Choices You Made Quotes & Sayings

Sophie Betsuie lost her composure and returned to the hogan, crying. She was beating herself up with a club made out of the words if only, and I knew what it felt like. If only I hadn't done this. If only someone else hadn't done that. I hoped she would learn sooner, rather than later, that you can't unchoose anyone's choices, least of all your own. All you can do with your past is try to grow out of it. — Kevin Hearne

She didn't want to. She loved you. She loves you now. Yes, she hurt you and she made a terrible mistake in leaving you. But your father made mistakes, too, and you will, as well. We all make bad choices - decisions that would better be left to rot in the bottom of the barrel. But we can't undo them. We can only move forward. — Tracie Peterson

Never let your fear of the unknown and things being too difficult make your choices for you in life. One of the saddest lessons in life is finding out that your fear made the situation worse than what it was and a braver person stole the dream you gave up on. — Shannon L. Alder

Do not regret too much the choices you have made in the past, Gabriel," she said, aware that she was using his Christian name, but not able to help it. "Only make the right ones in the future. We are ever capable of change and ever capable of being our better selves. — Cassandra Clare

Freedom comes with responsibility; it comes with privilege and a conscience. It comes with difficult choices. We cannot stand by and allow the Authority to do what it is doing any more. We cannot wait for them to come and take apart what we've made. I will not allow it. You know me. I will not allow it. — Sarah Hall

No genuine choice is ever simply a matter of the arbitrary exercise of will. Take your choice of lunch today. You can't decide to want anything, but what you want will at least in part be a result of a series of other choices and judgments you've made in your life to date. — Julian Baggini

There are two choices: to be human, made in the image of God, with Jesus; warp to be in human, consumed with greed and on aware of the pain that is inflicted upon others. Put in simple options, it is to be human and forgive, make peace in spite of all hatred, or to be in human and kill, dividing the spoils. To be dead before you die. — Megan McKenna

The measure of a man comes down to moments, spread out like dots of pain on the canvas on life. Everything you were, everything you'll someday be, resides in the small, seemingly ordinary choices of everyday life ... Each decision seems as insignificant as a left turn on an unfamiliar road when you have no destination in mind. But the decisions accumulate until you realize one day that they've made you the man that you are. — Kristin Hannah

What you are today is the choice you made yesterday. — Tsem Tulku

Don't hold back you life because of the choices someone else made. — Kimberly Lauren

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

You want that girl you left behind. I'm not her! Don't you get it? She's gone. I've lost her. I made choices that made me an awful person. I'm not worth all this time and energy you're wasting."
Fuck. I took a step toward her, and she took a step back. "You're wrong there. I don't want the sixteen-year-old girl I left behind. I want the woman she's become. The kind, compassionate, faithful, strong woman I watch from afar every day of my life. I want her. Nothing ever changed for me. Not with you. — Abbi Glines

Make choices and decisions and step on it so hard till it sticks on your shoes whare ever you go,if you cant bring it along the way make sure there is a strong effect on the choices and decisions you made. — Narjit Singh

You're so obsessed with one mistake you made a long time ago that you can't see all the people you've hurt along the way. You can't fix everything. Some choices you just have to accept, and try and rebuild as best as you can. — Max Landis

Never judge anyone by the choices they've made, because you never know they might have selected the best option out of two bad choices. — Asma Naqi

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 point wasn't that you tried to live forever; the point was that you lived, and did everything you could to live well. The point was the choices you made and the people you loved. — Cassandra Clare

There seldom is a single wave. Another way to look at it is, 'when it rains, it pours.' Good luck or bad luck often followed by more of the same. Whatever path you begin, it's almost impossible to change your direction. You're sent hurtling through space, crashing through experiences decided by the first few decisions you ever made. Binary choices set against something as simple as a yes or no in your earliest stages of development. As a Future Child, that would be your primitive choices in Genus. Actions, friendships, whether to smile in one moment or frown in the next. Those are all paths that, once set upon, are entirely unchangeable. At least, that's what I was designed to think. — Brandon R. Chinn

It's strange, but when your father has gone you suddenly discover that the choices you have made were as much for him as for yourself. — Jo Nesbo

