Choose Your Own Way Quotes & Sayings

Underlying all your choices, particularly subject matter and the way you represent it, should be your own personal scruples, the standards and rules that you voluntarily set for yourself, and which you may change or abandon whenever you choose - without explanation to anyone. — Richard Schmid

If you work by reason, you grow rough-edged; if you choose to dip your oar into sentiment's stream, it will sweep you away. Demanding your own way only serves to constrain you. However you look at it, the human world is not an easy place to live.

And when its difficulties intensify, you find yourself longing to leave that world and dwell in some easier one--and then, when you understand at last that difficulties will dog you wherever you may live, this is when poetry and art are born. — Soseki Natsume

You are here to create the world around you that YOU choose - while you allow the world, as others choose it to be, to exist also. And while their choices in no way hinder your own choices, your attention to what they are choosing does affect your vibration - and therefore your own point of attraction. — Esther Hicks

Dr. Deveaux stopped and looked at me hard. He leaned in and whispered, 'The rest is all bullshit, Miss Drake. It's as simple as that. Your purpose here in life is to discern the real thing from the bullshit, and then to choose the non-bullshit. Think of the opportunity that God has given you to study as the means by which to attain your own personal bullshit detector. Sometimes that will be particularly difficult, because those who proclaim to know the truth, well intentioned or not, are spewing the most bullshit. But you will know when you have been properly ravished. And then you'll see, how the entire world is eyeball deep in it and that we choose it, and that we choose it every day. But the good news is that, although we struggle with it, there is a way out. Yes, there is a very worthy antidote and option to all the bullshit. — Carolyn Weber

Your choices have psychological consequences. The way you choose to deal with reality, truth, facts - your choice to honor or dishonor your own perceptions - registers in your mind, for good or for bad, and either confirms and strengthens your self-esteem or undermines and weakens it. — Nathaniel Branden

Stop waiting for someone to give you what you want. The universe is too busy to care. It has worlds to create and galaxies to destroy. If you're worried about death and about your own end, don't. It's coming whether you like it or not. You will either arrive at the end of your life in style or you will arrive broken and beaten, but whichever way you choose, have no doubt that you WILL ARRIVE. There is only now. If you have power, it's now. If you can change anything, you have to do it now. If you want to be or to have that next great thing, be it. Have it. Take it. Own it. Do it. Become it. Be awesome. Do epic shit. Do it now. The clock is ticking. — Johnny B. Truant

The end comes to all of us ... but the end comes quicker to those who do not live their lives as they choose. If your life is not your own, then in what way is it living? — Christopher John Farley

In some ways the operation of the feminine stereotype is so obvious and for many women entirely unattainable, that it can be easily reacted against. It takes a great deal of courage and independence to decide to design your own image instead of the one that society rewards, but it gets easier as you go along. Of course, a woman who goes her own way will find her conditioning is ineradicable, but she at least can recognize its operation and choose to counteract it, whereas a man might find that he was being more subtly deluded. — Germaine Greer

1. Find your own style and have the courage to stick to it.
2. Choose your clothes for your way of life.
3. Make your wardrobe as versatile as an actress. It should be able to play many roles.
4. Find your happiest colours - the ones that make you feel good.
5. Care for your clothes, like the good friends they are! — Joan Crawford

In the Now, there really is no destination. Each moment is lived for its own sake, even as you move toward whatever you many choose to pursue. When you are focused on some outcome or achievement-or are looking forward to the day when you are able to live in conditions that you imagine will be superior to whatever currently exists-your life right now becomes just an interval on the way to the next event. — Richard Moss

A belief system usually evolves over time. It's something that we grow into, as our needs and goals develop and change. Even when we find a system of beliefs that works for us, we hone and fine-tune it, working our way deeper and deeper into its essential truth. Everything we experience, every thought we have, every desire, need, action, and reaction - everything we perceive with our senses goes into our personal databank and helps to create the belief systems that we hold now. Nothing is lost or forgotten in our lives.
You don't have to remain a victim of your conditioning, however. You can choose for yourself what you believe or don't believe, what you desire and don't desire. You can define your own parameters. Once you do that, you can start consciously creating your destiny according to your own vision. — Skye Alexander

