I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose, should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist: the threat is rather to life itself.”
Source: The Sea Around Us
“It is a curious spectacle to see a magnificent blue sapphire lose in the night all its glories while a poor trinket of aquamarine not only retains all its effect, but even seems to gain brilliancy.”
Source: Diamonds and Precious Stones a Popular Account of Gems
“it is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.”
Source: The Scarlet Letter
“It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual life upon another; each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his object.”
Source: The Scarlet Letter
“It is a curious thing, but as one travels the world getting older and older, it appears that happiness is easier to get used to than despair. The second time you have a root beer float, for instance, your happiness at sipping the delicious concoction may not be quite as enormous as when you first had a root beer float, and the twelfth time your happiness may be still less enormous, until root beer floats begin to offer you very little happiness at all, because you have become used to the taste of vanilla ice cream and root beer mixed together. However, the second time you find a thumbtack in your root beer float, your despair is much greater than the first time, when you dismissed the thumbtack as a freak accident rather than part of the scheme of a soda jerk, a phrase which here means "ice cream shop employee who is trying to injure your tongue," and by the twelfth time you find a thumbtack, your despair is even greater still, until you can hardly utter the phrase "root beer float" without bursting into tears. It is almost as if happiness is an acquired taste, like coconut cordial or ceviche, to which you can eventually become accustomed, but despair is something surprising each time you encounter it.”
Source: The End
“It is a curious thing, do you know, Cranly said dispassionately, how your mind is supersaturated with the religion in which you say you disbelieve.”
Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
“It is a curious thing how poets tend to become ascetics.... Even a debauch for them is a self-flagellation. They go on the loose in cruelty against themselves, admitting that they are pandering to, and despising, the lower self.”
Source: The Letters of D. H. Lawrence
“It is a curious thing in human experience, but to live through a period of stress and sorrow with another person, creates a bond which nothing seems able to break.”
“It is a curious thing that in whaling vessels the Church of England Prayer book is always employed, though there is never a member of that Church among officers or crew. Our men are all Roman Catholics or Presbyterians, the former predominating. Since a ritual is used which is foreign to both, neither can complain that the other is preferred to them, and they listen with all attention and devotion, so that the system has something to recommend it.”
“It is a curious thing that people only ask if you are enjoying yourself when you aren't.”
“It is a curious thing that the more the world shrinks because of electronic communications, the more limitless becomes the province of the storytelling entertainer.”
“It is a curious thing that we think it is more true to be sad than to be happy.”
“It is a curious thing that when one speaks from the heart it is invariably in the worst of taste.”
Source: Death in a White Tie: Inspector Roderick Alleyn #7
“It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know.”
Source: The Reptile Room
“It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things. The Baudelaire orphans were crying not only for their Uncle Monty, but for their own parents, and this dark and curious feeling of falling that accompanies any great loss.”
“It is a curious thing to be a woman in the Caribbean after you have been a woman in these United States.”
“It is a curious thing, watching a strong man fall to pieces.”
Source: My Sister's Keeper
“It is a curious thing, but I have been right in everything I have done and said in my life.”
“It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well.”
“It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things.”
“It is a curious thing... that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.”
“It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them.”
Source: An autobiography
“It is a curious truth - and yet a truth forced upon us by daily observation - that it is not the women who have suffered most who are the unhappy women. A state of permanent unhappiness - not the morbid, half-cherished melancholy of youth, which generally wears off with wiser years, but that settled, incurable discontent and dissatisfaction with all things and all people, which we see in some women, is, with very rare exceptions, at once the index and the exponent of a thoroughly selfish character.”
“It is a curious truth that many cats enjoy warmer, more convivial, even affectionate relationships with humans than they could ever do with fellow felines.”
“It is a curiously moving experience, to hear 350 sailors uttering the words "Oh shit!" in eleven different languages.”
Source: The Emperor's Coloured Coat: In Which Otto Prohaska, Hero of the Habsburg Empire, Has an Interesting Time While Not Quite Managing to Avert the First World War
“It is a curse not speaking languages and in a broken world more important than ever before.”