All great choices are made with great risks. You must decide for yourself if the consequences are worth the action you are willing to take. — Cathlin Shahriary

Sometimes, choices you've made in the past limit the choices you have today. — Bella Forrest

Time to go inward would you believe that I'm afraid to stare down the barrel of choices I have made. — Rodney Crowell

A lot of the times once you've finished a scene, the best reaction is to say you don't really remember what happened. I don't really remember what I did or the choices I made. — Jessica Biel

You speak of being afraid. Yet fear is something you generate in yourself, from your mind's lack of control; and you will learn to look at it and discover for yourself when you choose to be afraid. The first thing you must do is acknowledge that the fear is yours, and you can bid it come and go at will. Begin with this; whenever you feel fear that prevents choice say to yourself: 'What has made me feel fear? Why have I chosen to feel this fear preventing my choice, instead of feeling the freedom to choose?' Fear is a way of not allowing yourself to choose freely what you will do next; a way of letting your body's reflexes, not the needs of your mind, choose for you ... [Y]ou have chosen to do nothing, so that none of the things you fear will come upon you; so your choices are not made by you but by your fear ... I cannot promise to free you of your fear, only that a time will come when you are the master, and fear will not paralyze you. — Marion Zimmer Bradley

People often say that having a family makes you make safer choices. It's been the total opposite for me. It's really made me want to make bolder choices. — Jamie Cullum

When it came down to it and the life-or-death decision had to be made, then it was made by you, because you were the witch. And sometimes it wasn't a decision between a good thing or a bad thing, but a decision between to bad things: no right choices, just ... choices. — Terry Pratchett

It's fascinating. It's also exhilarating when you see people making the exact same choices that you've made. It kind of validates what you've decided to do. I saw a wonderful production of Jessica Lange doing Streetcar with Alec Baldwin. It was gorgeous. It's a measure of what a great classic that is, that our Cate Blanchett also did an absolute amazing Blanche in Sydney, as well as in New York. — Jacki Weaver

Accountability is not about blame, it's not about being wrong, it is about owning the choices you've made, or are making, that create the results you have in your life. And you do create everything in your life. — Claire Fontaine

If you end up doing only one thing from this entire book, let it be this: stop being angry with yourself. That alone is enough to radically alter your health, your relationships, your job, and your life. Don't be angry with yourself for not saying the right thing. Don't be angry with yourself for forgetting to do something you said you would do. Don't be angry with yourself for not finishing that project as fast as everyone else at work. Don't be angry with yourself for finishing school late, for being unemployed, for being single. Don't be angry with yourself for not saying what you wanted to say or not doing what you wanted to do. Regardless of what choices you have made, let go of the habit of self-anger. It doesn't serve you. It never has and it never will. — Emily Maroutian

If only I woulda done that."
"I really shoulda done that."
"I coulda done that."
I ask, "Do you really know what your life would be like now if you made those choices?" Believing in regret strips away our only chance to create a better future. That chance: what we decide to do today, right now, in the present. — Charles F. Glassman

Did they like being maids & butlers? Before you answer this consider everything you've ever read about English history after Robin Hood and before he Who. Your choices were: serving, being served, being killed by Jack the Ripper. So, the employee class made the best of it and got with the program. It was indoor work, after all. And as a wise man once observed, "You're gonna hafta serve somebody." (Bob Dylan, C. 1497-1580). And it beat mining. — Chris Kelly

The neurons that do expire are the ones that made imitation possible. When you are capable of skillful imitation, the sweep of choices before you is too large; but when your brain loses its spare capacity, and along with it some agility, some joy in winging it, and the ambition to do things that don't suit it, then you finally have to settle down to do well the few things that your brain really can do well
the rest no longer seems pressing and distracting, because it is now permanently out of reach. The feeling that you are stupider than you were is what finally interests you in the really complex subjects of life: in change, in experience, in the ways other people have adjusted to disappointment and narrowed ability. You realize that you are no prodigy, your shoulders relax, and you begin to look around you, seeing local color unrivaled by blue glows of algebra and abstraction. — Nicholson Baker