Some mothers seem to have the capacity and energy to make their children's clothes, bake, give piano lessons, go to Relief Society, teach Sunday School, attend parent-teacher association meetings, and so on. Other mothers look upon such women as models and feel inadequate, depressed, and think they are failures when they make comparisons ... Sisters, do not allow yourselves to be made to feel inadequate or frustrated because you cannot do everything others seem to be accomplishing. Rather, each should assess her own situation, her own energy, and her own talents, and then choose the best way to mold her family into a team, a unit that works together and supports each other. Only you and your Father in Heaven know your needs, strengths, and desires. Around this knowledge your personal course must be charted and your choices made. — Marvin J. Ashton

Whether your life is happy or not is your own choice.
Many people think I can't live a normal life because
I don't have arms or legs.
I could choose to believe that and give up trying.
I could stay at home and wait for others to take care of me.
Instead, I choose to believe that I can do anything,
and I always try to do things my own way.
I choose to be happy.
I am happy because I am always thankful. — Nick Vujicic

The little box that was given to me was by no means unique. I'd heard of prayer boxes, and I knew what they were for.
... Any scrap of paper will do, anywhere, anytime of the day or night. The important part, in a world of fractured thoughts, hurried moments, and scattershot prayers, is to take the time to think through, to write down, to clarify in your own mind the things you're asking for, the things you're grateful for, the things your're troubled about, the hopes you've been nurturing.
And then?
Put them in the box and ...
Let. Them. Go.
That's what trust is. It's letting go of the worry. It's the way of peace and also the way of God. such a hard road to travel for people like me, who are worriers. When I'm writing a story, I control the whole universe. In life ... not so much. Actually, not at all. Things happen that I hadn't anticipated and wouldn't choose and can't change. That's the tough part. — Lisa Wingate

If you take a single word ... and make it your own on a day-to-day basis, I hope it's choose. Being able to choose to act differently, even while feeling the old way, may be the most liberating growth you can accomplish. — Sue Thoele

What if ... all the rules and ways we lay down in our heads, don't even exist at all? What if we only believe that they're there, because we want to think that they're there? All the formalities of morality and the decisions that we see ourselves making in order to be better (or the best) ... what if we think we've got it all under control - but we don't? What if the path for you, is one that you would never dare take because you never saw yourself going that way? And then what if you realized that one day - would you take the path for you? Or would you choose to believe in your rules and your reasons? Your moralities and your hopes? What if your own hope, and your own morality - are going the other way? — C. JoyBell C.

I love books, by the way, way more than movies. Movies tell you what to think. A good book lets you choose a few thoughts for yourself. Movies show you the pink house. A good book tells you there's a pink house and lets you paint some of the finishing touches, maybe choose the roof style,park your own car out front. My imagination has always topped anything a movie could come up with. Case in point, those darned Harry Potter movies. That was so not what that part-Veela-chick, Fleur Delacour, looked like. — Karen Marie Moning

Do not presume to choose your own way of serving instead of the one I have made for you. — St. Catherine Of Siena

It is better to travel than to arrive. Better, by far, to find your own way than to have someone else choose it for you -- don't you think? — Lesley Howarth

Don't get angry or frustrated if those around you choose a different lifestyle than your own. Again, people make different choices, and everyone is on a different journey. Stop judging others, and you will see that others will stop judging you. I had to learn this the hard way. — Marta Tuchowska

Elsa is the sort of child who learned early in life that it's easier to make your way if you get to choose your own soundtrack. — Fredrik Backman

Somewhere along the way these countries [EU] redefined the relationship between government and citizen into something closer to pusher and addict. And, once you've done that, it's very hard to persuade the addict to cut back his habit. Thus, the general acceptance everywhere but America is that the state should run your health care. A citizen of an advanced democracy expects to be able to choose from dozens of breakfast cereals, hundreds of movies at the video store, and millions of porno sites on the Internet, but when it comes to life-or-death decisions about his own body he's happy to have the choice taken out of his hands and given to the government. — Mark Steyn

