Choice Quotes

“I dare say it is rather hard to be a rat,” she mused. “Nobody likes you. People jump and run away and scream out: ‘Oh, a horrid rat!’ I shouldn’t like people to scream and jump and say: ‘Oh, a horrid Sara!’ the moment they saw me, and set traps for me, and pretend they were dinner. It’s so different to be a sparrow. But nobody asked this rat if he wanted to be a rat when he was made. Nobody said: ‘Wouldn’t you rather be a sparrow?”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

“I'm tired of being your best friend. I'm tired of being second best. I won't settle for that anymore. It's all or nothing, Schuyler. You have to decide. Him or me.

- Oliver Hazzard-Perry”
― Melissa de la Cruz, Revelations

“He knew what it was like to love one who did not--or could not--love you back. But he'd had no choice. None of them did.”
― Melissa de la Cruz, Revelations

“Although goals are important, having a plan of action is vital to the success of those goals. Having a goal with no plan of action is like wanting to travel to a new destination without having a map.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“I wish sometimes that the gods would either choose better, or make their wishes clearer”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Chosen

“Are the choices you are making going to really make you happy NOW or happy eventually?”
― Robert Holden

“Trust is not a gasoline-soaked blanket that succumbs to the matches of betrayal, never able to be used for its warmth again; it’s a tapestry that wears thin in places, but can be patched over if you have the right materials, circumstances, and patience to repair it. If you don’t, you’re always the one who feels the coldest when winter comes.”
― A.J. Darkholme, Rise of the Morningstar

“There cannot be equality in power if there is no choice.”
― Jennifer L. Armentrout, The ​Crown of Gilded Bones

“It’s not my wish to walk intoxicated; to live for never is not my choice.”
― Suman Pokhrel

“You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice. If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill. I will choose a path thats clear. I will choose Freewill.”
― Neil Peart

“There comes a moment in every life when the Universe presents you with an opportunity to rise to your potential. An open door that only requires the heart to walk through, seize it and hang on.
The choice is never simple. It’s never easy. It’s not supposed to be. But those who travel this path have always looked back and realized
that the test was always about the heart. ...The rest is just practice.”
― Jaime Buckley, Prelude to a Hero

“You have two choices: You can make a living, or you can design a life.”
― Jim Rohn

“It wasn’t that she necessarily wanted to “socialize” at the bonfire, but she wanted to broadcast to the general population that her antisocial behavior was a personal choice not a sentence to social leprosy.”
― J.D. Stroube, Caged in Darkness

“... is it truly possible to steal a life, if... the Self is eternal and cannot die? Should this be so, then one who 'murders' does no more than transgress against the will of another, whose choice it is to live. At bottom, a murderer offends not against the body, but against the spirit.”
― Ki Longfellow, Flow Down Like Silver

“You won't understand this now, Saira. Later, perhaps. When you are older. When you learn that life is not only about the choices you make. That some of them will be made for you.”
― Nafisa Haji, The Writing on My Forehead

“My people sing, we dance, we love. That is our strength. But we also dig. And then we die. Seldom do we get to choose why. That choice is power. That choice has been our only weapon. But it is not enough.”
― Pierce Brown, Red Rising

“Look to your heart and soul first, rather than looking to your head first, when choosing. Rather than what you think, consider instead how you feel. Look to the nature of things. Feel your choices and decisions. It just might change everything.”
― Jeffrey R. Anderson, The Nature of Things - Navigating Everyday Life with Grace

“At some point the choice you will face is whether to carry out your duties or live your life”
― Cayla Kluver, Legacy

“Sometimes she has imagined what it would be like to fly, to live in the river, to run like a horse. She has dreamed of that freedom, that power, and fears the wildness in herself that wants to live as beasts live, moved purely by need and desire. She has felt torn between the heat of her limbs and the thoughts in her mind telling her to be careful and good and always calm”
― Francesca Lia Block, Primavera