Child, the good Lord got plans for all of us that we don't know-and he always got His reasons. He want us to learn and rejoice in the good that come from His design.
God's plan ain't a free pass. Uh-uh. He give us moments to make choices, and we make them. We accountable for those choices. God's job ain't to make our lives easier, it's to make us better souls by the lessons he give us. I tell you now, I wouldn't change one choice I made since I met you. No matter what. — Susan Crandall

You know, it looks like I have a varied resume or a varied career, that I've made interesting choices, when the truth of the matter is, in a way I've just kind of piece-mealed a career together, you know? — Adam Scott

On one hand, I knew that we should have headed back to the others. Taking time to get cozy with Glate wasn't the smartest of choices, especially given what had happened last time we tried to take advantage of what little free time we'd had with one another.
But on the other hand? Life was far too short to not give into temptation every now and again. We were all merely existing to die at one point or another. There would be no happily-ever-after for any of us. Life was what you made of it, and even if the world that I had found myself in had been complete and utter shit, I had decided that I would see to it that I lived out my last days happily. — Nicole Sobon

Advice? Focus on the craft. Study the greats. Try and understand how and why they made the writing choices they did. Then, start by copying them ... just as an exercise. See if you can do similar things. Learn how to write a song like so and so. Then, when you've done that, write a song like yourself. Learn to color within the lines before going outside them. — Patrick Stump

I never made conscious choices. There were times in my life that I chose the first job that came along because I was broke. I think that there were maybe a handful of times that I had a choice. In recent years, Ive had more of a choice, and its been very nice to have that choice, but most of the time, you just hope that theres another job after this one. — Alfred Molina

Take risks. Fail. Pick yourself back up again. And always, always remember this: there is no adversity capable of stopping you once the choice to persevere is made. — Jason Kilar

The right thing was confusing, and difficult, and sometimes Jason wondered if it was in fact a nonexistent ideal, like heaven or the American dream. There was no right thing. You did what you did for whatever reasons occurred to you at the time, depending on whichever emotion was running thickest in your blood. Your desire and fear and adrenaline and longing. You made your choice and came up with the reasons later. — Thomas Mullen

The choices you've made in the past are the direct cause of all your unhappiness today. — Harold Klemp

If I wanted to work financially, I would have made a series of different choices. I do get offered lots of movies which you could make a lot of money out of. And I always say, 'Why would I do that, when someone else could do it much better than me? Why would I want to do an action picture? Why?' — Stephen Daldry

Did you blame the men who fired the guns, the men who built the guns, or the men who invented the guys? Did you blame the men who had put those particular guns in the hands attached to those particular trigger fingers? When Nick's plane crashed into the ocean off Honduras at a speed which turned the ocean to unyielding stone, was it Western Mountain's fault, for sending him out?Nick's, for going? Anne's, for letting him? Did you blame the human beings who had made such a world possible, or the world that had made such human beings possible?
The answer, she thought, lying now in her missing daughter's bed (Was it Miranda, for pushing a limit any time she saw one? Anne again, for uprooting her so callously, for failing in some way to adequately console her after her father's death?), was that you had two choices: you could blame everybody, or you could blame nobody. — Kelly Braffet

Every time I see a film or TV show, I think about how that composer made those choices and how that director envisioned music and how that could work onstage or in a film and how you could support that even further by putting lyrics to it. — Robert Lopez

There are choices in life which you are aware, even as you make them, cannot be undone; choices after which, once made, things will never be the same.
There is that moment when you can still walk away, but if you do, you will never know what might have been. — Alan Bradley

You know, I've always just made the choices on my characters based on my connection to them, and I've made decisions that maybe other people haven't understood; why I passed on something, for instance. — Summer Glau

What would the engineer say, after you had explained your problem and enumerated all of the dissastisfactions in your life? He would probably tell you that life is a very hard and complicated thing; that no interface can change that; that anyone who believes otherwise is a sucker; and that if you don't like having choices made for you, you should start making your own. — Neal Stephenson

The most amazing thing you can ask for as an actor from a director is that you're being seen, that the choices made are informed. — Bertie Carvel

When you are around 60, there are certain things that are completely terrifying. One of them is that you have made the wrong choices in life, and now it's too late to do anything about them. — Henning Mankell

