: Ten Nights of Dream, Hearing Things, The Heredity of Taste
“I realized that it was not that I didn’t want to go on without him. I did. It was just that I didn’t know why I wanted to go on”
Source: Nothing Was the Same
“I realized that it's all really one, that John Lennon was correct. We utilize the music to bring down the walls of Berlin, to bring up the force of compassion and forgiveness and kindness between Palestines, Hebrews. Bring down the walls here in San Diego, Tijuana, Cuba.”
“I realized that it's insane to oppose it. When I argue with reality, I lose-but only 100% of the time. How do I know that the wind should blow? It's blowing!”
“I realized that it's my own fault that people take advantage of me. I should be around people who cherish my talents, my health, my time. I'm not a pawn for anyone's future business. I'm an artist. I deserve better than to be loyal to people who only believe in me because I make money.”
“I realized that Joyce had gone as far as one could in the direction of knowing more, in control of one's material. He was always adding to it; you only have to look at his proofs to see that. I realised that my own way was impoverishment, in lack of knowledge and in taking away, subtracting rather than adding. When I first met Joyce, I didn't intend to be a writer. That only came later when I found out that I was no good at all at teaching. When I found I simply couldn't teach. But I do remember speaking about Joyce's heroic achievement. I had a great admiration for him. That's what it was: epic, heroic, what he achieved. I realized that I couldn't go down that same road.”
“I realized that Judaism required me to give up something that meant too much to me...Bacon cheeseburgers.”
“I realized that kids everywhere go for the same stuff; and seeing as we'd done it in England, there's no reason why we couldn't do it in America too.”
“I realized that life is so short: Why waste one minute of it worrying what other people think or say about you, or what score you got on some test? Why not believe what you want to believe, and do what you love?”
“I realized that making music can help me to convey my feelings, and if it can relieve me, maybe it can help someone else?”
“I realized that many men are happy to play a supporting role to another man, but they are much less happy to play a supporting role to a woman. People are saying we need more females in our industry and we need more female-driven stories, but that takes the men of bankable star quality to come forward and play supporting roles in those films, because ultimately that's what the women have always done. We've always lent our name value to male-centric stories, and now we're going to have to ask the men to swallow their pride, because it seems that it's about pride.”
“I realized that marriage is not only about exchanging vows, but it is about two people who equally make a continuous effort to honour their vows.”
“I realized that more and more I was saying, 'It seems to me that we have come to the time war ought to be given up. It no longer makes sense to kill 20 million or 40 million people because of a dispute between two nations who are running things, or decisions made by the people who really are running things. It no longer makes sense. Nobody wins. Nobody benefits from destructive war of this sort and there is all of this human suffering.' And Einstein was saying the same thing of course. So that is when we decided — my wife and I — that first, I was pretty effective as a speaker. Second, I better start boning up, studying these other fields so that nobody could stand up and say, 'Well, the authorities say such and such '.”
“I realized that most people waste their lives earning a living, and I wanted to live. I love painting, so I keep painting. That's how I became an artist.”
“I realized that most thoughts are impersonal happenings, like self-assembling machines. Unless we train ourselves, the thoughts passing through our mind have little involvement with our will. It is strange to realize that even our own thoughts pass by like scenery out the window of a bus, a bus we took by accident while trying to get somewhere else. Most of the time, thinking is an autonomous process, something that happens outside of our control. This perception of machine-like quality of the self is something many people discover, then try to overcome, through meditation.”
Source: Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism
“I realized that most women in their teens and twenties hadn’t yet experienced one or more of the great radicalizing events of a woman’s life: marrying and discovering it isn’t yet an equal (or even nonviolent) institution; getting into the paid labor force and experiencing its limits, from the corporate “glass ceiling” to the “sticky floor” of the pink-collar ghetto; having children and finding out who takes care of them and who doesn’t; and, finally, aging, still the most impoverishing and disempowering event for women of every race and so the most radicalizing.”
Source: Doing Sixty & Seventy
“I realized that my battle to survive this war would have to be fought inside of me.”
“I realized that my bliss and my heartbreak both point in the same direction. I follow my joy and my heartbreak simultaneously because they’re two sides of the same coin.”
“I realized that my book readings were boring me. I was going to go up there and read a passage and sleepwalk through the whole event and I needed to make it more interesting. I wanted to be running and jumping and do something so that the event would be so exciting. I had to trick myself into having fun every time.”
“I realized that my camera work could help me in a lot of ways to put the audience in the driver's seat, so to speak, to get them in there with the action, and to get them as close and be as intimate with what was going on on-screen as possible.”
“I realized that my circumstances, while causing me despair and heartbreak, also held great possibility, if only I could see it. I knew that I was learning one of the most important lessons of my life: that instead of waiting for the perfect opportunity, I should work toward a realization that every opportunity is perfect. Each moment is perfect and heaven-sent, in that each moment holds the seeds for growth. Difficulty creates the opportunity for self-reflection and compassion.”
