Best 5936 quotes in «choices quotes» category

Henry was right—I let everyone else's feelings affect my decisions. Screw that. I'm taking the ball and running with it. Maybe they're not my top choices, but they're choices that are good for me, choices I can live with. Some things I can't control; but some things I can. And I'm going to.

Here's the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That's what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease. I want to leave a mark. But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, "They'll remember me now," but (a) they don't remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion. ... We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can't stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it's silly and useless--epically useless in my current state--but I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We're as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we're not likely to do either. People will say it's sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it's not sad, Van Houten. It's triumphant. It's heroic. Isn't that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm. The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn't actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn't get smallpox. ... But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar. ... What else? She is so beautiful. You don't get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.

Here's the thing about hitting rock bottom. You can either stay down there or get back up. It's your choice.

Here's the thing about hitting rock bottom. You can either stay down there, or you can get back up. It's your choice.

Her father was stern. Her father disapproved. Her father had very strong reservations...Half Belgian, half Persian, staunch British conservative, he'd seen the Himalayas and Harrogate and had chosen accountancy.

He shrugs. "Doesn't help to waste my time thinking about would've-beens." Laila whispers, "He says to the girl with a mind full of them.

He shrugged, "...my conscience rests easiest if I do only what I see as best in the moment...

He’s whispering again. I’m finding it hard to hear, and we’re standing close together. What do you want to ask? ‘If Hen/ was the same as she is now, in every way, but was a bit less physically attractive in one significant way, do you think you would have married her?’ I’m caught off guard by the question, but I don’t want to show that I am, so I don’t hesitate with my answer. Of course, I say. I love Hen. Hen’s my wife. She’ll be with me forever. I’ve always loved he. I’ll always love her. ‘ I know that. I know. I don’t doubt you love her very much. That’s not really what I’m asking, though. Are you sure you would have married her? Committed to her forever? Think about it. Does her appearance not mean anything to you? Is that what you’re saying? That what she looks like is irrelevant?’ It’s such a blonde question. It seems out of line with everything else we talked about. I feel a trickle in sweat slide down my spine. I’m saying, to me, no matter what, she would still be Hen. ‘Would she, though? Would she still be the Hen you fell in love with? What about this: What if she looked exactly as she does right now, but she was a little less intelligent? Would she still be Hen?’ That’s just stupid. It’s a stupid question. Hen is Hen.

...he wondered how a person as bright and deserving as Rob Peace could have made the choices, beginning on the night of that banquet, that had resulted in this. And he figured that the choices hadn't necessarily begun on that night. Most likely, they'd begun on the night he was born, and not all of them had been his to make.

His ambition was not to become wealthy or to be well known, an image which society for some reason dictates each individual should prescribe to, instead his only ambition was to be at peace with himself, if he could achieve that than anything else he might need would follow. From now on he would question all things in life, but especially the rules and regulations of all authority institutions; he would take nothing on face value and only would accept what he personally knew to undeniably be true.

His eyes searched hers. “I’d rather just be me. Feel comfortable in my own skin and be able to speak my mind without having to carry a damned thesaurus. Sure doesn’t seem worth giving up who you are to please others. Far as I’m concerned, they either like me or they don’t. Their choice.

His hands are behind his back. 'Choose,' he says. 'I've already made my choice,' I say, and I grab the sleeve of his leather jacket and pull him inside.

Honor the process. Honor your choices. If you proceed honoring the process itself, your purpose will unfold more gracefully.

How can we ever presume to know what will come of our choices, our paths, the lives we lead?

How everyone is struggling for something. Trying to keep the balance. Struggling to find their way back. Doing the best they can with what they've been dealt. Staying in place, doing anything to keep from sinking. To keep from rising. Until something changes. Like a day at school, a friend for lunch, someone standing up for you. And the choice to feel. Standing before you. Realizing what part is yours. What you can and can't do. Who you are. Who you are meant to be. More than the sum of all your broken parts.

How you brew your life is how it’s gonna taste on your tongue. You have the choice to make it bitter or sweeter. It all depend on the actions that you take day in day out.

How to be happy starts with self love, being proud of who you are and making happiness a daily choice.

How we choose to perceive affects how we partake of reality; narrowly or completely.

How will people remember you when you are gone? And for how long until they forget? Were you selfish or selfless? A gossip or a patient listener? Did you add value to the world, or did you simply take from it? Did you add value to the lives of others, or did you take the value out of someone's life? Were you a plus or negative? Meaningful or meaningless? Do you live to take or live to give?

I admired her choices though I wouldn't have made them.

Humans make their own history, but not under circumstances of their choosing.

I agree that sometimes it is difficult to choose between right and wrong, but not between right and stupid.

I am not what you think of me, I am simply what I choose to be.

I am in charge of my emotions.

