Quotes About Choice

We make our own choices and we're each responsible for them. Blame and credit belong to the individual. You haven't the right to claim either from someone else.

It was one of those events which decide the life of a man;

although a companion is agreeable, perfect freedom is sometimes still more agreeable. I

Sainte-Croix, a strange mixture of qualities good and evil, had reached the supreme crisis of his life, when the powers of darkness or of light were to prevail. Maybe, if he had met some angelic soul at this point, he would have been led to God; he encountered a demon, who conducted him to Satan.

Si domandano consigli soltanto per non seguirli, oppure, se si seguono, è per avere qualcuno da rimproverare per averli dati.

He whose game is the eagle takes no heed of the sparrow

Athos, secondo il solito, né lo dissuadeva, né lo incoraggiava. Athos era del parere che bisognava lasciare ad ognuno la sua libera scelta. Non dava mai consigli senza esserne richiesto e bisognava anche chiederglieli due volte. - In generale, - egli diceva, - i consigli si chiedono soltanto per non seguirli, o, se si sono seguiti, per aver qualcuno a cui poter rimproverare d'averli dati.

It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life. For my part, I should be inclined to think freedom less necessary in the great things than in the little ones, if it were possible to be secure of the one without the other.

This demonstrated to me that those who regard universal suffrage as a guarantee for good choices are under a complete illusion. Universal suffrage has other advantages, but not that one.

for a taste for variety is one of the characteristic passions of democracy.

It is, indeed, difficult to conceive how men who have entirely given up the habit of self-government should succeed in making a proper choice of those by whom they are to be governed; and no one will ever believe that a liberal, wise, and energetic government can spring from the suffrages of a subservient people.

Whoever seeks anything from freedom but freedom itself is doomed to slavery.

By the choice of the master, or by the will of the slave, it will cease; and in either case great calamities may be expected to ensue.

He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice. He gains no practice either in discerning or in desiring what is best. The mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used. The faculties are called into no exercise by doing a thing merely because others do it, no more than by believing a thing only because others believe it.

We prattle about free will, but we're nothing but response . . . mechanical reaction in prescribed grooves.

Through the vistas of the years every age but our own seems glamorous and golden. We yearn for the yesterdays and tomorrows, never realizing that we are faced with Hobson's Choice … that today, bitter or sweet, anxious or calm, is the only day for us. The dream of time is the traitor, and we are all accomplices to the betrayal of ourselves.

Jill told me that when you're really in love, you know right away. I'm not exactly sure how this happens. Is it like a flash of lightning? Like an angel tapping you on the shoulder? Or is it similar to choosing a puppy? You think you're picking the cutest one, but really you wind up going home with the one who keeps insisting on climbing into your lap.

Young people believe that regret is something you will never feel if you simply do as you please, but sometimes it is a matter of degree.

Do what you want, do what you will, do what you have to, do what you think you cannot.

Just know that what's done can be undone, but what's undone can never again be.

She preferred cats to human beings and turned down every offer from the men who fell in love with her.

What you wind up regretting aren't the things you do, it's what you don't do that you will never forgive yourself for.

Nothing could do that to them, that's what they used to whisper as they sat on the back stairs, in the dark and the dust, as if desire were a matter of personal choice.

Do people choose the art that inspires them — do they think it over, decide they might prefer the fabulous to the real? For me, it was those early readings of fairy tales that made me who I was as a reader and, later on, as a storyteller.