Source: Operation Jihadi Bride: My Covert Mission to Rescue Young Women from ISIS - The Incredible True Story
“It is a curse to be childish, but a blessing to be childlike.”
“It is a curse, being blessed with so much to offer.”
“It is a cursed evil to any man to become as absorbed in any subject as I am in mine.”
“It is a curve each of them feels, unmistakably. It is the parabola. They must have guessed, once or twice - guessed and refused to believe - that everything, always, collectively, had been moving toward that purified shape latent in the sky, that shape of no surprise, no second chance, no return. Yet they do move forever under it, reserved for its own black-and-white bad news certainly as if it were the rainbow, and they its children...”
Source: Gravity's Rainbow
“It is a custom often practiced by seafaring people to throw a bottle overboard, with a paper, stating the time and place at which it is done. In the absence of other information as to currents, that afforded by these mute little navigators is of great value.”
Source: Explanations and Sailing Directions to Accompany the Wind and Current Charts
“It is a damn miracle to survive being a girl raised in the south, to live through being told you are not worth the time and space you take up, until they remember why they've kept you around, and then rising above that, too.”
“It is a damn poor mind indeed which can't think of at least two ways to spell any word.”
“It is a damned sight easier to start wars than to end them. This truth has been stated for as long and as often as it has been ignored. High time and thank God, we are at least moving toward de-escalation in Vietnam. The road to extrication will be long, painful, bitter. But it must be trod. We are so bogged down in Vietnam that we cannot respond effectively anywhere else in the world to a military power play except through atomic bombardment.”
“It is a danger to wait around for an idea to occur to you. You have to find the idea.”
“It is a dangerous and fateful presumption, besides the absurd temerity that it implies, to disdain what we do not comprehend. For after you have established, according to your fine undertstanding, the limits of truth and falsehood, and it turns out that you must necessarily believe things even stranger than those you deny, you are obliged from then on to abandon these limits.”
Source: Complete Essays
“It is a dangerous assumption to say that people who drain energy "don't know what they are doing." People are sophisticated aware beings. Don't sit around and equivocate; they'll drain you more.”
“It is a dangerous business to compare sufferings, and generally an unproductive enterprise. Yet compare we must, because most people assume that anymal suffering is somehow lesser—or of less importance—than the suffering of human beings. Why would human suffering be of greater moral or spiritual importance than anymal suffering?”
Source: Animals and World Religions
“It is a dangerous business to compare sufferings, and generally an unproductive enterprise. Yet compare we must, because most people assume that anymal suffering is somehow lesser—or of less importance—than the suffering of human beings . Why would human suffering be of greater moral or spiritual importance than anymal suffering? Not one of the world’s largest religious traditions teaches that anymals are of lesser importance, or that their suffering might be overlooked while we remedy problems that are more central to human needs and wants. On the contrary—religious traditions hold human beings accountable for their actions with regard to anymals. Nonetheless, the assumption that it is right for humanity to focus social justice energy first and foremost on human beings persists in at least some religious communities. As a result, people turn a blind eye to factory farming and other horrendously cruel, life-destroying industries, and even continue to support these industries with their consumer dollars.”
Source: Animals and World Religions
“It is a dangerous day when we can take the cross out of the church more easily than the flag. No wonder it is hard for seekers to find God nowadays.”
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
“It is a dangerous error, surely very widespread among Christians, to think that the heart can pray by itself.”
Source: Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible
“It is a dangerous experiment to call in gratitude as an ally to love. Love is a debt which inclination always pays, obligation never.”
“It is a dangerous notion that we need a government to protect us from ourselves.”
“It is a dangerous thing for the perfecting of our minds to gain applause by works that do not call forth the whole of our energies; for in that case one generally comes to a standstill.”
“It is a dangerous thing to ask why someone else has been given more. It is humbling - and indeed healthy - to ask why you have been given so much.”
“It is a dangerous thing to be satisfied with ourselves.”
Source: The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila: Volume 1
“It is a dangerous thing to have instant access to your emotions.”
“It is a dangerous thing to reform anyone.”
Source: Aphorisms
“It is a dangerous thing to substitute reading or writing for living. Live first, then write.”
“It is a dangerous thing to unbelieve something only because it frightens you.”
Source: Heartless