I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion that they were created rather to feel than reason.”
Source: The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft
“It would be an error to try to build the Kingdom of Heaven upon envy. For nothing that is founded on envy can thrive; it must have another root.”
Source: Selected Writings
“It would be an exaggeration to say I’m not afraid of death, but I’m not afraid of what comes after, because I’m not a believer.”
“It would be an existence rife with difficulties... but of a pleasurable kind, difficulties they could take pride in, possess, value, as one would a family heirloom.”
Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns
“It would be an inconvenient rule if nothing could be done until everything can be done.”
“It would be an instructive exercise for the skeptical reader to try to frame a definition of taxation which does not also include theft. Like the robber, the State demands money at the equivalent of gunpoint; if the taxpayer refuses to pay, his assets are seized by force, and if he should resist such depredation, he will be arrested or shot if he should continue to resist.”
Source: The Ethics of Liberty
“It would be an understatement to suggest I disliked him at once. To claim I was nevertheless captivated against my will would also be minimizing. Here was a man who had my attention in under a minute and whom I wanted to tear to shreds.”
Source: The Temptation of Eden
“It would be an undoubted advantage if we were to leave God out altogether and honestly admit the purely human origin of all the regulations and precepts of civilization. Along with their pretended sanctity, these commandments and laws would lose their rigidity and unchangeableness as well. People could understand that they are made, not so much to rule them as, on the contrary, to serve their interests; and they would adopt a more friendly attitude to them, and instead of aiming at their abolition, would aim only at their improvement.”
Source: THE FUTURE OF AN ILLUSION
“It would be an unspeakable advantage, both to the public and private, if men would consider that great truth, that no man is wise or safe but he that is honest.”
Source: The Works of Sir Walter Ralegh, Kt: Miscellaneous works
“It would be as naive to study the song of the nightingale, as it would be ridiculous to try and win a King's Gambit against a representative of the old chess guard.”
Source: 200 Open Games
“It would be as unthinkable to try to construct the Labour Party without Marx as it would to be to establish university faculties of astronomy,anthropology or psychology without permitting the study of Copernicus, Darwin or Freud, and still expect such faculties to be taken seriously”
“It would be as useless to perceive how things 'actually look' as it would be to watch the random dots on untuned television screens.”
“It would be as wise to set up an accomplished lawyer to saw wood as a business as to condemn an educated and sensible woman to spend all her time boiling potatoes and patching old garments. Yet this is the lot of many a one who incessantly stitches and boils and bakes, compelled to thrust back out of sight the aspirations which fill her soul.”
“It would be asking too much to want to sell only to connoisseurs - that way starvation lies.”
Source: Monet by Himself: Paintings, Drawings, Pastels, Letters
“It would be autumn, and our fathers would be out threshing in the fields. We would walk through the mulberry groves, past the big loquat tree and the old lotus pond, where we used to catch tadpoles in the spring. Our dogs would come running up to us. Our neighbours would wave. Our mothers would be sitting by the well with their sleeves tied up, washing the evening's rice. And when they saw us they would just stand up and stare. "Little girl," they would say to us, "where in the world have you been?”
Source: The Buddha in the Attic
“It would be awesome to be so impressive that we could sway people to our way of thinking just by declaiming our thoughts, but probably most of us lack such gravitas. Luckily, there's something even better: evidence, logic, and argument.”
“It would be awesome to know how to sing and be some sort of performer; to feed off other's people's energy is intense. The feeling they must feel would be cool. Too bad I can't sing.”
“It would be awesome to stay popular, but if I was only an underground artist, I would be okay with that.”
“It would be bad for the economy if we have another Jimmy Carter grain embargo, Jimmy, Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Carter grain embargo, Jimmy Carter grain embargo.”
“It would be bad form for me to describe people I don't know and don't understand.”
“It would be beautiful to photograph the winners of everything from Nobel to booby prize, clutching trophy, or money or certificate, solemn or smiling or tear stained or bloody, on the precarious pinnacle of the human landscape.”
Source: Diane Arbus: revelations
“It would be better alone, anything is better alone but I don't think I can handle it alone.”
Source: To Have and Have Not
“It would be better for me ... that multitudes of men should disagree with me rather than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself.”
“It would be better for me to die than to live.”
