I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“I've wondered why everyone was silent about Chernobyl, why our writers weren't writing much about it -- they write about the war, or the camps, but here they're silent. Why? Do you think it's an accident? If we'd beaten Chernobyl, people would talk about it and write about it more. Or if we'd understood Chernobyl. But we don't know how to capture any meaning from it. We're not capable of it. We can't place it in our human experience or our human time-frame. So what's better, to remember or to forget?”
Source: Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
“I've worked extremely hard to become what I naturally am and what I want to be. My manuscripts/books didn't write, rework, edit or invent themselves and my degree didn't do itself either.”
“I've worked very hard, you know," she confided to him, "and I've planted some kind of-I've been lucky enough, I guess, to plant a star-and then people wanted to either get in the act or else they wanted to rob me emotionally or financially, whatever. And then walk away and it's always lonely”
Source: Judy Garland
“I’ve worn Niki’s pants for two days now. I thought a third day in the same clothes might be pushing it.”
Ian shrugged with indifference. “It might send Derian through the roof, but it doesn’t bother me. Wear what you want to wear.”
Eena wrinkled her nose at him. “Do you really feel that way or are you trying to appear more laissez-faire than Derian?”
“More laissez-faire?”
“Yes. That’s a real word.”
“Two words actually,” he grinned. “Laissez faire et laissez passer, le monde va de lui même!" He coated the words with a heavy French accent. Eena gawked at him.
“Since when do you speak French?”
“I don’t.” Ian chuckled. “But I did do some research in world history the year I followed you around on Earth. Physics was a joke, but history—that I found fascinating.”
Slapping a hand against her chest, Eena exclaimed, “I can’t believe it! Unbeknownst to me, Ian actually studied something in high school other than the library’s collection of sci-fi paperbacks!”
He grimaced at her exaggerated performance before defending his preferred choice of reading material. “Hey, popular literature is a valuable and enlightening form of world history. You would know that if you read a book or two.”
She ignored his reproach and asked with curiosity, “What exactly did you say?”
“In French?”
“Duh, yes.”
“Don’t ‘duh’ me, you could easily have been referring to my remark about enlightening literature. I know the value of a good book is hard for you to comprehend.” He grinned crookedly at her look of offense and then moved into an English translation of his French quote. “Let it do and let it pass, the world goes on by itself.”
“Hmm. And where did that saying come from?”
Ian delivered his answer with a surprisingly straight face. “That is what the French Monarch said when his queen began dressing casually. The French revolution started one week following that famous declaration, right after the queen was beheaded by the rest of the aristocracy in her favorite pair of scroungy jeans.”
“You are such a brazen-tongued liar!”
Source: Eena, The Companionship of the Dragon's Soul
“I’ve written a few stories in my time. But sooner or later you realize that the greatest stories can’t be written by men because the best of our humanity can’t pen the stories that will save our lives. And so, God sat down and wrote one on Christmas.”
“I've written about persistence
and perseverance
and yet
for those of us with patchwork lives
(projects, earnings, caretaking, home-tending,
playing, friending, loving, celebrating,
hurting, grieving, healing, assessing, re-grouping)
persistence and perseverance
has to be allowed
in patches,
not what from the outside might be viewed as
'normal'
(for whatever worth normal has,
the top of that overused bell curve).
So let me clarify.
When I talk about persistence,
it isn't about persistence of equal measure every day.
It's about not giving up on whatever is important to you,
and, especially, not giving up on yourself.
Some chapters of your life may allow many facets of your being,
others just cannot
and the feeling of failure that can arouse
is of no value.
Sometimes all you can do is ask yourself:
What must I do this week? today? next hour?
to continue the process as healthily as possible?
to accomplish the most?
It may be deep immersion in one,
or it may be an odd mix.
And tomorrow may be different.
And an unexpected gift may come and change everything.
And a Mack truck may hit and change everything.
Our answers to those questions may not look similar
but what I hope is similar
is the acceptance
of what must be.
Persist in your own patches.
Make your own quilt.”
“I’ve written for the waste basket so often that we’ve become friends. He writes too, but it’s mostly garbage.”
“I’ve written for those who want to learn, truly learn, about a community with which they aren’t familiar. Or for those who have preconceptions but can admit they may not be entirely accurate (and, in some cases, that they are completely wrong). This means my reader must possess an open mind and a certain level of curiosity. If that’s you, proceed to checkout. An uncensored glimpse behind the curtain, hairy backs and all, awaits.”
Source: Swingland: Between the Sheets of the Secretive, So
“I’ve written more about my parents than any writer in the history of the world, and I still return to their mysterious effigies as I try to figure out what it all means—some kind of annunciation or maybe even a summing-up They still exert immense control over me even though they’ve been dead for so long. But I can conjure up their images without exerting a thimbleful of effort.”
Source: A Lowcountry Heart: Reflections on a Writing Life
“I've written of you so often I think I've made you immortal.”
Source: Drowning Ophelia & Other Poetic Tragedies
“I've written you sixty-seven love poems.
Here’s another one for you.
But really, for me.
These poems are the candles that I light
with the fire you have ignited in me.
I place this candle here and another there
so even if the stars have argued with the moon
and are sulking away in a corner,
you can still find your way to me.
Sixty-eight poems now. What
does the future hold for us?
Joy? Disappointment? Gentle caresses? And subtle neglect?
I hope the good is more than the bad. Much more.
For what is the point of love
if by lighting these candles
our own flame loses its brightness?
I know the good is more than the bad.
Much more.
I cannot wait to write you sixty-nine.”
“I’ve yet to see an ad seeking “Professional Victims.” And I immediately thought, “If there are no jobs for people who have honed the skill of being the victim, why are we training so many people for it?”
“I vecchi si aggrappano al potere e alle loro convinzioni, che ammettono tutti i loro vizi peggiori ma escludono il minimo errore e soffocano la minima innovazione dei giovani. Poi, grazie a Dio, muoiono e non possono fare più danni. Ma ormai noi, i giovani, siamo diventati vecchi, e ci sforziamo di quel po' di male che loro hanno lasciato incompiuto.”
Source: A Suitable Boy, Vol. 1
“I veer away from trying to understand why I act. I just know I need to do it.”
“I veer more toward the philosophical and the poetic than I do toward the alert and angry.”
“I vegani hanno tutto il diritto di considerare sbagliato mangiare gli animali, ma non devono permettersi di imporre i propri tabù morali agli altri; l'iper-sensibilità dei pochi non deve diventare una prigione per la libertà dei molti.”
Source: Perché non sono Vegano - Le ragioni di un libero pensatore (I coriandoli)
“I veicoli elettrici sono meccanicamente molto più semplici da progettare. La maggior parte del loro valore aggiunto - e il profitto che consentono - deriva dal software che le governa e connette l'auto al cloud e dai dati che derivano da questo. La grande inflazione, in altre parole, sta costringendo l’industria tedesca a produrre beni che si affidano molto di più al capitale cloud che a quello tradizionale. Il problema allora è questo: paragonati ai loro corrispettivi americani e cinesi, i capitalisti tedeschi non sono riusciti a capire abbastanza in fretta i benefici dell’ investire nel capitale cloud- del diventare cloudalisti- e sono rimasti molto indietro in questa nuova partita. In termini pratici, si stanno mettendo fuori da una posizione competitiva. Incapaci di raccogliere sufficienti rendite cloud, i plusvalori tedeschi soffriranno e così sarà per l’economia dell’ Unione Europea - e la sua cittadinanza- dipendente dai plusvalori tedeschi.”
Source: Tecnofeudalesimo: Cosa ha ucciso il capitalismo
“I venerate an honest obliquity of understanding. The more laughable blunders a man shall commit in your company, the more tests he giveth you, that he will not betray or overreach you. I love the safety, which a palpable hallucination warrants ; the security, which a word out of season ratifies. And take my word for this, reader, and say a fool told it you, if you please, that he who hath not a dram of folly in his mixture, hath pounds of much worse matter in his com position.”
Source: Essays of Elia and Last Essays of Elia
“I venerate the man whose heart is warm, Whose hands are pure, whose doctrine and whose life, Coincident, exhibit lucid proof That he is honest in the sacred cause.”
Source: The Life and Works of William Cowper: His life and letters by William Hayley. Now first completed by the introduction of Cowper's private correspondence
“I vent through my music. That's the only outlet I have.”
“I venture forward with fear, as happens when one is in love.”
Source: Thus Were Their Faces
“I venture on assuring you that I regard the design formed by you and your friends with sincere interest, and in particular wish well to all the efforts you may make on behalf of individual freedom and independence as opposed to what is termed Collectivism.”
“I venture that those of us who are most serene when faced with the possibility of nothingness are the ones who've reached furthest to the downward and upward of their beings.”
“I venture to claim two qualifications for the great office which I hold, which to my mind, without making invidious distinctions, is one of the most important that can be held by any Englishman; and those qualifications are that in the first place I believe in the British Empire, and in the second place I believe in the British race. I believe that the British race is the greatest of the governing races that the world has ever seen.”
