Quotes About Choice

To walk into a modern-day bookstore is a little bit like studying a single photograph out of the infinite number of photographs that cold be taken of the world: It offers the reader a frame.

To paint a leaf, you have to sacrifice the whole landscape. It might seem like you're limiting yourself at first, but after a while you realize that having a quarter-of-an-inch of something you have a better chance of holding on to a certain feeling of the universe than if you pretended to be doing the whole sky. My mother did not choose a leaf or a head. She chose my father, and to hold on to a certain feeling, she sacrificed the world.

en el momento más importante de su vida no había sabido elegir las palabras.

To paint a leaf, you have to sacrifice the whole landscape. It might seem like you're limiting yourself at first, but after a while you realize that having a quarter-of-an-inch of something you have a better chance of holding on to a certain feeling of the universe than if you pretended to be doing the whole sky. My mother did not choose a leaf or a head. She chose my father, and to hold on to a certain feeling, she sacrificed the world.

That to choose on Abraham, one Moses, one David, was also to reject all the others that might have been

What if pleasure and displeasure were so tied together that whoever wanted to have as much as possible of one must also have as much as possible of the other. You have a choice in life: either as little displeasure as possible, painlessness in brief or as much displeasure as possible as the price for an abundance of subtle pleasures and joys

If I can't do what I want to do, then my job is to not do what I want to do. It's not the same thing, but it's the best thing I can do.

I guess we all get to live out our destiny, even those of us who have to choose the worst one imaginable. So why did I take this strange, dark trip? Well, I have a little 1-2-3 theory on this.

The doors of heaven and hell are adjacent and identical.

ADAM AND EVE, sitting in Paradise, chatting: If we could only open the gate and leave, says Eve. To go where, my dearest? If we could only open the gate and leave! Outside is sickness, pain, death! If we could only open the gate and leave!

Everyman has his folly, but the greatest folly of all, in my view, is not to have one.

If today I were to choose a spiritual guide from the whole wide world—a "guru," as they say in India, a "venerable father" as the monks say at Mount Athos—the one I would choose without fail would be Zorba.

He answered me: "Forgive me for saying this, Boss, but you are a pen pusher. You poor creep, you had the chance of a lifetime to see a beautiful green stone, and you didn't see it. By God, sometimes when I have no work to do, I sit down and ask myself, 'Is there a hell or isn't there?' But yesterday, when I received your letter, I said to myself, 'There sure is a hell for certain pen pushers!'

Every man has his folly. But the greatest folly of all is not to have one

A pilgrim is someone who gets moving in life because he realizes he is at a crossroads.

This is the world you have made yourself, now you have to live in it.

He reached onto his hip for the new digital data phone Serena picked out for him yesterday.

The difficulty in life is the choice.

I think of the separation between life and paradise as a river. If there are many bridges that cross the river, should it be of great concern to God which bridge the traveler chooses - Mirdin

The difficulty in life is the choice. —George Moore The Bending of the Bough

Vejo a separação entre a vida e o paraíso como um rio. Se muitas pontes cruzam o rio, será que Deus se importa qual delas escolheremos?

Creo que la separación entre la vida y el Paraíso es un río —dijo Mirdin—. Si hay muchos puentes que lo cruzan, ¿puede importarle mucho a Dios qué puente elige el viajero?

Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, it's unlikely you will step up and take responsibility for making it so. If you assume that there's no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there's a chance you may contribute to making a better world. The choice is yours.

As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise human science is at a loss.