If life and death did not both present themselves to us, there would be no inscrutability.

If there were only darkness, all would be clear.

If there were only the mess, all would be clear ; ;

If we remove ourselves for a moment from our time and our infatuation with mental disease, isn't there something absurd about a hero in a novel who is defeated by his infantile neurosis??

If you had screamed right there in the street where we stood, I could not have felt more fear.

If there was ever a thought in her mind she might devote her life to religion, it was now dispelled.

If she were not at home, Mama would see to it that a fresh white rose was there.

If the Stearns were not there, grace would be omitted.

If, as Reid says, `` nearly all his poetry was produced when he was not taking opium '', there may be some reason to doubt that he was under its influence in the period from 1896 to 1900 when he was writing the poems to Katie King and making plans for another book of verse.

If there be a disinterested patriot in America, 'tis General Washington, and his bravery, none can question ''.

If they do as well as they did in 1960 there can be no complaint.

If there were no West Berlin problem, imperialist quarters would have invented an excuse for stepping up the armaments race to try to solve the internal and external problems besetting the United States and its NATO partners.

If either one ever started making promises, there is no telling where the promises would end.

If one follows the reports of the Congress, one finds that there still seems considerable uncertainty in the minds of the leaders themselves about what exactly to do in this matter.

If he were to go with White, he would be out there two days, not just listening in the dark at some point between here and Papa-san, but moving ever deeper into enemy land -- behind Papa-san -- itself.

If their schedules were to synchronize, there was no point in wasting time.

If there was a fire or a flood he would save Mama first and Violet next.

If only there was a clock for him to crawl against.

If nothing is produced, there is no obligation to repay.

-- If there are outside windows in the basement corner where you build a shelter, they should be shielded as shown in the Appendix, page 29.

If there is time after the warning, the basement shielding could be improved substantially by blocking windows with bricks, dirt, books, magazines, or other heavy material.

If there is anything which we can do in the executive branch of the Government to speed up the processes by which we come to decisions on matters on which we must act promptly, that in itself would be a major contribution to the conduct of our affairs.

If you file a Form 1040, you should indicate in the place provided that there is an overpayment of tax and the amount you want refunded and the amount you want credited against your estimated tax.

If there are any major restrictions, they usually can be obtained in printed form.

If you plan to add cooling later to your heating system, there are things to watch for.

If the circumstances are faced frankly it is not reasonable to expect this to be true.

If his dancers are sometimes made to look as if they might be creatures from Mars, this is consistent with his intention of placing them in the orbit of another world, a world in which they are freed of their pedestrian identities.

If a work is divided into several large segments, a last-minute drawing of random numbers may determine the order of the segments for any particular performance.

If they avoid the use of the pungent, outlawed four-letter word it is because it is taboo ; ;

If Wilhelm Reich is the Moses who has led them out of the Egypt of sexual slavery, Dylan Thomas is the poet who offers them the Dionysian dialectic of justification for their indulgence in liquor, marijuana, sex, and jazz.

If he is the child of nothingness, if he is the predestined victim of an age of atomic wars, then he will consult only his own organic needs and go beyond good and evil.

If it is an honest feeling, then why should she not yield to it??

If he thus achieves a lyrical, dreamlike, drugged intensity, he pays the price for his indulgence by producing work -- Allen Ginsberg's `` Howl '' is a striking example of this tendency -- that is disoriented, Dionysian but without depth and without Apollonian control.

If love reflects the nature of man, as Ortega Y Gasset believes, if the person in love betrays decisively what he is by his behavior in love, then the writers of the beat generation are creating a new literary genre.

If he is good, he may not be legal ; ;

If the man on the sidewalk is surprised at this question, it has served as an exclamation.

If the existent form is to be retained new factors that reinforce it must be introduced into the situation.

If many of the characters in contemporary novels appear to be the bloodless relations of characters in a case history it is because the novelist is often forgetful today that those things that we call character manifest themselves in surface behavior, that the ego is still the executive agency of personality, and that all we know of personality must be discerned through the ego.

If he is a traditionalist, he is an eclectic traditionalist.

If our sincerity is granted, and it is granted, the discrepancy can only be explained by the fact that we have come to believe hearsay and legend about ourselves in preference to an understanding gained by earnest self-examination.

If to be innocent is to be helpless, then I had been -- as are we all -- helpless at the start.