I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.”
Source: The Gettysburg addresses: the story of two orations
“I should be glad of loneliness And hours that go on broken wings,A thirsty body, a tired heart And the unchanging ache of things,If I could make a single song As lovely and as full of light,As hushed and brief as a falling star On a winter night.”
Source: Flame and Shadow
“I should be grateful for the tough times because Allah chose me, thought I was good enough to go through it.”
“I should be happy, but instead I feel nothing. I feel a lot of nothing these days. I've cried a few times, but mostly I'm empty, as if whatever makes me feel and hurt and laugh and love has been surgically removed, leaving me hollowed out like a shell.”
Source: All the Bright Places
“I should be here with you,' Kieran stepped closer to Casteel. 'My duty is to defend your life with mine. That is what I'm bonded to do, the oath I took. How can I do that running away from the battle?' His voice lowered. 'Don't do this, Cas.'
...
'You took an oath to protect me, and you will,' Casteel said. 'You're not running away from the battle. You will be keeping safe what is most important to me, and that is Poppy.'
I jolted. 'Wait. What?'
'You will leave with them. It will be hard,' he said, still holding Kieran's gaze. 'There will be no breaks, and you will need to listen to everything Kieran tells you, especially when it's night in the mountains, but-'
'I'm not leaving,' I cut him off.
'You can't be here,' Casteel replied. 'Not when they come. This is not up for discussion.'
I shot to my feet. 'Let me make one thing clear. I don't know if you realise this or not, Casteel, but I'm not duty-bound to obey a single thing you say.'
Casteel stiffened.
'And maybe you should actually look at me when you try to order me to do things,' I tacked on.
He turned to me, his head cocked. 'I'm looking at you now.'
'But are you listening?'
'Oh, man,' Delano murmured under his breath as the rest of the room went dead silent. 'Someone is getting stabbed again.'
Someone, I think it was Jasper, snorted.
'Oh, I'm listening,' Casteel replied. 'Maybe you should try that. Along with this thing called common sense.'
'Definitely getting stabbed,' Kieran confirmed.”
Source: A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire
“I should be inclined, therefore, as I have hinted before, to consider the world and this life as the mighty process of God, not for the trial, but for the creation and formation of mind, a process necessary to awaken inert, chaotic matter into spirit, to sublimate the dust of the earth into soul, to elicit an ethereal spark from the clod of clay. And in this view of the subject, the various impressions and excitements which man receives through life may be considered as the forming hand of his Creator, acting by general laws, and awakening his sluggish existence, by the animating touches of the Divinity, into a capacity of superior enjoyment. The original sin of man is the torpor and corruption of the chaotic matter in which he may be said to be born.”
“I should be judged as a captain who went from Spain to the Indies to conquer a people numerous and warlike, whose manners and religion are very different from ours, who live in sierras and mountains, without fixed settlements, and where by divine will I have placed under the sovereignty of the King and Queen our Lords, an Other World, whereby Spain, which was reckoned poor, is become the richest of countries. Columbus is coming from the Indies as a prisoner to Cadiz.”
“I should be making plans more for the next world than for this one.”
“I should be more surprised. I should be reeling. But isn't this exactly how I've always felt? That I'm not quite made the same? That I'm some kind of alien, trying to learn how to be a human from scratch every day? That I constantly need to translate the world around me to myself, and then myself back to the world again, like speaking two completely different languages simultaneously?
Wow. No wonder I'm always so bloody exhausted.”
Source: Cassandra in Reverse
“I should be pleased, I suppose, that Hitler has carried out a revolution on our lines. But they are Germans. So they will end by ruining our idea.”
Source: Benito Mussolini: a biography
“I should be proud to have my memory graced, but only if the monument be placed... here, where I endured three hundred hours in line before the implacable iron bars.”
“I should be so lucky to be a misfit. I aspire to be a misfit.”
“I should be sorry if I only entertained them. I wish to make them better.”
