I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“it may be said of me by Harper & Brothers, that although I reject their proposals, I welcome their advances.”
Source: Letters
“It may be said of some very old places, as of some very old books, that they are destined to be forever new. The nearer we approach them, the more remote they seem: the more we study them, the more we have yet to learn. Time augments rather than diminishes their everlasting novelty; and to our descendants of a thousand years hence it may safely be predicted that they will be even more fascinating than to ourselves. This is true of many ancient lands, but of no place is it. so true as of Egypt.”
“It may be said that an education which does not succeed in making poetry a resource in the business of life as well as in its leisure, has something the matter with it.”
Source: Democracy And Education
“It may be said that artist and censor differ in this wise: that the first is a decent mind in an indecent body and that the second is an indecent mind in a decent body.”
Source: The American Mercury
“it may be said that children are but newly-issued editions of old compositions, re-bound and corrected, with fresh introductions, modern print and headpieces, but the text is that of former editions handed down from generation to generation.”
“It may be said that his wit shines at the expense of his memory.”
Source: The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane
“It may be said that it is with our thoughts as with our flowers. Those whose expression is simple carry their seed with them; those that are double by their richness and pomp charm the mind, but produce nothing.”
“It may be said that modern Europe with teachers who inform it that its realist instincts are beautiful, acts ill and honors what is ill.”
Source: The Treason of the Intellectuals
“It may be said that myths give to the transcendent reality an immanent, this-worldly objectivity. Myths speak about gods and demons as powers on which man knows himself to be dependent, powers whose favors he needs, powers whose wrath he fears. Myths express the knowledge that man is not master of the world and his life, that the world within which he lives is full of riddles and mysteries and that human life also is full of riddles and mysteries.”
“It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, wherever and whenever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.”
Source: The Works of Charles Darwin, Volume 15: On the Origin of Species, 1859
“It may be said that poems are in one way like icebergs: only about a third of their bulk appears above the surface of the page.”
Source: Figures of thought: speculations on the meaning of poetry & other essays
“It may be said that the basic characteristic of human behavior in general is that humans personally influence their relations with the environment and through that environment personally change their behavior, subjugating it to their control.”
“It may be said that the conceptions of differential quotient and
integral, which in their origin certainly go back to Archimedes,
were introduced into science by the investigations of Kepler,
Descartes, Cavalieri, Fermat and Wallis. . . .”
“It may be said that the power of preventing bad laws includes that of preventing good ones; and may be used to the one purpose as well as to the other. But this objection will have little weight with those who can properly estimate the mischiefs of that inconstancy and mutability in the laws, which form the greatest blemish in the character and genius of our governments.”
Source: The Federalist Papers: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay
“It may be said that the vices await us in the journey of life like hosts with whom we must successively lodge; and I doubt whether experience would make us avoid them if we were to travel the same road a second time.”
“It may be said very abstractly that in personality all persons are equal. But this is an empty tautological proposition, in logic identified with the law of mere identity or A = A. This is so because a person abstractly considered is not as yet separate from others, and has no distinguishing attribute.
Equality is the abstract identity set up by the mere understanding. Upon this principle, mere impoverished reflecting thought, or, in other words, spirit in its middle ranges, is apt to fall, when before it there arises the relation of identity to difference. This equalit would be only the identity of abstract persons as such, and would exclude all reference to posession, which is the basis of inequality. Sometimes the demand is made for equality in the division of the soil of the earth, and even other kinds of wealth. The theory of a pious, friendly brotherhood of men who are to possess all goods in common, and to banish the principle of private ownership, easily presents itself to one who fails to understand the nature of freedom of spirit and nature of right, through mistaking their definite phases. Claims of a demand for equality in divisions of wealth are superficial, because the differences of wealth are due not only to the accidents of external nature but also to the infinite variety and difference of mental ability and character.”
“It may be said with a degree of assurance that not everything that meets the eye is as it appears.”
“It may be said without exaggeration that the mountains made the men; and the men in return fought with passionate courage and energy in defence of their beloved mountains, in whose fastnesses, indeed, they were well-nigh unconquerable.”
“It may be said without qualification that every man is as holy and as full of the Spirit as he wants to be. He may not be as full as he wishes he were, but he is most certainly as full as he wants to be.”
“It may be said, almost without qualification, that true wisdom consists in the ready and accurate perception of analogies. Without the former quality, knowledge of the past is unobstructive: without the latter it is deceptive.”
“It may be seriously questioned whether the philosophies... which isolate mind and set it over against the world did not have their origin in the fact that the reflective or theoretical class of men elaborated a large stock of ideas which social conditions did not allow them to act upon and test. Consequently men were thrown back into their own thoughts as ends in themselves.”
Source: Democracy and Education: Top American Authors
“It may be something that future generations are more open to, but I am pretty confident that for the foreseeable future, using the argument of nondiscrimination, and "Let's get it right for the kids who are here right now," and giving them the best chance possible, is going to be a more persuasive argument.”
“It may be suggested by some books that it is not a sin to kill an animal, but it is written in our own hearts - more clearly than in any book - that we should take pity on animals in the same way as we do on humans.”
“It may be summer down at the lower elevations, but the goddess Ione usually defended the summit with wild or wintry weather. Hurricane-force winds, thunderstorms, ice storms, snow storms, dense fog and even hail the size of human heads -- any or all of these could be awaiting the intrepid monarch.”
