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 right moment. It always is when something beautiful happens.”
Source: The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World
“It was the ring on the left hand that people at the Old Girls' Reunion looked for. Often, in fact nearly always, it was an uninteresting ring, sometimes no more than the plain gold band or the very smallest and dimmest of diamonds. Perhaps the husband was also of this variety, but as he was not seen at this female gathering he could only be imagined, and somehow I do not think we ever imagined the husbands to be quite so uninteresting as they probably were.”
Source: Jane and Prudence
“It was the Riverton drawing room. Even the wallpaper was the same. Silver Studios' burgundy Art Nouveau, "Flaming Tulips," as fresh as the day the paperers had come from London. A leather chesterfield sat at the center by the fireplace, draped with Indian silks just like the ones Hannah and Emmeline's grandfather, Lord Ashbury, had brought back from abroad when he was a young officer. The ship's clock stood where it always had, on the mantelpiece beside the Waterford candelabra.”
Source: The House at Riverton
“It was the Russians that introduced the Chinese to Marxism. Before the October Revolution, the Chinese were not only ignorant of Lenin and Stalin but did not even know of Marx or Engels. The salvos of the October Revolution awoke us to Marxism-Leninism.”
“It was the same attendant, and somehow, in the busiest parking lot in the city of over 2 million, he had recognized me and remembered my story.
Our brief exchange affected me deeply. As I drove away, I felt an impossible sense of hope. This man’s willingness to extend himself to a stranger sustained me in a way I could not have anticipated. My usual defences of self-sufficiency, my wariness about receiving from someone I did not know, fearing something might be wanted in return, had been dissolved by weeks of stress and need. The truth is, I only have to receive and give what I am able. There is no risk. The intimacy, the interconnectedness of all life that is the love to which we all belong, can only be given and received. It cannot be taken.
And when it is given and received, we are sustained.”
Source: The Invitation
“It was the same in World War I, when Woodrow Wilson, also a tool of the Jews, maneuvered it into the war.”
“It was the same industrial logic- protein is protein- that made feeding rendered cow parts back to cows seem like a sensible thing to do, until scientists figured out that this practice was spreading BSE [mad cow disease].”
Source: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
“It was the same night I gave myself to him completely, knowing that I would belong to him for as long as he wanted to keep me. And, as it turned out, even longer than that.”
Source: Love the One You're With
“It was the same old question, whether a declaration of purpose might protect you from failure.”
Source: Future Sex: A New Kind of Free Love
“It was the same rainy night when everything had a meaning, and your existence was worth embracing.”
“It was the same smile I’d seen the day before, the one that hesitated halfway, like it wanted to make sure he was truly happy before it committed, then lit up his face, my face and the whole world.”
Source: Love Story
“It was the same thing in the army, no respect. They gave me a uniform that glowed in the dark.”
“It was the same way with silence. This was more than silence. A deaf person can feel vibrations. Here there was nothing to feel.”
Source: A Wrinkle in Time Trilogy
“It was the same with friendship. Disagreement between friends and spouses, too had to be carefully handled. If the time you spent with friends was consumed by disagreement, then there was no room for the essence of friendship, which was a sharing of the world. And that sharing involved seeing things the same way, or at least seeing things through the eyes of the friend.”
Source: The Forgotten Affairs Of Youth: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel
“It was the same with Schumacher: the need for the adrenaline rush, to push himself to the limit was always there. So without a Formula One car to race with he went on to do motorcycle racing and other stupid things, and obviously that wasn't enough to keep him happy, so he had a problem to sort out and returning to racing was his answer to the problem.”
“It was the same with the whole Russian machine. Fear was the impulse. For them it was always safer to advance than retreat. Advance against the enemy and the bullet might miss you. Retreat, evade, betray and the bullet would never miss.”
Source: gilt-edged bonds
“It was the savagery of their territory that diminished the clan of humans, like an old blade worked over too many times with the file. Ground down, but still razor sharp. They had lost wives, and daughters, and sons to illness, or some other malady. They lost strong men too. Men they’d known their whole lives, and ridden with for decades, were dead and buried, or at least dead, because they had stood side by side together against one savage brute or another. Worse yet, there was a time when bandits hid out in the bedrock. Human scum. They were the dregs, the cruelest kind of monster, devious and cunning, with a preference for deception.”
Source: Lion Knight saga: The Knights of the Brotherhood
“It was the saying of a great man, that if we could trace our descents, we should find all slaves to come from princes, and all princes from slaves; and fortune has turned all things topsy-turvy in a long series of revolutions; beside, for a man to spend his life in pursuit of a title, that serves only when he dies to furnish out an epitaph, is below a wise man's business.”
“It was the schoolboy who said, ""Faith is believing what you know ain't so.""”
“It was the sealing of a bond forged in flight and fire. Two halves of a rebellion, finding their center in each other.”
“It was the season Ching Ming--clearness and brightness—when spirits returned from the netherworld, essences of all sorts abounded and filial sons journeyed home to their ancestral shrines to pay homage. The Wang widow, Siao lan, whose husband died on their wedding night, was on her third and final year of mourning. Her weeping-singing rent asunder the twilight calm, "O master, thou are cruel. O father, curse the day of my birth. Fate is a playful warlock. One day the fresh young bride, tomorrow, an empty-bowl widow.”
Source: Woman of Am-kaw and Other Stories
“It was the season of sex, yes, but it was also, in all the vital ways, without sex itself—and isn’t that one useful definition of a happy girlhood?”
Source: Swing Time
“It was the second time in a row they were expecting us. We’ve got an informer in our group.”
