Quotes About Choice

The instinctive preference was to read rather than to act. No wonder our actual lives were more or less a shambles

A bird may twitter a better song. But should you consider abortion wrong or that the quacks ask too high a fee, come to this wall, and see.

Ah, how much more soothing (that is to say, if one should get the choice) to be wiped off the earth by hell-bound fiends than by neurotics.

The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure

The fates lead him who will; him who won't they drag.

They thought that it would be a disgrace to go forth as a group. Each entered the forest at a point that he himself had chosen, where it was darkest and there was no path. If there is a path it is someone else's path and you are not on the adventure.

Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.

In choosing your god, you choose your way of looking at the universe. There are plenty of Gods. Choose yours.   The god you worship is the god you deserve.

Nirvana is right here, in the midst of the turmoil of life. It is the state you find when you are no longer driven to live by compelling desires, fears, and social commitments, when you have found your center of freedom and can act by choice out of that. Voluntary action out of this center is the action of the bodhisattvas -- joyful participation in the sorrows of the world. You are not grabbed, because you have released yourself from the grabbers of fear, lust, and duties.

Where there is a way or a path, it's someone else's way.

Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt: "The Fates lead him who will; him who won't, they drag.

old Roman: "The fates lead him who will; him who won't they drag.

The One Forbidden Thing. Remember Bluebeard, who says to his wife, "Don't open that closet"? And then one always disobeys. In the Old Testament story God points out the one forbidden thing. Now, God must have known very well that man was going to eat the forbidden fruit. But it was by doing that that man became the initiator of his own life. Life really began with that act of disobedience.

Where there is a way or path, it is someone else's path.

When you are on your path, and it is truly your path, doors will open for you where there were no doors for someone else.

You really can't follow a guru. You can't ask somebody to give The Reason, but you can find one for yourself; you decide what the meaning of your life is to be. People talk about the meaning of life; there is no meaning of life--there are lots of meanings of different lives, and you must decide what you want your own to be.

Freud tells us to blame our parents for all the shortcomings of our life, and Marx tells us to blame the upper class of our society. But the only one to blame is oneself. That's the helpful thing about the Indian idea of karma. Your fate is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself.

In the Old Testament story God points out the one forbidden thing. Now, God must have known very well that man was going to eat the forbidden fruit. But it was by doing that that man became the initiator of his own life. Life really began with that act of disobedience.

No one is promiscuous in his way of dying. A man who has decided to hang himself will never jump in front of a train.

The laws of God, the laws of man,He may keep that will and can;Not I: let God and man decreeLaws for themselves and not for me.

As human beings, we are endowed with freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is up to us.

It's all well and good to set reasonable goals, but when unreasonable goals are your only choice, you should always strive for them. Because it's not really a choice at all.

Being a wife to a man is like being a lid to a jar: if she doesn't fit, he'll simply try another lid.

Salvation is from our side a choice, from the divine side it is a seizing upon, an apprehending, a conquest by the Most High God. Our accepting and willing are reactions rather than actions. The right of determination must always remain with God.