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 first time that we had sort of articulated our major problem. She wanted to die and I wanted her to live and we were enemies who loved each other.”
“It was the first time the chief of police, a kindly family man whose name was Hook, had ever been required to visit a girls' camp; his daughters had not gone in much for that sort of thing, and Mrs. Hook distrusted night air; it was also the first time that Chief Hook had ever been required to determine facts. He had been allowed to continue in office this long because his family was popular in town and the young men at the local bar liked him, and because his record for twenty years, of drunks locked up and petty thieves apprehended upon confession, had been immaculate. In a small town such as the one lying close to the Phillips Education Camp for Girls Twelve to Sixteen, crime is apt to take its form from the characters of the inhabitants, and a stolen dog or broken nose is about the maximum to be achieved ordinarily in the sensational line. No one doubted Chief Hook's complete inability to cope with the disappearance of a girl from the camp.
'You say she was going somewhere?' he asked Betsy, having put out his cigar in deference to the camp nurse, and visibly afraid that his questions would sound foolish to Old Jane; since Chief Hook was accustomed to speaking around his cigar, his voice without it was malformed, almost quavering.
("The Missing Girl")”
Source: Just an Ordinary Day: The Uncollected Stories
“It was the first time, in the West Wing, I had ever read anyone write a Southerner properly. Because Southern women, in my opinion, are complicated and are equally feminine and driven. That's kind of an unusual combination and people usually tend to get it wrong.”
“It was the flashing lights, and the noise of the machines, and the loud, loud music, all seeming to refract and contract around her, her eyes widening, her hair swooshing, her slow smile shining. She seemed an actual part of the place - all fun, all joy, all shimmery skittering energy.”
Source: Sugar Rush
“It was the forty-fathom slumber that clears the soul and eye and heart, and sends you to breakfast ravening.”
Source: Complete Novels of Rudyard Kipling: The Light That Failed + Captain Courageous: A Story of the Grand Banks + Kim + The Naulahka: A Story of West and East (Illustrated): Including his early autobiographical novel Stalky & Co.
“It was the forty-fathom slumber that clears the soul and eye and heart, and sends you to breakfast ravening. They emptied a big tin dish of juicy fragments of fish- the blood-ends the cook had collected overnight. They cleaned up the plates and pans of the elder mess, who were out fishing, sliced pork for the midday meal, swabbed down the foc'sle, filled the lamps, drew coal and water for the cook, an investigated the fore-hold, where the boat's stores were stacked. It was another perfect day - soft, mild and clear; and Harvey breathed to the very bottom of his lungs.”
Source: The Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling: All novels, short stories, letters and poems
“It was the freedom to experiment that made this experiment called Freedom possible.”
Source: So Say the Waiters book 1
“It was the French of the Normans that, grafting itself onto the barbaric Saxon tongue, gave it its most magnificent blossoming. And, in these new countries, where both English and French are intertwined again, it is as if English were bathing itself in the fountain of its own youth, and as if French were remembering the buried treasures it had thought forgotten.”
Source: Luminous Chaos
“It was the French Revolution that served as the catalyst of this renovation. Its impact was to make the concept of popular sovereignty the new moral justification for the political system of historical capitalism.”
Source: Capistalist Civilisation
“It was the full conviction of this, and of what could be done, if every man were placed in the office for which he was fitted by nature and a proper education, which first suggested to me the plan of Illumination.”
“It was the fundamental bifurcation of the masses of human meat into two starkly opposite classes: the haves and the have-nots. The have-nots had barely anything. The haves had it all. The haves had everything except concern and compassion for the have-nots, who they regarded as little more than cockroaches.”
Source: Love Connection: Romance in the Land of the Rising Sun
“It was the Gadfly whose eyes sank first. He shrank down, hiding his face; and
Montanelli understood that the gesture meant "Go!" He turned, and went out of the
cell. A moment later the Gadfly started up.
"Oh, I can’t bear it! Padre, come back! Come back!"
The door was shut. He looked around him slowly, with a wide, still gaze, and understood that all was over. The Galilean had conquered.”
Source: The Gadfly
“It was the game that put the Everton ship back on the road.”