I like to think that somewhere out there, on a planet exactly like ours, two people exactly like you and me made totally different choices and that, somewhere, we're still together. That's enough for me. — Iain Thomas

It said a lot about the choices you made in life when jogging actually lowered your heart rate. By — Jana Deleon

Problems with visual design can turn users off so quickly that they never discover all the smart choices you made with navigation or interaction design. — Jesse James Garrett

Life is choices, and they are relentless. No sooner have you made one choice than another is upon you. — Atul Gawande

Some choices, once you make them, they stay made. — Sherri L. Smith

We've all done things we wish we hadn't, made choices we didn't even know were choices at that time. but that doesn't mean we have to stick by them. In life, you find out who you are gradually, not all at once. You made a bad choice, okay? But you can still get out of it. — Jane Stanton Hitchcock

I can't stand whining. I can't stand the kind of paralysis that some people fall into because they're not happy with the choices they've made. You live in a time when there are endless choices ... Money certainly helps, and having that kind of financial privilege goes a long way, but you don't even have to have money for it. But you have to work on yourself ... Do something! — Hillary Clinton

Your life at this exact moment is a direct result of choices you made once upon a time. Thirty minutes or 30 year ago. — Sarah Ban Breathnach

Take responsibility.
Just as you can't deny that you can feel love and hate, happiness and sadness, anger and ease of mind, or tiredness and relaxation, you can't deny that you have a fate that, sometimes, you can't control. That doesn't mean that it takes control over you. You can't deny that you have words that need to be spoken. You can't deny that you have a choice. You can't deny the ability that you can say no. You can't deny the ability that you have the freedom to make a decision and defend it. You can't deny injustice when you see it, unfairness when you feel it, oppression when you witness it. Stop blaming the world around you for wronging you. Take responsibility for the nos you could have said but chose not to, the words you could have said but didn't, instead wrapping your mouth with your own hands and remaining silent against what needed to be addressed. Take responsibility for the choices you could have made but restrained yourself from making. — Najwa Zebian

Plowing through life, you're bound to run into obstructions. Some of life's trials result from mistakes and missteps, and some from poor choices. I know about that too, because I've made my share of blunders and had to face the consequences.
Other times, the unexpected lands in your hands like a wayward ball and the "trouble" coming at you is like a 250-pound linebacker blitzing straight off the edge.
— Jake Byrne

I've spent years trying to block out how you look. And sound. And feel. And before this show, I'd gotten pretty good at it. But now, here you are, in front of me every day, and it blows my mind that a single touch from you still has the power to ruin me. And whenever it happens, I forget about the choices I've made, and the circus my life's become, and I want you. Consequences be damned. — Leisa Rayven

You think you'll be ok because in the end your mother will still be your mother. You don't know that she'll be changed. Loving you still, of course, but what you find out later is that her love now tastes different from all that time spent training to withstand distance, containing herself in order to live with impotence so strong, the phrase "so near and yet so far" was made for it. You think if you'd known all this you'd be able to live with the results of your choices, never again wondering what would've happened if you'd never left. — Anjanette Delgado

Maybe a first love exists to reaffirm the best parts of yourself, the choices you made when you didn't worry about the consequences. Maybe a first love exists to remind you to be brave in the moment, to stand up for your feelings, instead of shrinking back in the face of potential loneliness. — Adriana Trigiani

Where you are today is the sum of every choice you've ever made. If you don't like where you are, start making different choices! — Dave Ramsey

Mindfulness gives you time. Time gives you choices. Choices, skillfully made, lead to freedom. You don't have to be swept away by your feeling. You can respond with wisdom and kindness rather than habit and reactivity. — Henepola Gunaratana

I guess that's the lesson in all of this-not to be eighty years old, looking back on your life, wondering if you made the right choice or how your life might have been different if you'd done one thing and not another. — Mary Simses

A person who's only suffering can't write a poem. There are choices to be made, and you need to be objective. — Edward Hirsch

He said, Don, when something hard happens to you, you have two choices in how to deal with it. You can either get bitter, or better. I chose to get better. It's made all the difference. — Donald Miller

