Choice Quotes

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I'm single because I was born that way.

But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.

Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path untaken.

But the Hebrew word, the word timshelThou mayest that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if Thou mayestit is also true that Thou mayest not.

Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it.

Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny.

Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.

Sleep my little baby-oh
Sleep until you waken
When you wake you'll see the world
If I'm not mistaken...
Kiss a lover
Dance a measure,
Find your name
And buried treasure...
Face your life
Its pain,
Its pleasure,
Leave no path untaken.

I knew they would kill me when they found out, but… He struggled for words, releasing a sharp breath. I think I realized that I would rather die because I betrayed them, than live because I betrayed you.

In the space between yes and no, there's a lifetime. It's the difference between the path you walk and the one you leave behind; it's the gap between who you thought you could be and who you really are; its the legroom for the lies you'll tell yourself in the future.

An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.

I have seen the best of you, and the worst of you, and I choose both.

You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.

You have a choice. Live or die.
Every breath is a choice.
Every minute is a choice.
Every time you don't throw yourself down the stairs, that's a choice. Every time you don't crash your car, you re-enlist.

Choosing a path meant having to miss out on others. She had a whole life to live, and she was always thinking that, in the future, she might regret the choices she made now. I’m afraid of committing myself, she thought to herself. She wanted to follow all possible paths and so ended up following none. Even in that most important area of her life, love, she had failed to commit herself. After her first romantic disappointment, she had never again given herself entirely. She feared pan, loss, and separation. These things were inevitable on the path to love, and the only way of avoiding them was by deciding not to take that path at all. In order not to suffer, you had to renounce love. It was like putting out your own eyes not to see the bad things in life.

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.

To say you have no choice is to relieve yourself of responsibility.

When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.

You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.

There are no safe choices. Only other choices.

He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing.

He often felt that too many people lived their lives acting and pretending,wearing masks and losing themselves in the process.

Plant seeds of happiness, hope, success, and love; it will all come back to you in abundance. This is the law of nature.

Just keep asking yourself: What would Jesus not do?

Kiss a lover,
Dance a measure,
Find your name
And buried treasure.
Face your life,
It's pain,
It's pleasure,
Leave no path untaken.

Love is the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth... Love is as love does. Love is an act of will -- namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.

When you make a choice, you change the future.

Honestly, if you're given the choice between Armageddon or tea, you don't say 'what kind of tea?

The truth is messy. It's raw and uncomfortable. You can't blame people for preferring lies.

Staring at the stars was like staring backward in time, since some stars are so far away that their light takes millions of years just to reach us. That we see stars not as they look now, but as they were when dinosaurs roamed the earth. The whole concept just struck me as…amazing somehow.

The problem, simply put, is that we cannot choose everything simultaneously. So we live in danger of becoming paralyzed by indecision, terrified that every choice might be the wrong choice.

What is the point of having free will if one cannot occasionally spit in the eye of destiny?

This I choose to do. If there is a price, this I choose to pay. If it is my death, then I choose to die. Where this takes me, there I choose to go. I choose. This I choose to do.

A man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind.

When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don't take are snuffed out like candles, as if they'd never existed.

A craven can be as brave as any man, when there is nothing to fear. And we all do our duty, when there is no cost to it. How easy it seems then, to walk the path of honor. Yet soon or late in every man's life comes a day when it is not easy, a day when he must choose. (Maester Aemon)

Fear is not real. The only place that fear can exist is in our thoughts of the future. It is a product of our imagination, causing us to fear things that do not at present and may not ever exist. That is near insanity. Do not misunderstand me danger is very real but fear is a choice.

Because to take away a man's freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person.

Everythings a choice. Nobody's born good. Nobody's born evil. It's always a choice.

If you have a goal, write it down. If you do not write it down, you do not have a goal - you have a wish.

Choices determine character.

What happens if your choice is misguided?' I ask, softly.
Miss Moore takes a pear from the bowl and offers us the grapes to devour. 'You must try to correct it.'
'But what if it’s too late? What if you can’t?'
There's a sad sympathy in Miss Moore's catlike eyes as she regards my painting again. She paints the thinnest sliver of shadow along the bottom of the apple, bringing it fully to life.
'Then you must find a way to live with it.

Single is no longer a lack of options – but a choice. A choice to refuse to let your life be defined by your relationship status but to live every day Happily and let your Ever After work itself out.

Choices may be unbelievably hard but they're never impossible. To say you have no choice is to release yourself from responsibility and that's not how a person with integrity acts.

It's not that I can't live without you; it's that I don't want to. There's a difference. We all make choices in life and I choose you.
My heart belongs to you. And I'm not asking for it back, even if you won't want it anymore. I'm just asking for a chance to have your again. I promise I'll be more careful with it this time.

Dalek: I will talk to the Doctor.
The Doctor: Oh will you? That's nice. Hello!
Dalek: The Dalek strategem nears completion. The fleet is almost ready. You will not intervene.
The Doctor: Oh really? Why's that, then?
Dalek: We have your associate. You will obey or she will be exterminated.
The Doctor: No.
Dalek: Explain yourself.
The Doctor: I said, "No."
Dalek: What is the meaning of this negative?
The Doctor: It means, "No."
Dalek: But she will be destroyed!
The Doctor: No! 'Cause this is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna rescue her. I'm gonna save Rose Tyler from the middle of the Dalek fleet, and then I'm gonna save the Earth. And then—just to finish off—I'm gonna wipe every last stinking Dalek out of the sky!
Dalek: But you have no weapons, no defenses, no plan.
The Doctor: Yeah! And doesn't that scare you to death? Rose?
Rose: Yes, Doctor?
The Doctor: I'm coming to get you.

What is a woman's place in this modern world?
Jasnah Kholin's words read.
I rebel against this question, though so many of my peers ask it. The inherent bias in the inquiry seems invisible to so many of them. They consider themselves progressive because they are willing to challenge many of the assumptions of the past.
They ignore the greater assumption--that a 'place' for women must be defined and set forth to begin with. Half of the population must somehow be reduced to the role arrived at by a single conversation. No matter how broad that role is, it will be--by-nature--a reduction from the infinite variety that is womanhood.
I say that there is no role for women--there is, instead, a role for each woman, and she must make it for herself. For some, it will be the role of scholar; for others, it will be the role of wife. For others, it will be both. For yet others, it will be neither.
Do not mistake me in assuming I value one woman's role above another. My point is not to stratify our society--we have done that far to well already--my point is to diversify our discourse.
A woman's strength should not be in her role, whatever she chooses it to be, but in the power to choose that role. It is amazing to me that I even have to make this point, as I see it as the very foundation of our conversation.