“In a moment, everything can change and in a moment, you can change everything.”
― Daniel Wallace

“There are those wonderful moments of clarity in life when one is reminded how irreparably flawed we humans are. Once, when I was nineteen, on the subway in Boston I lost my balance slightly and bumped into an elderly woman. I quickly apologized and she replied, "Well, hold on to something, stupid." There it is. That's it. That's it in a nutshell. I don't want to sound negative, but I think every fetus should be shown a film of that incident, maybe projected up on the uterine wall, and then asked if it wants to come out. I am a strong believer in a woman's right to choose, but I also think that in the last trimester, the kid should be given every opportunity to back out.”
― Paula Poundstone

“DANTE: And what if you found out you were right? What if it meant that I could hurt you?

RENEE: I would not say that I'm not scared. Everyone has the ability to hurt. It's the choice that matters.”
― Yvonne Wood, Dead Beautiful

“Three things make people want to change. One is that they hurt sufficiently. They have beat their heads against the same wall so long that they decide they have had enough. They have invested in the same slot machines without a pay-off for so long that they finally are willing either to stop playing, or to move on to others. Their migraines hurt, their ulcers bleed. They are alcoholic. They have hit the bottom. They beg for relief. They want to change.

Another thing that makes people want to change is a slow type of despair called ennui, or boredom. This is what the person has who goes through life saying, "So what?" until he finally asks the ultimate big "So What?" He is ready to change.

A third thing that makes people want to change is the sudden discovery that they can. This has been an observable effect of Transactional Analysis. Many people who have shown no particular desire to change have been exposed to Transactional Analysis through lectures or by hearing about it from someone else. This knowledge has produced an excitement about new possibilities, which has led to their further inquiry and a growing desire to change. There is also the type of patient who, although suffering from disabling symptoms, still does not really want to change. His treatment contract reads, "I'll promise to let you help me if I don't have to get well." This negative attitude changes, however, as the patient begins to see that there is indeed another way to live. A working knowledge of P-A-C makes it possible for the Adult to explore new and exciting frontiers of life, a desire which has been there all along but has been buried under the burden of the NOT OK.”
― Thomas A. Harris, I'm OK - You're OK

“You didn’t tell me living would be one decision after another, some easy, some difficult. You didn’t tell me living wasn’t a battle, but a war. You didn’t tell me that living was a choice, and that every day I choose to continue was another victory, another triumph.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong

“What is there left to understand? Choice is an illusion. Freedom is conceit. The hands that reach out to guide your every step, your every thought, come not from the gods, for they are no less deluded than we - no, my friends, those hands come to each of us... from each of us.”
― Steven Erikson, The Bonehunters

“What is it that the child has to teach?

The child naively believes that everything should be fair
and everyone should be honest,
that only good should prevail,
that everybody should have what they want
and there should be no pain or sadness.

The child believes the world should be perfect
and is outraged to discover it is not.

And the child is right.”
― Tzvi Freeman, Wisdom to Heal the Earth - Meditations and Teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe

“She looked out at the other trees, and she realised that her life was one of thousands, any one of which could have been her, she had grown wherever her life had taken her, she had drifted wherever the wind had blown her.”
― Dave McKean, Pictures That [Tick]

“Guilt could be as simple as that. There didn't have to be anything maudlin or self-pitying about it. It was a fact and you lived with the consequences, a kind of contract under which your actions led to inevitable obligations.”
― Nicholas Evans, The Smoke Jumper

“Faith means I chose not to know, which is different than ignorance which refuses to know.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Feminists have accepted that choice is possible when it comes to a different, difficult subject: abortion. The feminist position (and I agree with it) is that women own their bodies and therefore each woman has the right to choose to get an abortion if she gets pregnant. This is called being "pro-choice". Feminists should be consistent on the subject of choice. If a woman has the right to choose to have an abortion, she should also have the right to choose to have sex for money. It's her body; it's her right.”
― Chester Brown, Paying for It