But Agon did not force this prison upon you. He is the jailer of many, but you are the one who possesses the keys to your own cell. He may hunt you, but he did not lock you away here, nor force upon you the choices you have made these last few years. Your prison is in your mind, where you limit yourself, where you take on the voice of the Beast and speak to yourself the way he would if he could only get to you. But he does not need to if you will do the work for him. Fear is what locked you away, Ifferon, and fear is a tool of Agon. When you fear you open the gate that lets him into your mind. His greatest weapon is fear, for it drives strong men to madness. So why then be afraid? — Dean F. Wilson

You made me laugh at your jokes.
You made me cry at your criticism.
You made me shout at your lies.
Then I noticed how in every case someone else was present,
hearing you without laughter or tears or anger.
I alone reacted.
I see now; you never made me laugh or cry or rage.
I chose to find humor.
I chose to take offense.
I chose to feel scorned.
The truth is, you never had power over me. — Richelle E. Goodrich

If you say that you're all about a certain something, and look back and see that the choices that you've made don't reflect that, then there's something for you to look at. — Kathy Mattea

The New York Times denounces America's "dancing with dictators." Guilty as charged. Dance we do. And without apology. With no more apology than Franklin Roosevelt offered when he reportedly said of Nicaragua's Anastasio Somoza, "He may be a son of a bitch. But he's our son of a bitch."

Roosevelt was a grownup. He made choices. He slew his dragons one at a time. He understood that we do not live in the best of all possible worlds. He understood that in an international arena populated by sons of bitches, you make your distinctions, or you die. — Charles Krauthammer

Every choice closes doors ," I said, "and at some point you are left in the little room of yourself. I think most people who get to that room go crazy because they're surrounded with missed possibilities and no principle to explain or justify why they made the choices they did. I don't invite unhappiness, Aaron. Avoiding conflict may not be the noblest principle, but it works for me. — Michael Nava

am an Addict's Mom. I am an Addict's Mom. I stand before you able to state without hesitation that Yes, I am an addict's mom. I have learned to look past those judgmental stares, sensing what you are thinking, that I must be "one of those Moms." That somewhere, somehow, I made some horrific choices that sent my child into the depths of hell. I am here to tell you that the choices my child made are his own and his alone. This nightmare is far from what I wanted for my child. Just like everyone with children, there were big dreams and hopes for my child. — Joe Herzanek

There are some choices you can only make once. You can't go back to where you made a choice and then take the other one. — Mary Hoffman

I know there may be universes out there where I made different choices and they led me somewhere else, led me to someone else. And my heart breaks for every single version of me that didn't end up with you. — Taylor Jenkins Reid

Sometimes you simply made the wrong choice and you had to live with it. You could only change the future. — Kristin Hannah

But books were full of stories and stories were full of lies and lies hurt Jesus's feelings, so I didn't know what to think. I blamed my family. They were the ones who taught me so much about telling stories, and how not to do it, and then, in inspired moments of surprise, how to tell one so good you forgot what day it was, and I liked forgetting what day it was, so I made certain life choices that would allow me to get paid to forget what day it was and teach others to forget what day it was, which is, after all, what I think heaven probably is: the whole world, forgetting what day it is. You have to, I bet, with an endless supply of them. — Harrison Scott Key

In the end that was the choice you made, and it doesn't matter how hard it was to make it. It matters that you did. — Cassandra Clare

There are choices to be made...beware you do not make the wrong one. — Laken Cane

Everything that is happening at this moment is a result of the choices you've made in the past. — Deepak Chopra

Where do you put your attention? On fear or love? I wish the choice were made just once and not repeated every moment of the day. — Sophy Burnham

You may have made a lot of wrong choices, but you've also made a lot of choices that were right. Focus on your good qualities. Focus on your victories. Get off the treadmill of guilt. — Joel Osteen

But I was immobilized - less by another's static imposition than by my own static will. For the enemy had in thrall my power to choose, which he had used to make a chain for binding me. From bad choices an urge arises; and the urge, yielded to, becomes a compulsion; and the compulsion, unresisted, becomes a slavery - each link in this process connected with the others, which is why I call it a chain - and that chain had a tyrannical grip around me. The new will I felt stirring in me, a will to 'give you free worship' and enjoy what I yearned for, my God, my only reliable happiness, could not break away from the will made strong by long dominance. Two wills were mine, old and new, of the flesh, of the spirit, each warring on the other, and between their dissonances was my soul disintegrating. — Augustine Of Hippo

