Home > Topic > the choice
1 " The key to a successful relationship isn’t just in the words, it’s in the choice of punctuation. When you’re in love with someone, a well-placed question mark can be the difference between bliss and disaster, and a deeply respected period or a cleverly inserted ellipsis can prevent all kinds of exclamations. "
― David Levithan , The Lover's Dictionary
2 " Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live--that productive work is the process by which man's consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one's purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one's values--that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind, and no work is creative if done by a blank who repeats in uncritical stupor a routine he has learned from others--that your work is yours to choose, and the choice is as wide as your mind, that nothing more is possible to you and nothing less is human--that to cheat your way into a job bigger than your mind can handle is to become a fear-corroded ape on borrowed motions and borrowed time, and to settle down into a job that requires less than your mind's full capacity is to cut your motor and sentence yourself to another kind of motion: decay--that your work is the process of achieving your values, and to lose your ambition for values is to lose your ambition to live--that your body is a machine, but your mind is its driver, and you must drive as far as your mind will take you, with achievement as the goal of your road--that the man who has no purpose is a machine that coasts downhill at the mercy of any boulder to crash in the first chance ditch, that the man who stifles his mind is a stalled machine slowly going to rust, that the man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap, and the man who makes another man his goal is a hitchhiker no driver should ever pick up--that your work is the purpose of your life, and you must speed past any killer who assumes the right to stop you, that any value you might find outside your work, any other loyalty or love, can be only travelers you choose to share your journey and must be travelers going on their own power in the same direction. "
― Ayn Rand , Atlas Shrugged
3 " Dante laughed. " No cold soup, no goat cheese. I'll make a mental note. And no Gottfried Curse." " And for you it's no food at all. No sleep. And no tunnels." " I'm low maintenance." " Is that what you are? Because I've been trying to figure it out all semester." " And what have you concluded?" " A mutant. A rare disease. A creature from the inferno. Dante." " And what if you found out you were right?" he asked. " What if it meant that I could hurt you?" " I would say that I'm not scared. Everyone has the ability to hurt. It's the choice that matters. "
4 " Take wrong turns. Talk to strangers. Open unmarked doors. And if you see a group of people in a field, go find out what they are doing. Do things without always knowing how they'll turn out. You're curious and smart and bored, and all you see is the choice between working hard and slacking off. There are so many adventures that you miss because you're waiting to think of a plan. To find them, look for tiny interesting choices. And remember that you are always making up the future as you go. "
― Randall Munroe , xkcd: volume 0
5 " I made the choice to be vegan because I will not eat (or wear, or use) anything that could have an emotional response to its death or captivity. I can well imagine what that must feel like for our non-human friends - the fear, the terror, the pain - and I will not cause such suffering to a fellow living being. "
― Rai Aren
6 " So I would choose to be with you,That's if the choice were mine to make,But you can make decisions too,And you can have this heart to break "
― Billy Joel
7 " In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another...the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting--any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, " Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," can truly say to every group of Christian friends, " Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another." The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others. "
8 " Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it. "
― Ursula K. Le Guin , The Tombs of Atuan (Earthsea Cycle, #2)
9 " Dear Non-American Black, when you make the choice to come to America, you become black. Stop arguing. Stop saying I'm Jamaican or I'm Ghanaian. America doesn't care. "
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie , Americanah
10 " It goes without saying that these effects do not suffice to annul the necessity for a “change of terrain.” It also goes without saying that the choice between these two forms of deconstruction cannot be simple and unique. A new writing must weave and interlace these two motifs of deconstruction. Which amounts to saying that one must speak several languages and produce several texts at once. I would like to point out especially that the style of the first deconstruction is mostly that of the Heideggerian questions, and the other is mostly the one which dominates France today. I am purposely speaking in terms of a dominant style: because there are also breaks and changes of terrain in texts of the Heideggerian type; because the “change of terrain” is far from upsetting the entire French landscape to which I am referring; because what we need, perhaps, as Nietzsche said, is a change of “style”; and if there is style, Nietzsche reminded us, it must be plural. "
― Jacques Derrida , Margins of Philosophy
11 " And having once chosen, never to seek to return to the crossroads of that decision-for even if one chooses wrongly, the choice cannot be unmade. "
― Jacqueline Carey , Kushiel's Chosen (Phèdre's Trilogy, #2)
12 " You thought you had the choice to stay still or move forward, but your didn't. As long as your heart kept pumping an your blood kept blowing and your lungs kept filling, you didn't. The pang she felt for Tibby carried something like envy. You couldn't stand still for anything short of death, and God knew she had tried. "
― , Sisterhood Everlasting (Sisterhood, #5)
13 " Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know—and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know—even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction—than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too. "
― Isaac Asimov
14 " It makes no sense to compare yourself with others because there will always be better & worse people than you out there. Each person has his own path to make. You are where you are now. Could you reach for the stars & have everything you want? realistically no. You may not win Olympic Gold in London 2012 , or be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company etc but you most definitely have the capacity to make YOUR life as the Masterpiece it could really be. The choice is yours... "
― Pablo
15 " Bravery is the choice to show up and listen to another person, be it a loved one or perceived foe, even when it is uncomfortable, painful, or the last thing you want to do. "
― Alaric Hutchinson
16 " Feeding the ego is starving the wisdom, the choice is yours. "
―
17 " God always gives his best to those who leave the choice with him "
― Jim Elliot
18 " A lot of pieces I have written have to do with courage. As a result, people think that I am naturally brave. But what people don't know, is that I grew up with phobias and many fears. I was scared of everything. So, I write of courage not because I have not known fear, but I write of courage because I have walked with fear but I have made the choice not to fear it. "
― C. JoyBell C.
19 " It is in the darkest hour, when we are faced with our deepest most wrenching fears, that we are given the greatest strength. The choice is whether we succumb to the fear or rise with courage to face our truth and shine our brilliance as our sword of valor. "
20 " At any given moment the choice to be happy is present- we just have to choose to be happy. "
― Steve Maraboli , Life, the Truth, and Being Free