Source: Messiah; a Sacred Oratorio ... Arranged for the Organ Or Pianoforte, with Vocal Score, by G. J. Elvey
“I should be sorry to think it was the publishers themselves they got up this entire little flutter to enable them to unload a book that was taking too much room in their cellars, but you can never tell what a publisher will do. I have been one myself.”
Source: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
“I should be suspicious of what I want.”
“I should be the face of Samuel Smith Beer. That'd be great.”
“I should be the reigning champion. I punch a guy 300 times, he punches me a couple and they call him the champion? In what parallel universe does that make you the winner? I am the champion. I’ve been the champion. Anderson’s ribs have the exact same problem that his hands and his feet have, they’re attached to a cowardly person.”
“I should be trying to change the way people think, not just blindly following the shitty system that exists.”
Source: Like Real People Do
“I SHOULD BE UPSET THAT A BURGLAR STOLE ALL
MY LAMPS, BUT I’M DELIGHTED!”
Source: The Fearless Moral Inventory of Elsie Finch
“I should be very much obliged if you would slip your revolver into your pocket. An Eley's No. 2 is an excellent argument with gentlemen who can twist steel pokers into knots. That and a tooth-brush are, I think, all that we need.”
Source: The Complete Sherlock Holmes: All 56 Stories & 4 Novels
“I should be very sorry to see the United States holding anyone in confinement on account of any opinion that that person might hold. It is a fundamental tenet of our institutions that people have a right to believe what they want to believe and hold such opinions as they want to hold without having to answer to anyone for their private opinion.”
Source: TALKATIVE PRESIDENT OFF
“I should be very willing to redress men wrongs, and rather check than punish crimes, had not Cervantes, in that all too true tale of Quixote, shown how all such efforts fail.”
Source: DON JUAN
“I should be writing a poem every morning but I'm not.”
“I should become happier at what I do and leave others happier than before they’d met me.”
“I should bring you home,' he murmured, but he didn't move to drag me to my feet. Instead, I felt a slight thud in the earth, and the spring rain and new grass scent of him cloyed in my nose as he lay beside me. I tingled with pleasure as he stroked my hair.
This was such a lovely dream. I'd never slept so wonderfully before. So warm, nestled beside him. Calm. Faintly, echoing into my world of slumber, he spoke again, his breath caressing my eye. 'You're exactly as I dreamed you'd be too.' Darkness swallowed everything.”
Source: A Court of Thorns and Roses
“I should call myself four market Norton. I'm great in Boston and Cleveland. I do good in Phillie, New Jersey.”
“I should care about the education a child in Philadelphia, or Pittsburgh, or Erie, or Scranton received because if they didn't get a good education my life is diminished and all of our lives are enhanced if they get that good education. It is a shared enterprise and we need to recognize that.”
“I should change my job title to Retail Psychologist and get some impressive letter after my name.”
Source: Queen of the Night
“I should choose to be happy. You can choose; you can just throw a switch since, your whole life, it?s just in your brain anyway. It?s just your perception of it.”
“I should clarify that anyone that goes onstage and makes strangers laugh is insane. So I am insane.”
“I should come with a consumer warning, like the labels that say "Handle with care" or "May be hazardous to your health." I am unfit for human consumption. I struggle to articulate how awful and isolating this feels, but I can't find the words.”
“I should consent to breed under pressure, if I were convinced in any way of the reasonableness of reproducing the species. But my nerves and the nerves of any woman I could live with three months, would produce only a victim... lacking in impulse, a mere bundle of discriminations. If I were wealthy I might subsidize a stud of young peasants, or a tribal group in Tahiti.”
Source: Pavannes and Divagations
“I should consider that I know nothing about physics if I were able to explain only how things might be, and were unable to demonstrate that they could not be otherwise.”
“I should curl up in a ball and cry. Instead i think about everything in the whole entire world that makes me angry - There is a lot, oh, there is a lot - and I start singing Justin Bieber at the top of my lungs.”