Johannes aka ‘BB’
The Informer by Steen Langstrup”
Source: The Informer
“It was the second time that day that I stood looking at a space where a large thing wasn't where it was supposed to be.”
Source: Death Without Company: A Walt Longmire Mystery
“It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn.”
“It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world.”
Source: Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus: With Supplementary Essays and Poems from the Twentieth Century
“It was the senior stew's position to be at the top of the ramp when the men got off in Vietnam. But when we were about two hours out she would usually ask for a volunteer to take the forward door. All you had to do is stand at the door and say good-bye, but nobody wanted that job. It's nothing disparaging about the other gals, but many just couldn't do it. I'd always take the forward door and I was good at it.
I never said "good-bye" or "good luck." I would shake their hand, look them in the eye, smile and say, "See you later." Sometimes I'd say, "See you in twelve months." They really wanted somebody to look at them. At the top of the ramp was the world, at the bottom of the ramp was the war. I saw eyes full of fear, some with real terror. And maybe this sounds crazy, but I saw death in some of those eyes. At that moment, at the top of the ramp, I was their wife, their sister, their girlfriend, and for those troops who had no one else -- and there were many -- I was their mother. That was the most important thing I´ve ever done. I can't imagine doing anything more important than to nudge a troop into war. If he wasn't lucky, I was nudging him to his death with the best "It will be okay" smile I could conjure up.
I don't think there was one of us who did not want to keep them on the plane. That's why some of the girls were back in the bathroom crying. They couldn't stand to watch them leave. We were very aware we were sending them to war and that some would never come back. Therein lies the guilt.
[Helen Tennant Hegelheimer, World Airways flight attendant accompanying American troops to Vietnam, 1966-67.]”
Source: Vietnam: The Definitive Oral History, Told from All Sides
“It was the sensation of the unknown becoming more than some abstract thought. It was present and tangible and clammy to the touch, burrowed so viscerally inside of and surrounding her, she was sure she could see it if only she had some fucking light”
Source: Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror
“It was the separation of powers upon which the framers placed their hopes for the preservation of the people's liberties. Despite this heritage, the congress has been in too many cases more than willing to walk away from its constitutional powers.”
“It was the seventh of November, 1918. The war was finally over. Maybe it would be declared a holiday and named War's End Day or something equally hopeful and wrong. Wars would break out again. Violence was part of human nature as much as love and generosity.”
Source: Heart Specialist
“It was the sexual chemistry I wanted more of. It was electric. I'd forgotten what it was like to be with someone who excited you in every sense of the word, who thrilled and frightened you in equal measure.”
Source: The Greatest Love Story of All Time
“It was the shaving that bothered me the most. I'm not a great fan of shaving and I had to be really clean-shaven, hands, head, hairline, all the fluff off my face, everything except my eyebrows, so this sheen, this kind of polish they used on me, would stick.”
“It was the sheer force of the letters themselves which brought forth the meaning, since the only link between the Sephirot of non-verbal Wisdom and verbal Intelligence was through the letters of the alphabet.”
“It was the sheer variety of the pain that stopped me from crying out. It came from so many places, spoke so many languages, wore so many dazzling varieties of ethnic costume, that for a full fifteen seconds I could only hang my jaw in amazement.”
Source: The Gun Seller
“It was the short men that caused all the trouble in the world.”
Source: Goldfinger
“It was the sibling thing, I suppose. I was fascinated by the intricate tangle of love and duty and resentment that tied them together. The glances they exchanged; the complicated balance of power established over decades; the games I would never play with rules I would never fully understand. And perhaps that was key: they were such a natural group that they made me feel remarkably singular by comparison. To watch them together was to know strongly, painfully, all that I'd been missing.”
Source: The Distant Hours: A Novel
“It was the sick and decaying who despised the body and earth and invented the heavenly realm and the redemptive drops of blood: but they took even these sweet and gloomy poisons from body and earth. They wanted to escape their own misery, and the stars were too far for them.”
Source: The Portable Nietzsche
“It was the silent time before dawn, along the shores of what had been one of the most beautiful lakes in southern Africa.”
Source: The Covenant: A Novel
“It was the single best sexual encounter I've ever had. We were in the Soho Grand Hotel, and there was a mirror, and I was like, 'Oh my God, you're banging the girl of your dreams and you're watching it right now.'”
“It was the single forgiving phrase in the syntax of weaponry I had strapped about me. The rest were unequivocal sentences of death.”
Source: Altered Carbon
“It was the single greatest feat I ever saw.”
Source: The Mick
“It was the sinner that Christ came to help.”
“It was the slave's continuing desire for recognition that was the motor which propelled history forward, not the idle complacency and unchanging self-identity of the master”
Source: The End of History and the Last Man
“it was the small pleasures of his work that seemed in their simplicities to fill him to the brim.”
Source: Olive Kitteridge
“It was the smile of a man who is able to see, to know and to create the glory of existence. It was the mocking, challenging smile of a brilliant intelligence.”
Source: Atlas Shrugged
“It was the smile which runs before a promise.”
Source: The House of the Whispering Pines
“It was the sort of beauty you feel so deeply it becomes contagious and somehow makes you feel beautiful too.”
Source: Local Girls
“It was the sort of bone deep emotion that made him want to hold her tighter with one hand, and draw a sword against the world with the other.”
“It was the sort of early summer that erases any memory of other seasons, one where life and warmth clasp you to the absolute.”
Source: Swimming in the Dark
“It was the sort of happiness that fools you into thinking that there is still so much more, maybe even enough to laugh forever.”
Source: If He Had Been With Me