“It was the general opinion of ancient nations, that the divinity alone was adequate to the important office of giving laws to men... and modern nations, in the consecrations of kings, and in several superstitious chimeras of divine rights in princes and nobles, are nearly unanimous in preserving remnants of it... Is the jealousy of power, and the envy of superiority, so strong in all men, that no considerations of public or private utility are sufficient to engage their submission to rules for their own happiness? Or is the disposition to imposture so prevalent in men of experience, that their private views of ambition and avarice can be accomplished only by artifice? — … There is nothing in which mankind have been more unanimous; yet nothing can be inferred from it more than this, that the multitude have always been credulous, and the few artful. The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature: and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had any interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven, any more than those at work upon ships or houses, or labouring in merchandize or agriculture: it will for ever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses. As Copley painted Chatham, West, Wolf, and Trumbull, Warren and Montgomery; as Dwight, Barlow, Trumbull, and Humphries composed their verse, and Belknap and Ramzay history; as Godfrey invented his quadrant, and Rittenhouse his planetarium; as Boylston practised inoculation, and Franklin electricity; as Paine exposed the mistakes of Raynal, and Jefferson those of Buffon, so unphilosophically borrowed from the Recherches Philosophiques sur les Américains those despicable dreams of de Pauw — neither the people, nor their conventions, committees, or sub-committees, considered legislation in any other light than ordinary arts and sciences, only as of more importance. Called without expectation, and compelled without previous inclination, though undoubtedly at the best period of time both for England and America, to erect suddenly new systems of laws for their future government, they adopted the method of a wise architect, in erecting a new palace for the residence of his sovereign. They determined to consult Vitruvius, Palladio, and all other writers of reputation in the art; to examine the most celebrated buildings, whether they remain entire or in ruins; compare these with the principles of writers; and enquire how far both the theories and models were founded in nature, or created by fancy: and, when this should be done, as far as their circumstances would allow, to adopt the advantages, and reject the inconveniences, of all. Unembarrassed by attachments to noble families, hereditary lines and successions, or any considerations of royal blood, even the pious mystery of holy oil had no more influence than that other of holy water: the people universally were too enlightened to be imposed on by artifice; and their leaders, or more properly followers, were men of too much honour to attempt it. Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind.
[Preface to 'A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States of America', 1787]”
Source: A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America: Akashic U.S. Presidents Series
“It was the ghetto. I had seen them before from the high altitude of one who could look down and pity. Now I belonged here and the view was different. A first glance told it all. Here it was pennies and clutter and spittle on the curb... Here was the indefinable stink of despair. Here modesty was the luxury. People struggled for it... Here sensuality was escape, proof of manhood for people who could prove it no other way... Here hips drew the eye and flirted with the eye and caused the eye to lust or laugh. It was better to look at hips than at the ghetto.”
Source: Black Like Me
“It was the ghost of rationality itself ... This is the ghost of normal everyday assumptions which declares that the ultimate purpose of life, which is to keep alive, is impossible, but that this is the ultimate purpose of life anyway, so that great minds struggle to cure diseases so that people may live longer, but only madmen ask why. One lives longer in order that he may live longer. There is no other purpose. That is what the ghost says.”
“It was the girl with red hair and her friend. Jace stood up straight. The girl had taken her hair out of its ponytail and it spilled down over her shoulders, the color of a sunset. She was dancing with her eyes closed. And Jace felt something inside him stir at the way she moved, as if she had found her own circle of peace inside the chaos. She seemed sheltered by something he didn’t quite understand as she danced — and he had seen people dance and move with rare skill and amazing grace — with no sense of rhythm or practice.
Jace rarely thought about mundanes. They were the people he was supposed to protect, but his father had never brought him up to think about them as anything but an undifferentiated mass of needs and wants. A need to be saved. A want to be ignorant. Never to know of the darkness that surrounded them, the things that moved in the shadows.
He had never thought of them as carrying light themselves. But the girl with the red hair, there was a light around her.”
Source: We Jace you a Clary Xmas
“It was the great Hungarian-born polymath John von Neumann who first recognized that social behavior could be analyzed as games.”
Source: A Beautiful Mind
“It was the greatest contribution towards the whole of human race, made by China, is to prevent its 1.3 billion people from hunger.”
“It was the greatest honor God did to man that he made man in the image of God; but it is the greatest dishonor man has done to God that he has made God in the image of man.”
Source: An exposition of the Old and New Testament: wherein each chapter is summed up in its contents; the sacred text inserted at large, in distinct paragraphs; each paragraph reduced to its proper heads; the sense given, and largely illustrated; with practical remarks and observations
“It was the greatest sensation of existence: not to trust but to know.”
Source: Ayn Rand Reader
“It was the green that the sea would be, if the sea were perfect.”
“It was the hand of emperors and assassins. Languid yet lethal.”
Source: Falling Angel
“It was the happiest time of my life. I was useful, I was learning, I was away from my father. I look back at that time with extreme fondness. It seems rather far away now, but that is what age does. Time is such a villain.”