“I should dearly love that the world should be ever so little better for my presence. Even on this small stage we have our two sides, and something might be done by throwing all one's weight on the scale of breadth, tolerance, charity, temperance, peace, and kindliness to man and beast. We can't all strike very big blows, and even the little ones count for something.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated)
“I should deem a man-of-war incomplete without a body of Marines...imbued with that esprit that has so long characterized the "Old Corps."”
“I should definitely sleep in another room.”
“No,” she stated firmly. Before she could change her mind, she crossed to the bed, slipped beneath the covers, then looked at him expectantly.
“Where is Jax?” he asked, unmoving.
“Downstairs. He liked to sit on the ottoman at night and watch out the back window for raccoons and opossums. Why?”
“He’s the only chaperone available to us.”
Source: Awaken the Darkness
“I should describe mine own nature as tripartite, my interests consisting of three parallel and dissociated groups - (a) Love of the strange and fantastic. (b) Love of the abstract truth and of scientific logick. (c) Love of the ancient and the permanent. Sundry combinations of these three strains will probably account for all my odd tastes and eccentricities.”
“I should do something about the cigarettes; I quite accept that it's bad for your health, but you know a moderate tipple is positively beneficial and, at certain times, absolutely essential.”
“I should do the things that make me feel cool and smart. As I get older, I'm realizing more and more that it doesn't really matter if I'm good at it, it just matters that I try. My own effort, my own willingness, are becoming what's appealing to me.”
“I should dread to disfigure the beautiful ideal of the memories of illustrious persons with incongruous features, and to sully the imaginative purity of classical works with gross and trivial recollections.”
Source: A letter to a friend of Robert Burns occasioned by an intended republication of the account of the life of Burns, by dr. Currie [in The works of Robert Burns].
“I should emphasize this, to keep well-meaning but misguided multiculturalists at bay: the theoretical entities in which these tribal people frankly believe — the gods and other spirits — don't exist. These people are mistaken, and you know it as well as I do. It is possible for highly intelligent people to have a very useful but mistaken theory, and we don't have to pretend otherwise in order to show respect for these people and their ways.”
Source: Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
“I should esteem it the extreme of imprudence to prolong the precarious state of our national affairs, and to expose the Union to the jeopardy of successive experiments, in the chimerical pursuit of a perfect plan. I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect man. The result of the deliberations of all collective bodies must necessarily be a compound, as well of the errors and prejudices, as of the good sense and wisdom, of the individuals of whom they are composed.”
Source: The federalist papers
“I should estimate that in my experience most troubles and most possibilities for improvement add up to the proportions something like this: 94% belongs to the system responsibility of management 6% special”
“I should explain how difficult it is to keep trying to do better when there are so many people who just refuse to understand how hard it is. I should explain that I barely slept last night because I was so anxious about dinner and, even though I actually did quite well, I still felt like everyone was watching me, waiting for me to fuck up and ruin the day.”
Source: This Winter
“I should explain — in view of my last letter, you may find it slightly surprising — that Daphne and I are now bosom friends. That is to say, she seems to think we are; and I do not feel that I know her well enough to dispute it.”
Source: The Sibyl in Her Grave
“I should explain that Germanicus's way was always to refuse to think evil of any person until positive proof of such evil should be forced on him and, on the contrary, to credit everyone with the highest motives. This extreme simplicity was generally of service to him. Most people with whom he came in contact were flattered by his high estimate of his moral character and tended in their dealings with him to live up to it. If he were ever to find himself at the mercy of a downright wicked character, this generosity of heart would of course be his undoing; but on the other hand if any man had any good in him Germanicus always seemed to being it out.”
Source: I, Claudius
“I should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.”
Source: The Picture Of Dorian Gray
“I should favour anything that would increase the present enormous authority of women and their creative action in their own homes. The average woman...is a despot; the average man is a serf.”
“I should feel energized and powerful, invulnerable and potent, but all I feel is lost.”
Source: The Girl Who Would Be King