...what was important, what mattered, was not the fact of being afraid, but what you did, the choices you made, when you were afraid. And maybe that was something to do with being alive--or staying dead. — Graham Gardner

Life is funny. You start out with limitless potential, but time is always shaving away the possibilities. Every choice you make is the choice not to do a thousand other things. What's important, when all is said and done, is that you made a difference. Your choices, and everything undone, have to mean something. Otherwise, what was the point? I'm lucky that way. My path was already there. I had only to walk it. I often thought even if no one knew of the good I had done with my life, it didn't matter. That it was done is all that counts in the end. But then I died. And I hadn't gotten to do any of it yet. — Brian Clevinger

You are more than the choices that you've made,
You are more than the sum of your past mistakes,
You are more than the problems you create,
You've been remade. — Tenth Avenue North

You don't choose what you believe moment to moment, but choices you have made do shape what you come to believe. — Julian Baggini

Children and babies are the most innocent, vulnerable, helpless creatures on the planet. They're relying on you for everything. Their lives will be defined by the choices made by the adults around them. — Catelynn Lowell

Choices made, whether bad or good, follow you forever and affect everyone in their path one way or another. — J.E.B. Spredemann

Life often presents you with difficult choices. But who made up the rules? Why choose at all? — Ulysses Brave

As an individual navigating this reality, you have to make choices to survive. Sometimes you happily work for free if it's something you love and believe in. I'm not categorically saying that working for free is bad. I'm just looking at the broader implications of it, and also challenge this idea - and again, this is an argument made by certain people in the tech world - that amateurs are automatically more pure and will triumph over stodgy professionals. — Astra Taylor

Rigg shook her head in disgust. "Dunno. Seems you had plenty choices to me: help your friends or run an' hide. You made ah choice. It was the shitty one, but it was ah choice. — Ash Gray

I didn't have to see this big clock on the wall and worry. Most of the record I made was experimental. If you have a lot of time to do that you don't have to worry about the money, plus, I had no money. It was more out of necessity than choice. — Daniel Powter

What I tell student athletes is first of all, you've made good choices this far in order to be able to be in college and to be an athlete. Keep making good choices. — Condoleezza Rice

What do you know of gods and saints?" I ask, filling my voice with scorn.
His fingers drift to the silver oak leaf of Saint Camulos on his cloak. "I know that what our saints want is not always made clear to us. Sometimes, it is their wish for us to flail and struggle and come to our own choices, not accept ones that have been made for us. — Robin LaFevers

You made a choice - a single choice.
How neat to think you may have opened the door to a wondrous future without knowing. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Another parent's different approach raises the possibility that you've made a mistake with your child. We simply can't tolerate that because we fear that any mistake, no matter how minor, could have devastating consequences. So we proclaim the superiority of our own choices. We've lost sight of the fact that people have preferences. — Ayelet Waldman

Do not regret too much of the choices you have made in the past, only make the right ones in the future. We are ever capable of change and ever cable of being our better selves. — Cassandra Clare

Once you realize that you're in something that you've always wanted and you don't want to lose it, you behave differently. And that means the integrity, the professionalism, and knowing what's right from wrong and still making choices that you probably wouldn't have made. — Paul Anka

But the fantasy kingdom and trappings of success soon lost their luster, as I discovered that the most prestigious and remunerative of my resume's way stations was also the most tedious and unfulfilling I had ever experienced. This paradox only made me more morose about modernity. Why was I going to watch my hairline recede in front of two-thousand-line spreadsheets staring at me from cold, glowing monitors? Why was everyone in my office apparently so happy to be spending so many hours there, when the things they really cared about - people, pets, pastimes - were all relegated to a few photographs on their desks? That seemed to be the formula: spend the best years of your life in an office with photos of what you really care about. — Zack Love

As an actor you make choices that are either right or wrong, and you find the ones that are right for you. As an understudy, the choices have been made, so you have to make those choices right. Going into the role, you can't really question it. — James Lecesne