I am now 33 years old, and it feels like much time has passed and is passing faster and faster every day. Day to day I have to make all sorts of choices about what is good and important and fun, and then I have to live with the forfeiture of all the other options those choices foreclose. And I'm starting to see how as time gains momentum my choices will narrow and their foreclosures multiply exponentially until I arrive at some point on some branch of all life's sumptuous branching complexity at which I am finally locked in and stuck on one path and time speeds me through stages of stasis and atrophy and decay until I go down for the third time, all struggle for naught, drowned by time. It is dreadful. But since it's my own choices that'll lock me in, it seems unavoidable--if I want to be any kind of grownup, I have to make choices and regret foreclosures and try to live with them.

I am not you and all my choices have already been made, good and bad.

I am a believer in sensible choices, so different from many of my own. Also in sensible names for children.

I am not a believer of the law of attraction (though I do not deny the possibilities of it to be true), but I firmly believe in the ability of making choices, the ability to take conscious decisions.

I am the master of my thoughts and actions.

I am the only person responsible for my success and failure. I am where I am because of the choices I have made.

I believed our touching to be more intense because of it's very holding back. Belief is always a choice.

I believe in the ability to choose. I believe this life is made up of our choices and their consequences— the good and the bad. I do not believe in letting anything up to fate. We are the makers of our own destinies, our own futures, our own paths. To blindly follow is an insult to the miracle of being human. To be human is to make choices; the moment you allow others to make decisions for you is the moment you do an injustice to not only mankind but to yourself.

Ian pretended that not knowing what to do was the hard part when, somewhere inside, I think he knew that making a choice about something is when the real uncertainty begins. The more terrifying uncertainty is wanting something and not knowing how to get it. It is working toward something even though there is no sure thing. When we make choices, we open ourselves up to hard work and failure and heartbreak, so sometimes it feels easier not to know, not to choose, and not to do.

I believe in one that all people are dreaming. This now, past and future is just a long dream, some people wake up by dieing, other by suicide everything is about a choice. But the people which are dead in our world, there aren't dead in the other they are still alive and watching us and they are smiling at us and they want we to make our choice. To think then to do it!

I believe that life always has a way of surprising you, for better or for worse," he looks at me once more, his eyes holding mine captive in its strong hold. "And that you always have a choice as to how the story ends...

I can’t spend time with people I don’t enjoy. I can’t do it anymore as theater. I make choices, and that’s a beautiful thing about growing up, learning to say no, in a nice way, just say no. I have this friend…we just went different ways in life. Once he came to me and said, “Francis, you don’t like me anymore.” and I said “No, it’s not that I don’t like you, we’ve chosen different styles of life. I still have beautiful souvenirs of all the things we did together and how close we were, but the truth is it’s not that you bore me, but I don’t enjoy talking to you anymore and I don’t want to fight with you but there’s nothing in common between your life and mine nowadays”. I would have never said that but he asked me. So what could I say? I said the truth. Growing up has a bit to do with that, to be able to tell the truth, to show who you are, even if it hurts.

I can't say for sure if I'm better off, since I have no way of knowing what would have been. I could have traveled to exotic places and kissed exotic men in the moonlight. Or I could have ended living alone in a dumpy apartment with the flesh eating virus I contracted from a public toilet. Could haves are always a great unknown.

I can't tell you what's real for you. But in return, you can't say what's real for me either. I get to choose. Not you.

I choose to think before I act, before I speak. I choose to be good, better, best. I choose to let go and to get back. I choose to be me. I choose to love, to forget, to forgive. I choose to be a balm not a poison. I choose to see beauty in everything and everyone. I choose to be a part of the infinite universe and the God child. I choose to be me.

I chose him. If I chose him, he had to be the right choice. I wouldn’t love him if it weren’t right.

I can't change it now, and besides, I like who those years made me into,

I can't walk beside you for reasons of my own, but everytime you cross my mind, I send love to you, you know.

I choose to mind my own business. In order to improve my life & to be happy, Rather than focusing my energy on judging others on what they do or how they live their lives.

I didn’t know what to do. I knew what I wanted to do. I knew what I was supposed to do. But I didn’t know what I was going to do.

I don't regret any of the decisions I've made in my life because with every choice I make, I learn something new.

I did not find my way out of the darkness until I admitted I was lost.

Idolatry happens when you worship or praise anything excessively to the point of causing you to believe it reigns supreme. All things on this earth are temporal, even your very own desires. Be careful that you do not create idols to worship.

I don't know about homeless, but I'm never going to let you be hopeless. Or loveless. To be heartless however, well, that is your choice to make.

I embrace my fate; spiritual journey.

I didn't want to hear another word he was saying, but then he was like, "You get to choose if you care. They can't take that away from you. And you get to choose if you're going to walk through the rest of your life like a dead man. I've made my choice." After that, he stood up and stomped off like he was made at me. It's a good thing too. Because what Eddie and Sister--everybody in this place--doesn't realize is, you and I never had a choice. There wasn't a single moment when we weren't risking something. Every minute, every second. An anxiety that never leaves. Struggling for breath my whole fucking life. And that's supposed to change in here? -Luke (pg. 80-81)