I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Is it so good to be sad...? If it is... then I don't care to be good.”
“Is it so much to want to be seen?"
He hesitates, before saying, "I notice you. And you shouldn't be ashamed for wanting the spotlight. It's already yours."
As much as I don't want to condone the cliché poetry of his words, I can't help but smile.
"You're enough." His voice is sharp when he says it. "Don't ever forget it."
I meet his eyes, and to my surprise, I do feel seen.
Something within me softens, turning my cheeks warm. Maybe it's my glacier of a heart melting down. I untangle my folded arms, welcoming Damien closer. His fingers stroke my throat, rousing a shaky breath.
I lean closer, and his lips part wider. The whole world stills, all thoughts fading as I graze the wetness of his bottom lip.”
Source: Dance of the Starlit Sea
“Is it so small a thing
To have enjoy'd the sun,
To have liv'd light in the spring,
To have lov'd, to have thought, to have done;
To have advanc'd true friends, and beat down baffling foes...?”
Source: Empedocles On Etna And Other Poems
“Is it so small a thing
To have enjoy'd the sun,
To have liv'd light in the spring,
To have lov'd, to have thought, to have done;
To have advanc'd true friends, and beat down baffling foes;
That we must feign a bliss
Of doubtful future date,
And while we dream on this
Lose our present state,
And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose?
Empedocles on Etna: Act I, Scene II”
Source: Selected Poems of Matthew Arnold: Volume II of II
“Is it so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light
in the sky, to have loved, to have thought, to have done?”
“Is it so small a thing To have enjoyed the sun.”
“Is it so unjust that a man should leave the world by the same gate through which he entered it?”
“Is it so wrong to just live life and enjoy it? Between fun and function, why must we choose the latter?”
“Is it still a fish cart when there’s no fish in it? When its false bottom is filled with children?”
Source: Borealis: A Worldmaker of Yand Novel
“Is it still cool to go to the mall?' she asked. 'I take quite a lot of pride in not knowing what's cool,' I answered.”
Source: The John Green Collection
“Is it still okay to make fun of schizophrenics? There's a little voice in my head that says no.”
“Is it still possible in the advanced modern world to build societies with both freedom and order at the same time? To build and sustain communities and nations that demonstrate the highest values of human dignity, freedom, justice, equality, compassion, peace, and stability?”
Source: The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai's Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom
“Is it still there?" I asked, staring at his head, bent over, as he wedged the stethoscope beneath my left breast. And then, before I could stop myself, "Does it sound broken?”
Source: Good in Bed
“Is it 'Stockholm syndrome' when your God has never once misguided your steps? I think not! Let the lost ones dart across the darkness, bashing into walls, pretending to love their ways as we delight in obedience to the footsteps of Christ which bring us to freedom. By Faith we wander - not because we are lost, but because we are free.”
Source: Healology
“Is it strange for me to say that if I were to die today, there’s not a thing I would change? I’ve lived well. Maybe I have made mistakes and been through my fair share of pain but all in all, it’s been okay. I’ve lived well.”
“Is it strange, then, that some tears fall on the pages of his Bible, as he lays it on the cotton-bale, and, with patient finger, threading his slow way from word to word, traces out its promises? Having learned late in life, Tom was but a slow reader, and passed on laboriously from verse to verse. Fortunate for him was it that the book he was intent on was one which slow reading cannot injure,--nay, one whose words, like ingots of gold, seem often to need to be weighed separately, that the mind may take in their priceless value.”
Source: Uncle Tom’s Cabin
“Is it strange to be happy with an alien?”
“You tell me.”
Source: Pretty Human
“Is it strange, then, that in a literature so concerned with realism and with personal liberation this refusal and impoverishment of the life of the spirit have always nourished the screamers, the eccentrics, the pseudo-Whitmans, the calculating terrorists?”
Source: On Native Grounds: An Interpretation Of Modern American Prose Literature
“Is it "stress" or "anxiety?"
Stress = natural response to present danger
Anxiety = the fear of losing something of having less of something in the future
Stress = Present Danger
Anxiety = Perceived Future Danger”
Source: Life Hacks For Mindful Living
“Is it stupidity or is it moral cowardice which leads men to continue professing a creed that makes self-sacrifice a cardinal principle, while they urge the sacrificing of others, even to the death, when they trespass against us? Is it blindness, or is it an insance inconsistency, which makes them regard as most admirable the bearing of evil for the benefit of others, while they lavish admiration on those who, out of revenge, inflict great evils in return for small ones suffered? Surely our barbarian code of right needs revision, and our barbarian standard of honour should be somewhat changed.”
Source: Works: The study of sociology
“Is it sufficient that you have learned to drive the car, or shall you look and see what is under the hood? Most people go through life without ever knowing.”
“Is it surprising that modern English land law should resemble a chaos rather than a system?”
Source: A Short History of English Law: From the Earliest Times to the End of the Year 1919
“Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?”
Source: Critique and Power: Recasting the Foucault/Habermas Debate
“Is it surprising that the cellular prison, with its regular chronologies, forced labour, its authorities of surveillance and registration, its experts in normality, who continue and multiply the functions of the judge, should have become the modern instrument of penality? Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?”
“Is it ten thousand hours or twenty thousand hours to mastery? The answer is that it doesn't matter. There is no end zone. To think of a number is to live in a conditional future. We're simply talking about a lot of hours - that to get where we want to go isn't about brilliance, but continual effort. It means it's all within reach - for all of us, provided we have the constitution and humbleness to be patient and the fortitude to put in the work.”
Source: Ego Is the Enemy
“Is it that bad, if that is what this is?" Evan asks. "If all I am is you, and no part of me is here, think about how long you've had hope for yourself. Think about how long you've believed in yourself. Think about how long you've been urging yourself to climb. Think about how far you've gotten, just as you."
"Maybe," Regulus rasps, "but I really wish it was you."
Evan sighs. "I'm dead, Regulus."
"I know, Evan," Regulus says, and his voice cracks. "I know."
"Everyone else, and you let them go," Evan whispers. "You learned to let them go, and learned to keep them even though you had. But not me."
"You—you're—" Regulus shakes his head, feeling his face twitch and twist, trying so hard not to cry. You're the first person I learned to trust again, he doesn't say. You're the first person I really, truly lost; the first person I could never get back, he doesn't say. What he says, instead, makes his voice crack. "You're my best friend."
And it's true. Even now, it's true, and Regulus knows it, so Evan does, too. "You were mine, too," Evan says, and then he tilts his head a bit. "After the arena, you dreamed of me because you couldn't let me go."
"I know."
"Why did you stop?"
"Because I knew I needed to," Regulus chokes out.”
Source: Crimson Rivers
“Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color; and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows- a colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues — every stately or lovely emblazoning — the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge — pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?”
Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale
“Is it that my habit of placing myself in the souls of other people makes me see myself as others see or would see me if they noticed my presence there? It is. And once I've perceived what they would feel about me if they knew me, it is as if they were feeling and expressing it at that very moment. It is a torture to me to live with other people. Then there are those who live inside me. Even when removed from life, I'm forced to live with them. Alone, I am hemmed in by multitudes. I have nowhere to flee to, unless I were to flee myself.”
Source: The Book of Disquiet
“Is it that Nature, attentive to the preservation of mankind, increases our wishes to live, while she lessens our enjoyments, and as she robs the senses of every pleasure, equips imag-ination in the spoil?”
Source: The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith, M.B.: With Memoirs of His Life and Writings : Enriched with an Elegant Portrait of the Author
“Is it that they think it a duty to be continually talking,' pursued she: 'and so never pause to think, but fill up with aimless trifles and vain repetitions when subjects of real interest fail to present themselves? - or do they really take a pleasure in such discourse?' 'Very likely they do,' said I; 'their shallow minds can hold no great ideas, and their light heads are carried away by trivialities that would not move a better-furnished skull; - and their only alternative to such discourse is to plunge over head and ears into the slough of scandal - which is their chief delight.”
Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Diversion Illustrated Classics)
“Is it that we pretend to a reformation? Truly, no: but it may be we are more addicted to Venus than our fathers were. They are two exercises that thwart and hinder one another in their vigor. Lechery weakens our stomach on the one side; and on the other sobriety renders us more spruce and amorous for the exercise of love.”
Source: The Complete Essays
“Is it that you don’t like people, or that you just grow tired of them and can’t for the life of you remember why you ever found them interesting?”
Source: Find Me
“Is it that you hate this president or that you hate America?”
“Is it that you just prefer being led, rather than leading yourself, so that you needn’t take responsibility for the decisions you make?”
Source: Time To Awaken
“Is it that your dream is unattainable or is it that you have the wrong dream?”
“Is it the darkness of my face or the darkness of space? And is there a difference?”
Source: Borealis: A Worldmaker of Yand Novel
“Is it the duty of every good revolutionary to kill every newborn White baby?”
“Is it the factitious and the conventional that most surely succeed on earth and in the course of life?”
“Is it the fault of wine if a fool drinks it and goes stumbling into darkness?”
“Is it the gods who set this fire in our hearts, or do we each make our fierce desire into a god?”
Source: Lavinia
“Is it the killing you wish you could take back, or the joy of the killing?”
Source: Doctor Sleep
“Is it the nature of the world that all things seek a rhythm, and in that rhythm a sort of peace? Certainly it has always seemed so to me. All events, no matter how earth-shaking or bizarre, are diluted within moments of their occurrence by the continuance of the necessary routines of day-to-day living. Men walking a battlefield to search for wounded among the dead will still stop to cough, to blow their noses, still lift their eyes to watch a V of geese in flight.”
Source: Assassin's Apprentice (Farseer Trilogy 1): Book 1
“Is it the obligation of great art to be continually interesting? I think not.”
“Is it the public-speaking thing?"
He'd remembered. Of course he had. "Yeah. It will be awful."
Adam stared at her and said nothing. Not that it would be fine, not that the talk would go smoothly, not that she was overreacting and underselling a fantastic opportunity. His calm acceptance of her anxiety had the exact opposite effect of Dr. Aslan's enthusiasm: it relaxed her.
"When I was in my third year of grad school," he said quietly, “my adviser sent me to give a faculty symposium in his stead. He told me only two days before, without any slides or a script. Just the title of the talk."
"Wow." Olive tried to imagine what that would have felt like,”
Source: The Love Hypothesis
“Is it the raindrops pervading my being?
or is it your lips touching my skin?”
“Is it the realization that people recently psychoanalyzed tend to be dreadful bores which makes the U.S.A. army reject them for the draft?”
“Is it the responsibility of the colored artist or the ethnic artist to create works that are designed to exist in opposition to a certain political structure?”
“Is it the sea you hear in me,
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness?
--from "Elm", written 19 April 1962”
Source: Ariel
“Is it the sea you hear in me? Its dissatisfactions? Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness? Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it.”
Source: Ariel
“Is it the sheer nature of the beast within, the human animal inside the Human Being?”
Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West