I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“It was the era of photography. This may have influenced us, and played a part in our reaction against anything resembling a snapshot of life. (On the year 1905)”
“It was the era of Tab Hunter and Rock Hudson; they all had a certain look.”
“It was the era that I later analyzed, the "feminine mystique" era, [when] "career woman" was a dirty word. And so I didn't want a career anymore. [But] I had to do something. So I started freelancing for women's magazines.”
“It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane.”
“It was the evening on which MM Debienne and Poligny, the managers of the Opera, were giving a farewell gala performance to make their retirement.”
Source: The Phantom of the Opera
“It was the evidence from science and history that prompted me to abandon my atheism and become a Christian.”
“It was the exact opposite
for me. At first all I
wanted was sex with her,
but soon I wanted more.
More sex, yes, in unusual
places, and all different kinds.
But that wasn’t all. I wanted
her to fill the empty spaces
left by a father who never
once praised me, ‘friends’ who
used me, an ice princess mom
who raised me with glass kisses.”
Source: Impulse
“It was the experience of mystery - even if mixed with fear - that engendered religion.”
Source: The World As I See It
“It was the eyes. The secret of love was in the eyes. The way one person looked at another, the way eyes communicated and spoke when the lips never moved.”
Source: Flowers in the Attic
“It was the face of a human being who’d been constructed exclusively of wounds. Not time or history or ambition, nothing but wounds. The face of a person who could probably kill someone without feeling anything whatsoever.”
Source: Audition
“It was the fact that they tried so hard that doomed them.”
“It was the failures who had always won, but by the time they won they had come to be called successes.”
Source: The Unexpected Universe: A Library of America eBook Classic
“It was the Faith which gradually and indirectly transformed the slave into the serf, and the serf into the free peasant... You will not be able to set up in a pagan or an heretical or a wholly indifferent society the institutions characteristic of economic freedom; you will not be able to curb competition which alone would be sufficient to destroy such freedom, nor pursue permanently and consecutively any one part of the program. The thing must be done as a whole, and it can be done as a whole only by the ambient influence of Catholicism.”
“It was the fall into history that enslaved us to the labor cycle, to the agricultural cycle. And notice how fiendish it is.”
“It was the family tradition. I wanted to live up to the name-McNair.”
“It was the fashion of the time, still is, to feel that all actors are neurotic, or they would not be actors.”
“It was the fashion of the times to attribute every remarkable event to the particular will of the Deity; the alterations of nature were connected, by an invisible chain, with the moral and metaphysical opinions of the human mind; and the most sagacious divines could distinguish, according to the colour of their respective prejudices, that the establishment of heresy tended to produce an earthquake, or that a deluge was the inevitable consequence of the progress of sin and error.”
Source: THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (All 6 Volumes): From the Height of the Roman Empire, the Age of Trajan and the Antonines - to the Fall of Byzantium; Including a Review of the Crusades, and the State of Rome during the Middle Ages
“It was the fate of Europe to be always a battleground. Differences in race, in religion, in political genius and social ideals, seemed always, in the atmosphere of our mother continent, to be invitations to contest by battle.”
“It was the fault of David Trezeguet, who made me do one drink of vodka after another. I slept in the bathtub. Now I hold my vodka much better.”
“It was the feel of it, the love of it, not the thought: it was instinct and reflex and knowing the wind, and Maris was the wind.”
Source: Windhaven
“It was the final session of the Council, the most essential, in which the Pope [Paul VI] was to bestow upon all humanity the teachings of the Council. He announced this to me on that day with these words, ‘I am about to blow the seven trumpets of the Apocalypse.’”
“It was the first airplane . . . that could make money just by hauling passengers.”
“It was the first and most striking characteristic of Socrates never to become heated in discourse, never to utter an injurious or insulting word -- on the contrary, he persistently bore insult from others and thus put an end to the fray.”
Source: Stoic Six Pack: Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Golden Sayings, Fragments and Discourses of Epictetus, Letters from a Stoic and The Enchiridion
“It was the first car accident I had ever been in. It shakes you up a little bit.”
“It was the first day in the life of the new lean and mean Peabody.
An hour later, she lay on the grubby floor wheezing like the dying. Her quads and hamstrings burned, her glutes wept, and her arms couldn't stop screaming for mama.
"Never doing this again," she announced. "Yes, you are," she corrected. "Can't. Dying. Can. Will. Help me, I think I broke my ass. Wimp, pussy. Shut up.”
Source: Treachery in Death
“It was the first female-style revolution: no violence and we all went shopping.”
“It was the first follower that transformed the lone nut into a leader.”
“It was the first honest emotional connection I'd had in a while. So I immediately panicked and had to leave.”
“It was the first rent in the holy image of my father, it was the first fissure in the columns that had upheld my childhood, which every individual must destroy before he can become himself.”