She wasn't afraid of difficulties; what frightened her was being forced to choose one particular path.
Choosing a path meant having to miss out on others. She had a whole life to live and she was always thinking that, in 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 dissappointment, she had never again given herself entirely. She feared pain, 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 in order not to see the bad things in life. — Paulo Coelho

As you get older, you have to be willing and able to choose your own path for your life. And once you choose it, you walk it with strength. If you meet evil along the way, know that it is supposed to make you afraid, but it's not supposed to stop you. You walk through the fear and you walk through the evil, and you don't let either one become your master. — Dan Groat

Are you trying to tell me - in your own typically macho way - that you want to make love again?"
He glanced at her. "I'm not trying to tell you anything. I want you. You want me. Someone is going to end up wearing nothing but a satisfied smile on her lips."
"I don't know, Nick, I might talk afterward. Do you think you can handle it?"
"I can handle anything you can think up, and a few things you've probably
never even thought of."
"Do I have a choice?"
"Sure, wild thing. I have four bedrooms. You can choose which one we use first. — Rachel Gibson

Heresy," by the way, simply means "choice." It came to mean "thoughtcrime," implying it was blasphemy to presume to choose your own belief instead of swallowing what the bishops spoonfed you. — Robert M. Price

The road my elders dictate is a narrow one, and I no longer believe it to be the road to wisdom. I choose my ow road. I choose to do the right thing, as you call it. I would not choose another companion for that road, and should you choose to walk that road with me, it would be.., his voice faltered, unable to put words to Alain's feelings, but he met her eyes, trying to let his feelings show. Perhaps he succeeded this time, because once again Mari blushed and bent her head. — Jack Campbell

In the same way that there's a partner for every person, there's a place. All you have to do is find your own among the billions that belong to other people, you have to be awake, you have to choose. — Bodil Malmsten

You are free to choose your own way of life, but you are not free to choose the results. — Herbert M. Shelton

A desire to live does not give you the knowledge required for living. And even man's desire to live is not automatic: your secret evil today is that that is the desire you do not hold. Your fear of death is not a love of life and will not give you the knowledge needed to keep it. Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking, which nature will not force him to perform. Man has the power to act as his own destroyer - and that is the way he has acted through most of his history. — Ayn Rand

You can easily find out her real name and address with your hacker skills, and I'll just pop out to Cleveland or wherever and kill her. That way she won't beat you anymore at your game. I'll let you choose whether I Own her or not, and how slowly and painfully you want her to die. I'll bring home a trophy for you to display so everyone will see how much I care for you." I looked around his place. "A garland with her teeth maybe, or her scalp if she has nice hair."
Wyatt made a kind of gurgling sound. "Sam. You're joking aren't you? In that weird way you do sometimes? You can't just kill her. I want to beat her at the game, not physically harm her person. I'll work on my technique and I'll win eventually."
Why would he want to do that? This idea was growing on me. What boyfriend wouldn't want a garland of teeth? — Debra Dunbar

You like all animals at that moment, although no doubt you will one day choose your favorites. Your own nature will triumph. We are all born with our natures. You popped out of your mother's belly, I saw your eyes, and I knew that you were already you. And I think back over my own life and I realize that my own nature
the core me
essentially hasn't changed over all these years. When I wake up in the morning, for those first few moments before I remember where I am or when I am, I still feel the same way I did when I woke up at the age of five. Sometimes I wonder if natures can be changed at all of if we are stuck with them as surely as a dog wants bones or as a cat chases mice. — Douglas Coupland

Our faith is really proven in the way we talk to ourselves. The loudest human voice you will listen to is your own. Choose your words wisely. — Christine Caine

Whenever you're down on your luck, and when things aren't going the way you like, remember that you are the author of your own story. You can write it any way you like, with anyone you choose. And it can be a beautiful story or a sad and tragic one. You get to pick. — