I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“I understood more what Nancy Reagan and Ronald Reagan, what they were coming from. Kind of the horrors of their childhoods that they were coming from. When you experience such pain early on, some people really interface with that pain and try and unpack it, and some people just take it and squelch it down and try and be as successful as they can. And, you know, encourage everybody, "Don't dwell on the negative! Come on, buck up!"”
“I understood my personal responsibility in putting Christ on the cross and the implications of how the Gospel impacts every area of life. It informs my identity as a human, as an artist, and as a citizen of this country.”
“I understood now that you could be as soft as the silken draperies, shine like the copper candle holders, and have something tick quietly inside you and never miss a beat, even if you lived in a rude sod hut in the wilderness.”
Source: The Fifth of March: A Story of the Boston Massacre
“I understood now what it meant to sacrifice everything, to give your life to protect not only the ones you loved, but their world and what they cared for, as well.”
Source: Night of the Dragon
“I understood now why I was called a perversion. It was unnatural for a woman to have this kind of ambition, and yet I existed. My existence was my birthright, and it would be my justification.”
Source: The Night Ends with Fire
“I understood now. This voice, the one that had been trying to get my attention all this time, calling out to me, begging me to hear it - it wasn't Will's. It was mine.”
“I understood once I held a baby in my arms, why some people have the need to keep having them.”
“I understood public relations and always maintained a high profile.”
“I understood so much more about who he was, about the walls he had built and the reasons he’d built them. This was a pivotal moment because I finally understood the depth of Atticus’s emotional scars and now realized why the bond that had formed between us was so strong. It had been forged in the crucible of shared pain.”
Source: Night Shift
“I understood somehow my mother's frustration. And that it was no good not only for her, but for her children or her husband, that she didn't have a real use of her ability.”
“I understood something that Brett wouldn't admit - that we were talking about family. And family is the ultimate trap, it's something you carry with you for life; the people you come from and the marks they leave on you.”
Source: The Haunting of Velkwood
“I understood something then. My sister might be twice the goddess I was, but I was twice the witch. Her crumbling trash could not help me.”
Source: Circe
“I understood that 'The Yellow Birds' would be a peculiar representation of the experience of being at war. I intended it to be so.”
“I understood that all the material of a literary work was in my past life, I understood that I had acquired it in the midst of frivolous amusements, in idleness, in tenderness and in pain, stored up by me without my divining its destination or even its survival, as the seed has in reserve all the ingredients which will nourish the plant.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Marcel Proust (Illustrated)
“I understood that as much as I had resisted the outside, as much as I had constricted my life, as much as I had closed and narrowed the channels into me, there were still many takers for the quiet heart.”
“I understood that at the core, our essence is made of pure love. We are pure love-every single one of us. How can we not be, if we come from the Whole and return to it? I knew that realizing this meant never being afraid of who we are. Therefore, being love and being our true self is one and the same thing!”
“I understood that centuries of chains and lashes will not kill the spirit of man nor the sense of truth within him.”
Source: Anthem
“I understood that every flower created by Him is beautiful, that the brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not lessen the perfume of the violet or the sweet simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all the lowly flowers wished to be roses, nature would no longer be enamelled with lovely hues. And so it is in the world of souls, Our lord's living garden.”
Source: The Story of the Soul
“I understood that I might fail, but I wouldn't let it happen because I changed my compass along the way.”
Source: The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change
“I understood that I was inventing myself, and that I was doing this more in the way of a painter than in the way of a scientist. I could not count on precision or calculation; I could only count on intuition.”
Source: Lucy: A Novel
“I understood that I was not the best director in the world nor the worst director in the world. I realized that there is a very mysterious element to what works and what doesn't work in the theater. And it's good to know that from the beginning.”
“I understood that I was suffering because I couldn't make anyone else around me feel better.”
Source: The Elegance of the Hedgehog
“I understood that if ever one wanted to live with someone you cooked for them and they came running. But then it is my idea of hell these days, living with someone. The idea of sharing your life with someone is just utterly ghastly. I know why people do it, but it's never a good idea.”
Source: Real Cooking
“I understood that if I wanted to work, the saxophone was the main instrument. The clarinet was what we call a double.”
“I understood that in this small space of time we had mutually surrendered our loneliness and replaced it with trust.”
Source: Just Kids
“I understood that life is lived most fully in the imagination - that, ironically, imagination is the key to reality.”
“I understood that menstruation - the indication that you're a real woman - stopped if you grew weak from illness”
“I understood that my family was rich in love but would probably never own the land my father, John, dreamed of owning. My mother, Willie Ella Mays Clarke, was a washerwoman for poor white folks in the area of Columbus, Georgia where the writer Carson McCullers once lived.”
“I understood that our entire universe is contained in the mind and the spirit. We may choose not to find access to it, we may even deny its existence, but it is indeed there inside us, and there are chemicals that can analyze its availability.”