Source: Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun [and] Hermann Hesse
“It was the first smile of my life. Of course, that is a ridiculous thing to say; I had been smiled at often, the big man had smiled at me not a minute since. And yet I say: it was the first smile, because it was the first that ever went straight into me like a needle too thin to be seen.”
“It was the first thing I learned when I started. An old boss said to me, 'Your job is to reflect interest, not to create it.' And what I've taken from that is, if you're not talking about things people are interested in, then they're going to find someone who is. It's not any more complicated than that. But if you forget it, you won't have a show for very long.”
“It was the first time I ever said her name. Momentous things pass unnoticed. It’s funny how life works.”
Source: Flesh and Steel
“It was the first time I had ever made love. I wondered if he knew that. It felt like crying. I wondered, Why does anyone ever make love?”
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel
“It was the first time I had let go of my inhibitions in aeons. She had the key to the cage of propriety in which I had imprisoned myself. I was introduced to a lifestyle of decadence.”
Source: The Fire Within My Heart
“It was the first time I realized that absolute reality could be so much more fun than fantasy.”
“It was the first time I saw the look on the face of the people I robbed: it was ugly. I was the cause of such ugliness, and the only thing that made me feel was a cruel pleasure which, I thought, was bound to transfigure my own face, to make me resplendent. I was then 23 years old. From that moment on, I felt capable of advancing in cruelty.”
Source: The thief's journal
“It was the first time I traveled alone, but I was not scared.”
“It was the first time I used that bat. A Yankee fan in Chicago gave it to me the last time we were there and said it would bring me luck. There's no brand name on it or anything. Maybe the guy made it himself. It had been in the bat rack, and I picked it up by mistake because it looked like the bat I had been using the last few days.”
“It was the first time I was ever in love, and I learned a lot. Before that I'd never even thought about killing myself.”
“It was the first time I worked with Matthew McConaughey [in the True Detective].They're fun guys [with Woody Harrelson]. They don't take life at all too seriously, but yet they take their work very seriously. And both of them are just so committed to character and the story.”
“It was the first time I'd ever felt truly jealous of anyone else in my entire life.”
Source: Eclipse
“It was the first time I'd ever said the words to another person, and the sound of them broke open my heart.”
Source: The Secret Life of Bees
“It was the first time in a half century that they had been so close and had enough time to look at each other with some serenity and they had seen each other for what they were: two old people, ambushed by death, who had nothing in common except the mercy of an ephemeral past that was no longer theirs but belonged to two young people who had vanished and who could have been their grandchildren.”
Source: Love in the Time of Cholera
“It was the first time in months that somebody was explaining what was happening to me and assuring me that it was okay.
It was the first time in months that somebody was talking to me like I mattered.
It was the first time in months that I was being assured that I need not feel guilty for something that was out of my control.”
Source: Life is What You Make It: A Story of Love, Hope and How Determination Can Overcome Even Destiny
“It was the first time in years I didn’t wonder if my father was out there, looking at it too.”
“It was the first time it had ever occurred to me, that this detestable cant of false humility might have originated out of the Heep family. I had seen the harvest, but had never thought of the seed.”
Source: The Works of Charles Dickens
“It was the first time she'd discovered something she really didn't want to find, and she didn't know what to do once she'd found it.”
Source: The Jodi Picoult Collection #3: Vanishing Acts, The Tenth Circle, and Nineteen Minutes
“It was the first time that I came face to face with madness and feared it and was fascinated by it.”
Source: Country Girl
“It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags and with the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties; almost every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches here and there were being systematically demolished by gangs of workmen. Every shop and cafe had an inscription saying that it had been collectivized; even the bootblacks had been collectivized and their boxes painted red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said 'Señor' or 'Don' or even 'Usted'; everyone called everyone else 'Comrade' or 'Thou', and said 'Salud!' instead of 'Buenos días'. Tipping had been forbidden by law since the time of Primo de Rivera; almost my first experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a lift-boy. There were no private motor-cars, they had all been commandeered, and the trams and taxis and much of the other transport were painted red and black. The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls in clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs of mud. Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of the town where crowds of people streamed constantly to and from, the loud-speakers were bellowing revolutionary songs all day and far into the night. And it was the aspect of the crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small number of women and foreigners there were no 'well-dressed' people at all. Practically everyone wore rough working-class clothes, or blue overalls or some variant of militia uniform. All this was queer and moving. There was much in this that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for...so far as one could judge the people were contented and hopeful. There was no unemployment, and the price of living was still extremely low; you saw very few conspicuously destitute people, and no beggars except the gypsies. Above all, there was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom. Human beings were trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine.”
Source: Homage to Catalonia
“It was the first time that I had ever been romantically kissed. It was even better than the chocolate cake.”
Source: Grace: A Novel