Quotes About Decision

I had chosen the dead rather than the living, the thing thought rather than the thing thinking.

He had come to think that so long as a man wants to do right he may go where he can: when he can go no further, then it is not the way.

Similarly, there are multitudes who lose their lives pondering what they ought to believe, while something lies at their door waiting to be done, and rendering it impossible for him who makes it wait, ever to know what to believe.

Of all useless things a knowledge of the future seems to me the most useless, for what are you to do with a thing before it exists? Such a knowledge could only bewilder you as to the right way to take—would make you see double instead of single.

To be, or not to be, that is the Question:

Those whose business it is to open doors, so often mistake and shut them!

But may not one sometimes make a mistake without being able to help it?' 'Yes. But so long as he is not after his own ends, he will never make a serious mistake.

The consequences of every act are included in the act itself.

Comrades, he said, here is a point that must be settled. The wild creatures, such as rats and rabbits–are they our friends or our enemies? Let us put it to the vote. I propose this question to the meeting: Are rats comrades? The vote was taken at once, and it was agreed by an overwhelming majority that rats were comrades. There were only four dissentients, the three dogs and the cat, who was afterwards discovered to have voted on both sides.

Much better hang wrong fellow than no fellow.

There it lay, fixed in future time, preceding death as surely as 99 precedes 100. One could not avoid it, but one could perhaps postpone it: and yet instead, every now and again, by a conscious, willful act, one chose to shorten the interval before it happened.

To mark the paper was the decisive act.

But that was merely an intellectual decision, taken because he knew that he ought to take it. He did not feel it. In this place you could not feel anything, except the pain and the foreknowledge of pain. Besides, was it possible, when you were actually suffering it, to wish for any reason whatever that your own pain should increase? But that question was not answerable yet.

Still, if you gave me the choice of having any woman you care to name, but I mean any woman, or catching a ten-pound carp, the carp would win every time.

But that was merely an intellectual decision, taken because he knew that he ought to take it. He did not feel it.

As a magistrate his methods were simple. Even for the vastest bribe he would never sell the decision of a case, because he knew that a magistrate who gives wrong judgments is caught sooner or later. His practice, a much safer one, was to take bribes from both sides and then decide the case on strictly legal grounds. This won him a useful reputation for impartiality.

Don't let it happen, it's up to you

By a kind of instinct—rather queer, and probably indicating another landmark in my life—I just quietly put the money in the bank and said nothing to anybody.

And it was a queer thing I'd done coming here.

Gordon wished he would come in. Sell him a copy of Women in Love. How it would disappoint him! But no! The Welsh solicitor had funked it. He tucked his umbrella under his arm and moved off with righteously turned backside. But doubtless tonight, when darkness hid his blushes, he'd slink into one of the rubber–shops and buy High Jinks in a Parisian Convent, by Sadie Blackeyes. Gordon turned away from the door and back to the book–shelves.

It is a serious matter to shoot a working elephant–it is comparable to destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery–and obviously one ought not to do it if it can possibly be avoided.

to push an inconvenient person over a cliff solves nothing.

Better a little caution than a great regret.

Perhaps not all the time will he be rewarded because sometimes his judgment may be faulty and