Quotes About Choice

This was love, I supposed, and eventually I would come to know it. Someday it would choose me and I would come to know its spell, for long stretches and short, two times, maybe three, and then quite probably it would choose me never again.

You chose love like a belief, a faith, a place, a box for one's heart to knock against like a spook in the house.

You have a choice, she told the class. The whorish emptiness of lies or the straightlaced horrors of truth.

I tried to live cautiously - or eventually learned to try to live - in a spirit of regret prevention, and I could not see how Bonnie could accomplish such a thing in this situation. Regret - operatic, oceanic, fathomless - seemed to stretch before her in every direction. No matter which path she took, regret would stain her feet and scratch her arms and rain down on her, lightlessly and lifelong. It had already begun.

She believes you can refuse to participate in certain emotions. "I like hamburgers but I don't eat them," she says. "Hamburgers are not an emotion," says Roz. "Yes they are," says Charis.

Let's make our own way,' says the Mother, 'and not in this boat.

Learning that we are more than the voices that haunt us can provide hope and serve as a mean of changing our life. As the language of self-awareness is expanded and reinforced we learn that we are capable of choosing whether or not to follow the expectations of others and the mandates of our childhoods and cultures. Thus much of our suffering can be traced back to our stream of thoughts: the voices in our heads and the stories we tell about ourselves.

Life is nothing if not a random motion of coincidences and quirks of chance; it never goes as planned or as foretold; frequently one gains happiness from being obliged to follow an unchosen path or misery from following a chosen one.

Up to a point a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movements and changes in the world about him; then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say, this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow. The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds.

A man marries by accident, a woman by design.

A man ought to know enough to make a choice; and pa, he always advised me to look to both sides of a proposition.

But a long time ago I made me a rule: I let people do what they want to do.

When evil takes up to violence, the good have no choice but to defend themselves.

Barnabas speaks] I will drink water. Water? But water is not fit for men to drink. For the cattle, for birds and beast, but a man needs ale . . . or wine, if you are a Frenchman. [William answers]

The way I see it, every time a man gets up in the morning he starts his life over, Sure, the bills are there to pay, and the job is there to do, but you don't have to stay in a pattern. You can always start over, saddle a fresh horse and take another trail. ~Kearney McRaven

Up to a point a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movements and changes in the world about him; then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say, this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow.

A lady should be allowed to choose her comp'ny, an' should be treated like a lady until she shows she prefers different.

How often it is that a whim may alter the course of our existences! How often the simple decision whether to go right or left when one leaves a doorway can change so much! A man may turn to the right and walk straightaway into all manner of evil, and to the left, all manner of good.

You can marry me now and resent at leisure.

when we choose a belief and act on it, we change the way things are.

If behaving as thought we had free will or God exists gets us results we want, we will not only come to believe those things; they will be, pragmatically, true.

Anxiety is the price tag on human freedom

Life will deal me many different hands, some good, some bad (maybe they've already been dealt), but from here on in, I'll be turning my own cards. —Alton Richard

And what would you like, Sharie? asked Miss Mush. What do you have? asked Sharie. Potato salad. What else is there? asked Sharie. Nothing said Miss Mush. Okay said Sharie. I'll have that. Potato salad? asked Miss Mush. No,nothing. said Sharie.