“I understood that Our Father's energy flows through everything like air through a whistle. God is like a breath that passes through people, plants, animals and all kinds of things to animate them. And his breath creates tension, harmonies and moans... It's like an expiration. (…) This energy of Our Father, which gives life and sustains the whole physical world, created the music I was perceiving. My music, which wasn't really mine...”
Source: Being Pyotr Ilyich: Tchaikovsky’s Inner Life, Revealed by Himself 130 Years Later
“I understood that pain was real and sometimes things didn't last. Sometimes you just had to enjoy it while it lasts and cherish it when it's gone.”
Source: While It Lasts
“I understood that the man I was calling for could never ever come back. Because I understood that the man that I was calling for was dead.”
“I understood that the most beautiful, dangerous, adventurous and gratifying journeys of all is the one inside yourself, whether you're sitting in the living room or under a canopy here in Budelli. That's why staying at home and doing nothing can be really hard for many.”
“I understood that the most terrible thing in life is complete hopelessness... To cross out all the 'maybes' and give up the fight when you still have strength for it is the most terrible form of suicide. It's almost unbearable to watch it happening in others. Unjustified hope - salvation for the weak in spirit and intellect - irritates me. But the loss of hope is the paralysis, even the death, of the soul. Sveta, let us hope, while we still have strength to hope.”
Source: Just Send Me Word: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag
“I understood that the stories we believe have power over us. They work into our bodies and minds and change us from inside out. What if one day these stories become something stronger, more real, than fairy tales?”
“I understood that the teacher was not eing dismissive, that the problem would be addressed. But, without extra upset. A noncombative response, the Buddha taught, assures that pain does not become suffering. And, unclouded by the tension of struggle, the mind is able to assess clearly and respond wisely.”
“I understood that the will could not be improved before the mind had been enlightened.”
“I understood that there was a right and a wrong way to treat human beings, even those you thought of as your enemies. My American captors held no such values.”
Source: Don't Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantanamo
“I understood that there was no escaping the memories, that I was surround by them. (p.30)”
“I understood that there would be some backlash, and that scared me, honestly. But deep down, I felt like it was the right thing to do. And if I was to run away from what I felt in my soul was the right thing to do, that would make me a coward. I can’t live with that. God wouldn’t be able to put me where I am today, and as far as I’ve come in life, if I was a coward.”
“I understood that these trade agreements were going to destroy the middle class of this country. I led the fight against us. That is one of the major differences that we have.”
“I understood that this sister of mine was going to live somewhere else, away from us...This information did not make me thing of the baby as less mine. She was my sister, like my brother was my brother and my mother was my mother. The adoptive parents' claim on my developing sister did not negate mine, she was not a kingdom or a territory or a thing with a deed; she was a person. This baby girl would be both my sister and these other people's daughter, and my mom's daughter. there would be moments when one claim took focus-- as right now this baby girl was more Ours than Theirs, and one day she would be more Theirs than Ours, but none of those connections could completely erase the others. It would be easier, perhaps, if they could, if after she was gone we could forget this baby ever belonged to us. But that's not how people work.”
Source: Bastards: A Memoir
“I understood that to be a woman in the world was to spend so much time trying to act the right way. Be loud enough, but not too loud. Stand up for yourself, but pleasantly. Beauty was everything, but you shouldn’t rely on your looks. Always, always I was trying to get it right, to find the balance, but here around this circle, naked but not sexualized, together we could flail and scream and open ourselves raw without worrying about anything else at
all.”
Source: A Special Place for Women
“I understood that Valek’s loyalty to the Commander was without question. His blue eyes held a fierce determination and I knew in my soul that Valek would take his own life after he had taken mine.”
Source: Poison Study
“I understood that you would take the Human Race in the concrete, have exploded the absurd notion of Pope's Essay on Man, [Erasmus] Darwin, and all the countless Believers-even (strange to say) among Xtians-of Man's having progressed from an Ouran Outang state-so contrary to all History, to all Religion, nay, to all Possibility-to have affirmed a Fall in some sense.”
Source: Lectures 1818-1819 on the history of philosophy
“I understood the importance in principle of public key cryptography but it's all moved much faster than I expected. I did not expect it to be a mainstay of advanced communications technology”
“I understood the life around me better, not from love, which everybody acknowledges to be a great teacher, but from estrangement, to which nobody has attributed the power of reinforcing insight”
“I understood the vagaries of nature and the vicissitudes of young girls' hearts. The beats of my spirit I put on hold deepened my awareness of Life. But only the madness in me made me enjoy every second of being alive.”
“I understood the word 'swoon'. It felt that way, like 'sweep' and 'moon' and 'woo', all those words smashed together in one word that stood for that feeling, right then.”
Source: What I Saw and How I Lied
“I understood the words of the Imitation: "Be not solicitous for the shadow of a great name.”
Source: Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux