I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Imagine that the gods have a care for everything that lives in the community of life on earth.”
“Imagine that the impossible is an opportunity.”
“Imagine that the keeper of a huge, strong beast notices what makes it angry, what it desires, how it has to be approached and handled, the circumstances and the conditions under which it becomes particularly fierce or calm, what provokes its typical cries, and what tones of voice make it gentle or wild. Once he's spent enough time in the creature's company to acquire all this information, he calls it knowledge, forms it into a systematic branch of expertise, and starts to teach it, despite total ignorance, in fact, about which of the creature's attitudes and desires is commendable or deplorable, good or bad, moral or immoral. His usage of all these terms simply conforms to the great beast's attitudes, and he describes things as good or bad according to its likes and dislikes, and can't justify his usage of the terms any further, but describes as right and good the things which are merely indispensable, since he hasn't realised and can't explain to anyone else how vast a gulf there is between necessity and goodness.”
Source: The Republic
“Imagine that the lines an actress reads are a river that runs calmly along the surface of the earth. Then imagine that the actress are the earth, and that under the earth is another river, a wilder one whose current leaps in the opposite direction, whose roar is muted. Every time the actress speaks her lines, she must offer a glimpse of the river that runs beneath: the mysterious churn of her consciousness, the lawlessness of a person's doubts or desires.”
“Imagine that the things that create silence and tranquillity meet at the same time: A full moon, a cold midnight, and a moment without wind! What should we do? We should breathe the silence in as if we were breathing fresh air in! Silence is an extraordinary journey towards eternity!”
“Imagine that the universe is a great spinning engine. You want to stay near the core of the thing - right in the hub of the wheel - not out at the edges where all the wild whirling takes place, where you can get frayed and crazy. The hub of calmness - that's your heart. That's where God lives within you. So stop looking for answers in the world. Just keep coming back to that center and you'll always find peace.”
Source: The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims
“Imagine that the universe is the size of your room. There is nothing outside your room. But you can expand the universe as far as your senses go. If you can see a mountain from the window, universe has expanded till the mountain. If you walk 2 km outside the room, it has expanded 2 km.
If you are reading about Britain, universe has expanded till britain.. and so on. This is not an imagination. This is reality. Your universe exists only as far as your mind goes. You are expanding it by discovering new things.”
“Imagine that the world had created a new 'dream product' to feed and immunize everyone born on earth. Imagine also that it was available everywhere, required no storage or delivery, and helped mothers plan their families and reduce the risk of cancer. Then imagine that the world refused to use it.”
“Imagine that the world is a circle, that God is the center, and that the radii are the different ways human beings live. When those who wish to come closer to God walk towards the center of the circle, they come closer to one another at the same time as to God. The closer they come to God, the closer they come to one another. And the closer they come to one another, the closer they come to God.”
“Imagine that the world is made out of love. Now imagine that it isn’t. Imagine a story where everything goes wrong, where everyone has their back against the wall, where everyone is in pain and acting selfishly because if they don’t, they’ll die. Imagine a story, not of good against evil, but of need against need against need, where everyone is at cross-purposes and everyone is to blame.”
“Imagine that we are sitting in an ordinary room. Suddenly we are told that there is a corpse behind the door. In an instant the room we are sitting in is completely altered; everything in it has taken on another look; the light, the atmosphere have changed, though they are physically the same. This is because we have changed and the objects are as we conceive them. That is the effect I want to get in my film.”
“Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last. Imagine that you are doing this but that it is essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature...in order to found that edifice on its unavenged tears. Would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me. Tell the truth.”
“Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die.”
“Imagine that you are in control of your life. Now, the question is: Why do you have to imagine this?”
“Imagine that you are more than nothing. Evil made you, but you are no more evil than a child unborn. If you want, if you seek, if you hope, who is to say that your hope might not be answered?”
Source: Dead and Alive (Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein, Book 3)
“Imagine that you are stuck on a long train ride and must choose one of two books to read in order to pass the time: the first is a novel whose main character is an office worker who is essentially working to pay his monthly cable bill; the second is about someone who decides to travel in South America (and of course encounters various setbacks in the process), but who pushes beyond the boundaries of conventional American life. Which... book would you pick up to read? Indeed, which of the two characters would you rather be?”
“Imagine that you are watching a movie which is so engaging that you forget yourself. Suppose that the movie is not 3 hours long but millions of years long. Of course, a human protagonist can’t have such a long story. So, the protagonist of the movie is someone who changes forms from human to cow to monkey to tree to dog to cat and so on... Then who are you and who is the protagonist of the movie? Aren’t you the eternal power watching your own story unfold before you?”
“Imagine that you had discovered gold or oil on a certain property, and no one else knew about it. Can you see yourself being sad and feeling deprived for having to gather all your resources and sacrifice them in order to buy that property? Hardly. Now you know what it is like to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus.”
“Imagine that you have lived your whole life within the walls of a small house, where everything you received was dropped off and pushed through a mail slot in your front door and you dumped your trash out of a chute on the side of your house. Although you know that there is a whole other world out there beyond the door, and you have read about distant places (different kinds of people and things), you have never stepped outside of your door to really experience them for yourself.
Well, we are inviting you to open up that tiny house and step out into a wider world of experience. We are inviting your roof to lift off of your tiny house and for those walls of your tiny house to open, lay themselves out, and become a larger floor that will support you in your new stage of experience and action.”
Source: "The Seed" Journal: A Space for Recording Your Soul Experiences and Expansive Journeys
“Imagine that - you leave your country and they change the name while you're gone, so in a way, you can never go home.”
Source: Cracked
“Imagine that you traveled all over the world, looking for happiness, looking for thrills to pass the time. Imagine seeing everything there is to see and still not finding happiness. Well, that would give you a very bleak outlook on life, would it not?”
Source: Daughter of the Pirate King
“Imagine that you wanted your children to learn the names of all their cousins, aunts and uncles. But you never actually let them meet or play with them. You just showed them pictures of them, and told them to memorize their names. Each day you'd have them recite the names, over and over again. You'd say, "OK, this is a picture of your great-aunt Beatrice. Her husband was your great-uncle Earnie. They had three children, your uncles Harpo, Zeppo, and Gummo. Harpo married your aunt Leonie ... yadda, yadda, yadda."”
“Imagine that you were on the threshold of this fairytale, sometime billions of years ago when everything was created. And you were able to choose whether you wanted to be born to a life on this planet at some point. You wouldn’t know when you were going to be born, nor how long you’d live for, but at any event it wouldn’t be more than a few years. All you’d know was that, if you chose to come into the world at some point, you’d also have to leave it again one day and go away from everything. This might cause you a good deal of grief, as lots of people think that life in the great fairytale is so wonderful that the mere thought of it ending can bring tears to their eyes. Things can be so nice here that it’s terribly painful to think that at some point the days will run out. What would you have chosen, if there had been some higher power that had gave you the choice? Perhaps we can imagine some sort of cosmic fairy in this great, strange fairytale. What you have chosen to live a life on earth at some point, whether short or long, in a hundred thousand or a hundred million years? Or would you have refused to join in the game because you didn’t like the rules? (...) I asked myself the same question maybe times during the past few weeks. Would I have elected to live a life on earth in the firm knowledge that I’d suddenly be torn away from it, and perhaps in the middle of intoxicating happiness? (...) Well, I wasn’t sure what I would have chosen. (...) If I’d chosen never to the foot inside the great fairytale, I’d never have known what I’ve lost. Do you see what I’m getting at? Sometimes it’s worse for us human beings to lose something dear to us than never to have had it at all.”
Source: The Orange Girl
“Imagine that you're a gay man and you're spending all your time with people who believe you are possessed by the devil.”
“Imagine that your child is born with wings.”
Source: Harmony
“Imagine that your deepest desires are signals from the future version of yourself who knows you were meant to manifest them. These were cravings leading you to the destiny you were always meant to fulfill. To manifest your dreams, visualize that your future self is the one that already has this desire and can't wait for you to experience it. Your future self is calling out to you to birth your desires into existence and embody your highest self. Reframe that desire as evidence that you are meant to have it and already do in another plane of existence. Use this to motivate you toward your highest "timeline.”
Source: Power: Surviving and Thriving After Narcissistic Abuse
“Imagine that your mind is like a calm, clear lake or a vast empty sky: Ripples appear on the surface of the lake and clouds pass across the sky, but they soon disappear without altering the natural stillness.”
“Imagine that your tears can talk. What would they say? Listen to them. They are trying to tell you something important.”
Source: Waldmeer
“Imagine that, a poncho sombrero combo, I'll be off my tits on happiness.”
“Imagine that, death was just like being asleep. Would he have time to think before it was all over? And would he have time to think that he had thought it? But wait, how much do you have to think before you have finished thinking?”
“Imagine that: If you could change one of the genes in an experiment, an aging gene, maybe you could slow down aging and extend lifespan.”
“Imagine the administrative acrobatics of dividing and uniting states! It's like trying to untangle headphones only to realize you've created a knot worse than before!”
“Imagine the amazing good fortune of the generation that gets to see the end of the world. This is as marvelous as being there in the beginning.”
Source: Fragments: Cool Memories III, 1990-1995
“Imagine the ancient society of India, and in fact all over the world, a few thousands years ago. In those days, rational thinking was quite scarce. Ignorance was the default mode of thinking. Only a handful of individuals were capable of higher intellectual thinking.”
“Imagine the beauty and glory in dying while literally doing something you absolutely LOVE (something positive, impactful and wonderful, which BTW would be the best legacy ever) and ppl still turning that around to say, you died while doing it because you wrong.”
“Imagine the big rating agencies as three competitive saloons standing side by side, with each free to set its own drinking age. Before long, nine-year-olds would be downing bourbon”
“Imagine the choices you'd make if you had no fear-of falling, of losing, of being alone, of disapproval.”
“Imagine the clouds dripping Dig a hole in your garden to put them in”
“Imagine the consequences if Saddam fails to comply and we fail to act. Saddam will be emboldened, believing the international community has lost its will. He will rebuild his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. And some day, some way, I am certain, he will use that arsenal again, as he has ten times since 1983.”
“Imagine the consequences of having the first woman prime minister who is the milk snatcher. [Margaret Thatcher] takes away the nourishment of the nation.”
“Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.”
“Imagine the disincentive to software development if after months of work another company could come along and copy your work and market it under its own name...without legal restraints to such copying, companies like Apple could not afford to advance the state of the art.”
“Imagine the earth’s population of six billion people reduced to just one hundred representatives. Statistically, that makes 30 white, 70 non-white. It means 6 people own 59% of the wealth and they all live in North America. 80 are in substandard housing. One has an education. One owns a computer. Don’t blame me if it all sounds crazy.”
“Imagine the everyday occurrence where you meet one basic need, only to find that the next need follows immediately. Think of a waterfall. I watched in wonder as I witnessed one waterfall after another from a train window in beautiful Norway. There was no end to those tiny water droplets. They just kept falling. In fact, everyone’s basic needs seem like a waterfall that just keeps cascading, spilling one need after another, especially when you live with other people and have their needs to consider along with your own.”
Source: Midlife Maze: A Map to Recovery and Rediscovery after Loss
“Imagine the fear the first men must have felt when they saw the sun setting on the horizon and the dark night beginning to rise—They must have felt such hopelessness within their hearts as the darkness descended, only for it to spark back to life as the stars began to shine through. However, the stars do not burn like the sun, do they? They provide little light for the land, which makes one wonder, that perhaps conquering the dark was not their purpose. Maybe the creators of the world intended when they made them, not to bring light into the world, but instead for them to serve as something else.
That is the great mystery of our world, is it not? Why would the creators, the gods who shaped the land and the heavens with their hands, forge something so stunning, so dazzling, only to then hide them away during the day and allow men to gaze upon their beauty only when darkness is present—this must mean something, right?
Maybe that was their intention all along. Perhaps they knew they could not eliminate the darkness of the night, so instead, they created these beautiful glowing lights in the sky—a small light for the people to cling to—to serve as a constant reminder to all that looked up, that no matter how dark the world seemed, there would always be light.
Maybe that is why they created you as well”
Source: The Seven
“Imagine the feeling of catching yourself loving yourself without trying. It's like catching a sunset out of the corner of your eye. It will stop you.”
“Imagine the first Burmese "giraffe woman"; she was probably a local icon in her village in the way she put the rings around her neck to sell her craft. Then she became a celebrity, so all of the wannabes started following her in that uncomfortable and unhealthy trend. But is that so different from Pamela Anderson? I don't think so.”
“Imagine the first discovery that one of these epidemics was man-made—the panic, the violence that would ensue. That’s where the end would come. A typhoon kills a few hundred people, does a few billion in damage, and what do we do?” Erskine interlocked his fingers. “We come together. We put the pieces back. But a terrorist’s bomb.” He frowned. “A terrorist’s bomb does the same damage, and it throws the world into turmoil.” He spread his hands apart like an explosion going off. “When there’s only God to blame, we forgive him. When it’s our fellow man, we must destroy him.”
“Imagine the first time you are about to rap in a studio and you find yourself in a booth with Redman and KRS!”
“Imagine the greatness this world would know if kindness were as contagious and enduring as the common cold.”
Source: Slaying Dragons: Quotes, Poetry, & a Few Short Stories for Every Day of the Year