If I lose mine honour, I lose myself. Ant. and 40 Cleop., iii. 4.
If I love thee, what is that to thee? Goethe.
If I'm designed yon lordling's slave, / By Nature's law designed, / Why was an independent wish / E'er planted in my mind? Burns.
If I must die, / I will encounter darkness as a bride / And hug it in my arms. Meas. for Meas., iii. 1.
If I seek an interest of my own detached from that of others, I seek an interest which is chimerical, and can never have existence. James Harris.
If I should say nothing, I should say much 45 (much being included in my love); though my love be such, that if I should say much, I should yet say nothing, it being, as Cowley says, equally impossible either to conceal or to express it. Pope.
If I wish for a horse-hair for my compass-sight, I must go to the stable; but the hair-bird, with her sharp eyes, goes to the road. Thoreau.
If ill thoughts at any time enter into the mind of a good man, he doth not roll them under his tongue as a sweet morsel. Matthew Henry.
If in the course of our life we see that done by others for which we ourselves at one time felt a vocation, and which we were, with much else, compelled to relinquish, then the noble feeling comes in, that only humanity altogether is the true man, and that the individual can only rejoice and be happy when he has the heart (Muth) to feel himself in the whole. Goethe.
If in youth the universe is majestically unveiling, and everywhere heaven revealing itself on earth, nowhere to the young man does this heaven on earth so immediately reveal itself as in the young maiden. Carlyle.