“I realized that my family was more important to me than downtown night life.”
“I realized that my friends in the ashram needed to be celibate because, for them, sexuality was a very tacky issue.”
“I realized that my identity as a novelist was private. Only I knew how much of a novelist I was!”
“I realized that my jaws were locked, teeth clenched, my eyes wide, and from the light-headedness, I imagined I must look frightfully pale. And I was holding my breath, resisting life so I could resist change from happening.
I had so much fear in me.
Fear that in this change my home would disappear. I had grown up under the memory of my brother's stories of home, and in the twelve years that had passed without him, I realized that I had been waiting, that I had never truly left Heuksan Island. The home Brother had told me about, I had dreamed of arriving there one day. A home where there was no more sorrow or tears, no more deaths or farewells.
A place of togetherness.
But now this place would change into a haunted mansion full of strangers and ghosts. How could I embrace them? What did family mean when family had gone away and returned, scarred to the point of being unrecognizable? How could you embrace a stranger with haunted eyes that looked right through you?”
Source: The Silence of Bones
“I realized that my kisses with Dane had become a form of punctuation, the quotations or the hasty dash at the end of a conversation”
Source: The Travis Family Series, Books 1-3: Blue-Eyed Devil, Smooth Taking Stranger and Sugar Daddy
“I realized that my life was to be one of simple, childlike faith, and that my part was to trust, not to do. I was to trust in Him and He would work in me to do His good pleasure. From that time my life was different.”
“I realized that my money would do vastly more good for others than it could for me and decided to make a commitment to donating to the most effective charities I could find. Many people contacted me asking how they could do this as well, and so I set up giving what we can.”
“I realized that my skin was always the best when I had only been cleaning it, I hadn't been moisturizing that much and I hadn't been going to a facialist.”
“I realized that my truest passion was for helping people change through faith in a higher power. That meant, for me, belonging to the church. Using my abilities to bring Christian doctrine to a postmodern world.”
“I realized that night that in the realm of fundamental human forces, the logical gravitation of the mind is no match for the emotional magnetism of the heart. I realized that night that emotion defies reason just as a magnetism defies gravity… that love is stronger than logic.”
Source: Heaven and Hurricanes
“I realized that no one can ever take anything from the Lord for granted, not the prosperity of the Church, not its vast army of missionaries, not its beautiful meeting houses and temples, nor the wealth and comfort he may enjoy. If apathy or complacency or unrighteousness reigns in the heart of a Saint, the gospel will be stripped away and given to another, more responsible steward.”
Source: Feathered Serpent, Part 2
“I realized that once I graduated from college, there might be a period of time where people might typecast me or be more limiting, and I might not be able to play a crazy character. For me, it was important to do that at least in school.”
“I realized that one cannot reveal oneself without mannerism, without some evident trace of one's personality. But all the same one should not go too far in that direction.”
“I realized that one isn’t born with courage. One develops it by doing small courageous things—in the way that if one sets out to pick up a 100-pound bag of rice, one would be advised to start with a five-pound bag, then 10 pounds, then 20 pounds, and so forth, until one builds up enough muscle to lift the 100-pound bag. It’s the same way with courage. You do small courageous things that require some mental and spiritual exertion.”
“I realized that Owen [Suskind] is completely brilliant, because he embraced and memorized all these classic Disney films - these fables that chronicle the hero's journey, and have existed for thousands of years. Owen, in a sense, grew up on a diet of myth and fable, and has become an expert on their themes, which contain a moral guide that connects people.”
“I realized that part of me had been waiting for Wendell to make a miraculous recovery. To rescue us all, as well as himself, just when we needed him most. It would fit the pattern of innumerable stories.
But perhaps Wendell wasn't part of his kingdom's story anymore. Or he was, but merely as a footnote, a trial for his stepmother to overcome as she rose from powerful to unstoppable-- to irrevocably weave herself into the fabric of her world, as the king of Ljosland had.
And if he was a footnote, what did that make me?
I leaned close, breathing in the smell of his hair--- the salt of sweat; smoke from the fire; and the distant smell of green leaves that never left him.
"My answer is yes," I whispered in his ear.”
Source: Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands
“I realized that part of that anger was because I didn't know who I was and where I came from. I didn't know my history.”
“I realized that people don't quite understand what I do when I was the new kid on the block and a lot of Hollywood was offering me fairly cheesy projects.”
“I realized that people had an unreal image of me, that somehow I was a god on Mount Olympus. I decided that if I were going to make use of my role as a Supreme Court Justice, it would be to inspire people to realize that, first, I was just like them and second, if I could do it, so could they.”
“I realized that people make cartoons for a living. It had never dawned on me that you could do this as a career.”
“I realized that performing was what I wanted to do when I did my first professional gig as a dancer with my company Synergy in Canada. I was overwhelmed with how it felt to perform in front of an audience.”