Quotes About Choice

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“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.”
― Robert Frost

“I'm single because I was born that way.”
― Mae West

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

“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.”
― Jodi Picoult, Change of Heart

“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.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“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.”
― William Jennings Bryan

“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.”
― Aristotle

“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.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

“Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path untaken.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

“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.”
― Paulo Coelho, Brida

“There are no safe choices. Only other choices.”
― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty

“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.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“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.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

“Just keep asking yourself: What would Jesus not do?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“When a man cannot chose, he ceases to be a man.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“He often felt that too many people lived their lives acting and pretending,wearing masks and losing themselves in the process.”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Choice

“Plant seeds of happiness, hope, success, and love; it will all come back to you in abundance. This is the law of nature.”
― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

“To say you have no choice is to relieve yourself of responsibility.”
― Patrick Ness, Monsters of Men

“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“What happens if your choice is misguided,
You must try to correct it
But what if it’s too late? What if you can’t?
Then you must find a way to live with it.”
― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty

“What is the point of having free will if one cannot occasionally spit in the eye of destiny?”
― Jim Butcher, White Night

“The truth is messy. It's raw and uncomfortable. You can't blame people for preferring lies.”
― Holly Black, Red Glove

“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.”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Choice

“Choices determine character.”
― Brandon Mull, Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary

“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.”
― Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

“There is a time in every life when paths are chosen, character is forged. I could have chosen a different path. But I didn’t. I failed myself.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“I once saw a politician walking a dog, and I thought, “How absurd—an animal walking an animal.” Then I thought, “If given the choice, I’d rather vote for the dog.”
”
― Jarod Kintz, This is the best book I've ever written, and it still sucks