Source: Tales from Frewyn
“It was the hard work of our people, the freedom they enjoyed and their faith in God that built this country and made it the envy of the world. In all of our great cities and towns evidence of the faith of our people is found: houses of worship of every denomination are among the oldest structures. While never willing to bow to a tyrant, our forefathers were always willing to get to their knees before God. When catastrophe threatened, they turned to God for deliverance. When the harvest was bountiful the first thought was thanksgiving to God.”
“It was the hardest boyfriend I ever had to break up with [referring to crystal methamphetamines]”
“It was the hardest boyfriend I ever had to break up with.”
“It was the hardest decision of his coaching career so I accepted that I should be No 1 and that was it”
“It was the hardest time of my life, but the best part of my journey.”
“It was the hardest year of my life. It was humbling. I was a fish out of water.”
“It was the hat. He looked sweet in the hat. How could a man in a fuzzy blue hat have used human bones to pave his roads?”
Source: A Visit From the Goon Squad
“It was the hate of the used and tormented, who are the children of the used and tormented, and whose own children will be used and tormented.”
Source: Strange the Dreamer
“It was the heart of any scam or fiddle -- keep the punter uncertain, or, if he is certain, make him certain of the wrong thing.”
“It was the heart of any true moment of decadence: the knowledge that an epoque is already slipping from us, inexorably, even in the moment of its glory.”
Source: The Hotel on Place Vendome: Life, Death, and Betrayal at the Hotel Ritz in Paris
“It was the heaviest thing I'd ever felt, as if I were being crushed under a thousand trucks. I wanted to black out from the pain, but I breathed deeply. I can do this.”
Source: The Titan’s Curse
“It was the height of insanity, but he wanted to protect his true identity from people who might cause him harm until he was sure of things”
Source: The Polymorph
“It was the helplessness that scared the both of us.”
Source: A Summer to Die
“It was the highlight of my life being in the Mae West show, because I saw and did things I never had before.”
“It was the hour in which objects lose the consistency of shadow that accompanies them during the night and gradually reacquire colors, but seem to cross meanwhile an uncertain limbo, faintly touched, just breathed on by light; the hour in which one is least certain of the world's existence.”
Source: The Nonexistent Knight
“It was the hour of a profound human change, and excitement was generating on the air.”
Source: The Great Gatsby
“It was the hour of morning, when the sun mounts with those stars that shone with it when God's own love first set in motion those fair things”
Source: Inferno
“It was the hour of prayer. Black-beetles exploded against the walls like crackers. More than a dozen crawled over the tiles with injured wings. It infuriated him to think that there were still people in the state who believed in a loving and merciful God. There are mystics who are said to have experienced God directly. He was a mystic, too, and what he had experienced was vacancy — a complete certainty in the existence of a dying, cooling world, of human beings who had evolved from animals for no purpose at all. He knew.”
Source: The Power and the Glory
“It was the hour when gauze-winged insects are born that only live for a day.”
Source: The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories
“It was the hubris of each generation to think this anew, to think that their time was special, that all things would come to an end with them.”
“It was the ideal of living in Eretz Yisrael that took me out of my house, out of my country and caused me to travel from my place. I left my house; I repudiated my inheritance...Why? Because I wished to travel to the bosom of my mother, Eretz Yisrael.”
“It was the ideal place where people call ‘home.”
Source: The Pax Valley
“It was the impatience of the way he tore my panties from my body, that really turned me on: I was all he could think of, as his lust got the better of him.
I glanced back, and saw the underwear torn and discarded, a little strip of thin black material on the floor, and thought, Yes, this is the kind of impatient sex I’m looking for.
The way they looked so small, and cruelly forgotten, was a beautiful symbol of how much we both needed to satisfy our lusts.”
Source: Naked and Sexual
“It was the in-between time, before day leaves and night comes, a time I’ve never been partial to because of the sadness that lingers in the space between going and coming.”
Source: The Secret Life of Bees
“It was the incommunicable scent of this country, its intangible essence, that she had brought along with her to France.”
Source: Ignorance
“It was the influence of the Great Depression, recycling, thriftiness, stocking up to the point of hoarding for fear of being without. ... She [Rhea Leen] remembered coming home from school before Jean [Billie Jean Parker] got off work to a cold, empty house, and finding only one can of soup in the cupboard, heating the soup and eating only half of it, saving the rest for he aunt. Rather remembered ... when her father took a job as a janitor because his savings had been wiped out in the crash of 1929 and there were no other jobs. He always distrusted banks thereafter, refusing to do business with them, preferring to bury his money in the yard. He was not alone.”
Source: My Life with Bonnie and Clyde