805 Choice Quotes

Mine to the core of the heart, my beauty! Mine, all mine, and for love, not duty: Love given willingly, full and free, Love for love's sake - as mine to thee. Duty's a slave that keeps the keys, But Love, the master, goes in and out Of his goodly chambers with song and shout, Just as he please - just as he please.

His folly has not fellow Beneath the blue of day That gives to man or woman His heart and soul away.

Lest Arab governments be tempted out of sheer routine to rush into impulsive rejection, let me suggest that tragedy is not what men suffer but what they miss.

That's a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.

There always comes a time when one must choose between contemplation and action. This is called becoming a man.

In my life, I don't need to have my face plastered everywhere. It's not really something I want.

I can't play bridge. I don't play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn't seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window.

There are worse things than a lie... I have found... that it may be well to choose one sin in order that another may be shunned.

It may almost be a question whether such wisdom as many of us have in our mature years has not come from the dying out of the power of temptation, rather than as the results of thought and resolution.

Where choice begins, Paradise ends, innocence ends, for what is Paradise but the absence of any need to choose this action?

Fortunately in my work there's always a choice: I can choose to do it willingly or unwillingly.

It costs money to stay healthy, but it's even more expensive to get sick.

I am a person always full of contradictions... It was hard to choose whether to devote myself to revolution as a soldier or as a writer.

I'll promise to go easier on drinking and to get to bed earlier, but not for you, fifty thousand dollars, or two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars will I give up women. They're too much fun.

General, your tank is a powerful vehicle it smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men. but it has one defect: it needs a driver.

I've been here before and will come again, but I'm not going this trip through.

I'm probably one of the most dangerous men in the world if I want to be. But I never wanted to be anything but me.

A man is basically as faithful as his options.

You can't be happy that fire cooks your food and be mad it burns your fingertips.

We're at war with Japan. We were attacked by Japan. Do you want to kill Japanese, or would you rather have Americans killed?

Television is becoming a collage - there are so many channels that you move through them making a collage yourself. In that sense, everyone sees something a bit different.

Every man has his dignity. I'm willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.

It is said that desire is a product of the will, but the converse is in fact true: will is a product of desire.

Whether or not anyone could have done it is not what's important. What is important is whether or not anyone would have done it.

I would rather start a family than finish one.

A man is an artist only at certain moments, by an effort of will. Objects have the same appearance for everybody.

Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no judgment.

I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.

Topography displays no favorites; North's as near as West. More delicate than the historians' are the map-makers' colors.

Procrastinate now, don't put it off.

To some, freedom means the opportunity to do what they want to do; to most it means not to do what they do not want to do. It is perhaps true that those who can grow will feel free under any condition.

He whom God has touched will always be a being apart: he is, whatever he may do, a stranger among men; he is marked by a sign.

Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs.

You can either watch TV or you can make TV.

The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide.

Treat your life like something to be sculpted.

The choice of approaches could be made the responsibility of the programmer.

It is my job in life to travel all roads, so that some may take the road less travelled, and others the road more travelled, and all have a pleasant day.

Perl is designed to give you several ways to do anything, so consider picking the most readable one.

I shall ask no more than that you agree with Dean Inge that even though counting heads is not an ideal way to govern, at least it is better than breaking them.

For myself it would be most irksome to be ruled by a bevy of Platonic Guardians, even if I knew how to choose them, which I assuredly do not.

The public needs the equivalent of Chevrolets as well as Cadillacs.

Happiness and love are just a choice away.

If we wish to free ourselves from enslavement, we must choose freedom and the responsibility this entails.

What we call the secret of happiness is no more a secret than our willingness to choose life.

Belief is a moral act for which the believer is to be held responsible.

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

Experience suggests it doesn't matter so much how you got here, as what you do after you arrive.

Exile, for no other motive than ease, would be the last defeat, with no seed of future victory in it.

What you are is a question only you can answer.

The meaning of economic freedom is this: that the individual is in a position to choose the way in which he wants to integrate himself into the totality of society.

Success follows doing what you want to do. There is no other way to be successful.

I would rather dance as a ballerina, though faultily, than as a flawless clown.

I have too many fantasies to be a housewife. I guess I am a fantasy.

The sophist sneers: Fool, take Thy pleasure, right or wrong! The pious wail: Forsake A world these sophists throng! Be neither saint nor sophist-led, but be a man.

I only direct in self-defense.

Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it.

As you live out your desolation, you can be either unhappy or happy. Having that choice is what constitutes your freedom.

We are always living in the final days. What have you got? A hundred years or much, much less until the end of your world.

He who cannot eat horsemeat need not do so. Let him eat pork. But he who cannot eat pork, let him eat horsemeat. It's simply a question of taste.

The doors of heaven and hell are adjacent and identical.

I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear.

With every experience, you alone are painting your own canvas, thought by thought, choice by choice.

We have to go. I'm almost happy here.

My hands are clean, but not because I wasn't prepared to bloody them.

Many women long for what eludes them, and like not what is offered them.

A man is sorry to be honest for nothing.

I have drunken deep of joy, And I will taste no other wine tonight.

We don't want to start a nuclear war unless we really have to, now do we Jack?

It won't be easy, that is why I have always failed where others have succeeded.

You have to live before you die, or you'll die before you live.

In Dante the hero would rather flee and renounce the tempting embrace instead of yielding to his desires and enduring the attendant dangers.

Submit to the present evil, lest a greater one befall you.

Love's gift cannot be given, it waits to be accepted.

A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.

The ways we miss our lives are life.

It is better to entertain an idea than to take it home to live with you for the rest of your life.

I've been wanting to go into music ever since I can remember. I mean even before I became an actor. I just thought it would be a tough field to break into, so I became an actor instead.

Corruption never has been compulsory; when the cities lie at the monster's feet there are left the mountains.

The acorn becomes an oak by means of automatic growth; no commitment is necessary. The kitten similarly becomes a cat on the basis of instinct. Nature and being are identical in creatures like them. But a man or woman becomes fully human only by his or her choices and his or her commitment to them. People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day by day. These decisions require courage.

The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt but in spite of doubt.

Human freedom involves our capacity to pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight.

The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.

I'm pro-choice. I'm pro-gay rights.

To him who has nothing it is forbidden not to relish filth.

All the things you would do gladly, oh without enthusiasm, but gladly, all the things there seems no reason for your not doing, and that you do not do! Can it be we are not free? It might be worth looking into.

Wickedness is always easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to everything.

In every one of us there are two ruling and directing principles, whose guidance we follow wherever they may lead; the one being an innate desire of pleasure; the other, an acquired judgment which aspires after excellence.

Who makes us ignorant? We ourselves. We put our hands over our eyes and weep that it is dark.

Even if you reject everything, it is always better to know what it is you are rejecting.

Not all that tempts your wandering eyes And heedless hearts, is lawful prize; Nor all that glisters gold.

I don't understand the ones that have no sense of hope and invest in hate. That's not gonna work out, you know? It's a waste of your time!