Source: Foreign & Colonial Speeches
“I venture to define science as a series of interconnected concepts and conceptual schemes arising from experiment and observation and fruitful of further experiments and observations. The test of a scientific theory is, I suggest, its fruitfulness.”
“I venture to give an alternative method of regarding the processes occurring in the electric field, which I have often found useful and which is, from a mathematical point of view, equivalent to Maxwell's Theory.”
Source: Notes on Recent Researches in Electricity and Magnetism: Intended as a Sequel to Professor Clerk-Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism
“I venture to maintain that there are multitudes to whom the necessity of discharging the duties of a butcher would be so inexpressibly painful and revolting, that if they could obtain a flesh diet on no other condition, they would relinquish it forever.”
“I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.”
Source: The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke: Charge against Warren Hastings concluded
“I venture to say that every man who is not presumably incapacitated by some consideration of personal unfitness or of political danger is morally entitled to come within the pale of the Constitution.”
“I venture to say that it's not enough to respect and tolerate religions other than our own.”
“I ventured up onto the domes of the world's largest telescopes a few times. The view was impressive! The curvature of the domes means that you can only walk around on about twenty feet of the domes before developing a fear of sliding off them on the rapidly sloping surface. What amazes me today was that I was not required to wear a safety harness during the fun activity while breathing very high altitude air that was 40% deficient of oxygen that was known to make people faint. A strenuous climb up ladders was required to get to the top of the domes and a fall from that height would likely be fatal.”
“I verily believe Christianity necessary to the support of civil society. One of the beautiful boasts of our municipal jurisprudence is that Christianity is a part of the Common Law... There never has been a period in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying its foundations.”
“I verily believe that a man's way with women is in inverse ratio to his prowess among men. The weakling and the saphead have often great ability to charm the fair sex, while the fighting man who can face a thousand real dangers unafraid, sits hiding in the shadows like some frightened child.”
Source: Under the Moons of Mars
“I verily believe that her not remembering and not minding in the least, made me cry again, inwardly - and that is the sharpest crying of all.”
Source: A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations (Oprah's Book Club): Two Novels
“I verily believe that I never took infant in my arms that did not the moment it was there by its cries beg to be removed.”
Source: Letters of Dorothy Wordsworth: A Selection
“I verily believe that the kingdom of God advances more on spoken words than it does on essays written and read; on words, that is, in which the present feeling and thought of the teaching mind break into natural and forceful expression.”
Source: Conditions of success in preaching without notes, 3 lects
“I very carefully levered up an eyelid and shut it again fast. A merciless sunbeam had squirted straight in, making my brain bleed.”
“I very comprehensively studied Irving Thalberg and his biographies. He's who [Scott] Fitzgerald roughly modeled the character after. He worked for him, as a writer, when he was at MGM. And, of course, I revisited the novel and the politics of MGM and the studio system at the time and familiarized myself with the world. There was a great deal of physical and literary work that went into it.”
“I very early caught on that the editor of Cincinnati Post had something specific in mind that he was looking for, and I tried to accommodate him in order to get published. I would turn out rough idea after rough idea, and he would veto eighty percent of them. I pretty much prostituted myself for six months but I couldn't please him, so he sent me packing.”
“I very easily decide in certain situations that I'm an outsider. That's just my own craziness. I think that I have sympathy for those characters who are like that, but I love it when the humor comes from a character who is serious about his situation - only the way he's thinking about it is all wrong, or the ways he's solving his problems are never going to work.”
“I very firmly believe that we have to make sure that we enforce our borders, that we have an employment verification system, and that those people who have come here illegally do not get an advantage to become permanent residents, they do not get a special pathway.”
“I very linearly [sic] wish you would exert yourself so as to keep all your matters in order your self without depending on others as that is the only way to be happy to have all your business in your own hands.”
“I very little, you cheat big! – Short Round”
“I very much admire Sheryl Sandberg for what she has done. I really do. But Sandberg's narrative also implies: "Well, it's your fault if you couldn't make it." There is a certain injustice in that.”
“I very much adore people who are outcasts, and I've always loved to be around interesting, circus-type people.”
“I very much believe in reforming the tax system.”
“I very much believe in rescuing animals, not buying them.”
“I very much believe in the collective work and the team dynamic.”
“I very much believe in the Intentional Fallacy. If Donald Trump lies and dopes and bumbles and staggers his way into peace in the middle east, he gets credit for it. He owns it.”
“I very much believe in things unseen, both of positive and destructive energy, and I have never seen The Exorcist through from start to finish. I find it too realistic, frankly, and too disturbing for me. I absolutely believe in spiritual warfare and have experienced it in my life. So I respect Mr. Friedkin's extraordinary success with that, but it's not a picture I'll ever see.”