Intelligence is a luxury, sometimes useless, sometimes fatal. It is a torch or a fire-brand according to the use one makes of it.—Fernan Caballero.
Intemperance.—The body, overcharged with the excess of yesterday, weighs down the mind together with itself, and fixes to the earth that particle of the divine spirit.—Horace.
Intemperance is a great decayer of beauty.—Junius.
Intolerance.—Nothing dies so hard, and rallies so often, as intolerance.—Beecher.
Intolerance is the curse of every age and state.—Dr. Davies.
Invective.—Invective may be a sharp weapon, but over-use blunts its edge. Even when the denunciation is just and true, it is an error of art to indulge in it too long.—Tyndall.
Invention.—Invention is a kind of muse, which, being possessed of the other advantages common to her sisters, and being warmed by the fire of Apollo, is raised higher than the rest.—Dryden.
Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory. Nothing can be made of nothing: he who has laid up no materials can produce no combinations.—Sir J. Reynolds.
Irony.—Irony is to the high-bred what billingsgate is to the vulgar; and when one gentleman thinks another gentleman an ass, he does not say it point-blank, he implies it in the politest terms he can invent.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Irresolution.—Irresolution is a worse vice than rashness. He that shoots best may sometimes miss the mark; but he that shoots not at all can never hit it. Irresolution loosens all the joints of a state; like an ague, it shakes not this nor that limb, but all the body is at once in a fit. The irresolute man is lifted from one place to another; so hatcheth nothing, but addles all his actions.—Feltham.