Source: Revenge to the Tennth Power
“It may be taken for granted that, rash as the Americans are, when they are prudent there is good reason for it.”
Source: Around The World in 80 Days
“It may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand: 'Sit down and shut up,' but that's the worthless, easy path; that's a quitter's way out.”
“It may be tempting but is inadvisable to attribute symptoms to normal aging phenomena. In my experience, disc degeneration is no more pathological than graying hair or wrinkling skin.
In recent years, there have been numerous reports the medical literature of herniated discs in patients with no history of back pain. They were discovered inadvertently on CT or MRI studies done to investigate other parts of the body. (page 122)”
Source: Healing Back Pain
“It may be tempting to binge-watch our way through these next months. But TV washes over you. Reading draws you in. Books that absorb us, books that calm us down, books that comfort us, books that remind us we are not alone but part of the grand sweep of history, books that surprise and enchant us — this is what we’re looking for.
~ From The New York Times article, "Let Books Create Your Summer”
“It may be tempting to look back and wring our hands over missed opportunities for change in the preceding decades. But, I'm not interested at looking in the rearview mirror except to learn.”
“It may be that 'the voice of the people is the voice of God' in fifty one cases out of a hundred, but in the remaining forty nine it is quite as likely to be the voice of the devil, of, what is still worse, the voice of a fool.”
Source: Letters, Selected and Edited by Elting E. Morison
“It may be that ... when the advance of destructive weapons enables everyone to kill everybody else nobody will want to kill anyone at all. [Referring to the hydrogen bomb.]”
“It may be that [Erwin Rommel] believed it to be possible to convince [Adolf] Hitler to go away and to end the war, but Hitler never dreamed of doing something like that.”
“It may be that a free society... carries in itself the forces of its own destruction, that once freedom has been achieved it is taken for granted and ceases to be valued, and that the free growth of ideas which is the essence of a free society will bring about the destruction of the foundations on which it depends.”
“It may be that a more subtle person would find for this thing a reason of greater subtlety: but such is the reason that I find, and that liketh me best.”
“It may be that a second wave of the sexual revolution might at last accomplish its aim of freeing half the race from its immemorial subordination--and in the process bring us all a great deal closer to humanity. It may be that we shall even be able to retire sex from the harsh realities of politics, but not until we have created a world we can bear out of the desert we inhabit.”
Source: Sexual Politics
“It may be that all games are silly. But then, so are humans.”
“It may be that America has become too big and complicated for most people to deal with being part of. People are longing for a smaller, stupider reality.”
“It may be that apartheid brings such stupendous economic advantages to countries that they would sooner have apartheid than permit its destruction.”
“It may be that at some time in the dim future of the race the need for war will vanish: but that time is yet ages distant. As yet no nation can hold its place in the world, or can do any work really worth doing, unless it stands ready to guard its right with an armed hand.”
Source: Works
“It may be that at this moment every battlement of heaven is alive with the redeemed. There is a sainted mother watching for her daughter. Have you no response to that long hushed voice which has prayed for you so often? And for you, young man, are there no voices there that have prayed for you? And are there none whom you promised once to meet again, if not on earth, in heaven?”
“It may be that Christians, notwithstanding corporate worship, common prayer, and all their fellowship in service, may still be left to their loneliness. The final break-through to fellowship does not occur, because, though they have fellowship with one another as believers and as devout people, they do not have fellowship as the undevout, as sinners. The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everybody must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship. We dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy. The fact is that we are sinners!”
Source: Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community
“It may be that DMT makes us able to perceive what the physicist call "dark matter" - the 95 per cent of the universe's mass that is known to exist but that at present remains invisible to our senses and instruments.”
“It may be that even if half consciously, we choose our personalities to maintain a certain saving balance in the family's little universe.”
Source: Timebends: A Life
“It may be that everything the life science companies are telling us will turn out to be right, and there's no problem here whatsoever. That defies logic.”
“It may be that for a long time some nations will continue to fight each other, but the example of those nations who prefer arbitration to war, law courts to the battlefield, must sooner or later influence the belligerent powers and make war as unpopular as pugilism is now.”
“It may be that I link every library to that first one - to my early childhood experience of drawing on the floor near my father's desk. A library is of course a real place, but it is also an unreal one. What happens there is mostly silent. I think I've always liked the whispering aspect of libraries, the hushing librarians and my feeling of solitude among many.”
Source: A Plea for Eros: Essays
“It may be that I shall find it good to get outside of my body - to cast it off like a disused garment. But I shall not cease to work! I shall inspire men everywhere, until the world shall know that it is one with God.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“It may be that in the belief of the possibility of redemption, people willingly do wrong. Redemption waits, like a side door, there in whatever court of judgement we eventually find ourselves. Not even the payment of a fine is demanded, simply the empty negotiation that absolves responsibility. A shaking of hands and off one goes, through that side door, with the judge benignly watching on. Culpability and consequences neatly evaded.
There is, in this, no moral compass. No need for one, for every path leads to the same place, where blessing is passed out, no questions asked.
The cult of the Redeemer... it is an abomination.”
Source: Toll the Hounds
“It may be that in the larger design of the universe this invasion from Mars is not without its ultimate benefit for men; it has robbed us of that serene confidence in the future, which is the most fruitful source of decadence.”
Source: The War of the Worlds
“It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust”
Source: A Christmas Carol