Quotes About Choice

Yet even so, the margin between staying and leaving was so thin. Really, it could have gone either way. Sometimes I think that my years of diligent schoolwork and political idealism had given me the erroneous notion that if one choice, one plan, was hard and the other was easy, doing the hard thing was inherently better—worthier, more upstanding.

the erroneous notion that if one choice, one plan, was hard and the other was easy, doing the hard thing was inherently better—worthier, more upstanding.

Griff had the guarded face of a man who had much to lose by the wrong choice, although he had never had anything to lose. Griff's smile visited his face like a stranger who was only asking directions on his way through to another town.

Bullet shrugged. She was right, it would just be another box. It was going to be just another box for him, too, but he'd figured it out. You didn't get out of one box without getting into another, and you didn't get out of one box without getting into another, and you didn't get out without it costing you. For himself, he was just looking for a box that fit him. For her - what he was hoping to do was just loosen a board or two for her. It was up to her what she did about that.

As best she could, in her secluded position, she was considering how she might secure further choices, and what they might be — once this, her first free choice, had played itself out.

We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament, and embrace it with passion.

Her soul's already knotted over the choice of side-order, you can tell. She'll end up getting coleslaw anyway, on account of Mom says it's healthy. It's vegetables, see. Me, I need something healthier today. Like the afternoon bus out of town.

You live by what you thrill to, and there's the end of it.

Better a thousand times take one's chance with death, than accept a life one did not want.

But no, he would not give in. Turning sharply, he walked towards the city's gold phosphorescence. His fists were shut, his mouth set fast. He would not take that direction, to the darkness, to follow her. He walked towards the faintly humming, glowing town, quickly. THE END

There is no such thing as liberty. The greatest liberators are usually slaves of an idea. The freest people are slaves to convention and public opinion, and more still, slaves to the industrial machine. There is no such thing as liberty. You only change one sort of domination for another. All we can do is to choose our master.

Look here, my dear child'—and Lady Bennerley laid her thin hand on Connie's arm. "A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it. Believe me!" And she took another sip of brandy, which maybe was her form of repentance.

But how could she know what she would feel next year? How could one ever know? How could one say Yes? for years and years? The little yes, gone on a breath! Why should one be pinned down by that butterfly word? Of course it had to flutter away and be gone, to be followed by other yes's and no's! Like the straying of butterflies.

Men are less free than they imagine; ah, far lessfree. The freest are perhaps least free.

I went to the four levers. None of them were marked. There was only one way to figure out which one was the right one. I had to call upon all my Traveler experience and special powers to figure it out. It's called...Eenie, meenie, miney...mo! -Bobby Pendragon

Life and death occur in a moment. In other words, life and death are nothing but moment. You don't believe that your life is a moment, because in everyday life you always have lots of choices. But if you see death, you taste it immediately. Moment and you come together, creating the momentum energy of time, and you and death become one; you have no choice.

Destiny is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice.

As you and I march across the decades of time, we are going to meet a lot of unpleasant situations that are so. They cannot be otherwise. We have our choice. We can either accept them as inevitable and adjust ourselves to them, or we can ruin our lives with rebellion and maybe end up with a nervous breakdown.

So figure it out for yourself. Which would you rather have, an academic, theatrical victory or a person's good will? You can seldom have both. The Boston Transcript once printed this bit of significant doggerel:   Here lies the body of William Jay, Who died maintaining his right of way— He was right, dead right, as he sped along, But he's just as dead as if he were wrong.

it is easier to do ill than well in the world.

The non-suicide is a little traveling suck of care, sucking care with him from the past and being sucked toward care in the future. His breath is high in his chest. The ex-suicide opens his front door, sits down on the steps, and laughs. Since he has the option of being dead, he has nothing to lose by being alive. It is good to be alive. He goes to work because he doesn't have to.

With pulleys and ropes and time to plan one could move anything. Now that she thought of it, why couldn't anyone do anything he or she wished, given the tools and the time.

Now that she thought of it, why couldn't anyone do anything he or she wished, given the tools and the time?

That time we separated was my idea. I thought, well, I'm fifty years old and there might be someone else out there. People waste their happiness - that's what makes me sad. Everyone's so scared to be happy.