“It would be better for the true physics if there were no mathematicians on earth.”
“It would be better for us to have some doubts in an honest pursuit of truth, than it would be for us to be certain about something that was not true.”
“It would be better for you to turn around and go into the thick grasses, there where one of those strange grassy islets in the riverbed will completely cover you, it would be better if you do this for once and for all, because if you come back tomorrow, or after tomorrow, there will be no one at all to understand, no one to look, not even a single one among all your natural enemies that will be able to see who you really are; it would be better for you to go away this very evening when twilight begins to fall, it would be better for you to retreat with the others, if night begins to descend, and you should not come back if tomorrow, or after tomorrow, dawn breaks, because for you it will be much better for there to be no tomorrow and no day after tomorrow; so hide away now in the grass, sink down, fall onto your side, let your eyes slowly close, and die, for there is no point in the sublimity that you bear, die at midnight in the grass, sink down and fall, and let it be like that — breathe your last.”
Source: Seiobo There Below
“It would be better if I called you,’ she told me, and caution, I thought,
caution, how well she knows how to conduct an affair like this, and I
remembered again the stair that always - ‘always’ was the phrase she had
used -squeaked.”
Source: The End of the Affair
“It would be better if it did break, better than living with wanting and not having, better than living itself.”
Source: The Sun Is Also a Star
“It would be better if there were nothing. Since there is more pain than pleasure on earth, every satisfaction is only transitory, creating new desires and new distresses, and the agony of the devoured animal is always far greater than the pleasure of the devourer”
Source: 101 Facts of life
“It would be better if you began to teach others only after you yourself have learned something.”
“It would be better not to know so many things than to know so many things that are not so.”
“It would be better to be deceived a hundred times than to live a life of suspicion.”
Source: Lectures to My Students
“It would be better to disconnect from everything, to float free from my body, to be nothing in an endless night of nothing.”
Source: The Stolen Heir
“It would be better to drown these prisoners in the Dead Sea if possible, since that's the lowest point in the world.”
“It would be better to have no laws at all, than to have too many.”
“It would be both foolish and cumbersome to continue our everyday existences in bliss without first denying to ourselves, for the sake of excusing our own repugnance, the inherent cruelty from which modern civilization was conceived...And there can be no other path by which a fiercely competitive, yet social species, as humanity, can afford its members the level of safety, prosperity and stability—such that we enjoy now— without its initial pangs of cannibalism, brutality, dominance and cruelty to forge the foundations, very much like the lava which formed the ground upon which we now stand. Lava still erupts from the core. Brutality, Dominance, and Cruelty similarly erupt from ours; and they are no less prevalent now than in early human history.”
Source: Only the Deplorable
“It would be catastrophic if one day these fundamentalists Christians gain enough political power to enforce their literal understanding of Mosaic Law.”
“It would be considered a theft on our part if we didn't give to someone in greater need than we are.”
“It would be consistent and proper for us to join the war for democratic freedom, only if we would likewise be assured that democratic freedom in theory as well as in practice.”
“It would be contrary to the spirit of the American Government to use force to subjugate the South.”
“It would be convenient if one could redesign the past, change a few things here and there, like certain acts of outrageous stupidity, but if one could do that, the past would always be in motion. It would never settle down finally to days of solid marble.”
Source: An Unfortunate Woman
“It would be cool to be invisible, but I'm afraid of what people would say about me if they didn't know I was there. Some things are better left unknown.”
“It would be crazy for me to come out now talking about selling drugs and doing all this stuff I never did for the sake of A&R or records or trying to keep the street buzz or whatever.”
“It would be crazy to say no to someone she cared about simply because she had a few insubstantial doubts.”
“It would be creepy if you knew my home address.”
“It would be curious to discover who it is to whom one writes in a diary. Possibly to some mysterious personification of one's own identity.”
Source: My Apprenticeship
“It would be curious to know what leads a man to become a stationer rather than a baker, when he is no longer compelled, as among the Egyptians, to succeed to his father's craft.”
“It would be dangerous territory if I wasn't practising what I preach which is to always accept responsibility, always accept the consequences of your actions.”
“It would be deemed foolish to repay a spiritual separation that Adam and Eve committed, with the death of the body only.”
Source: Sinless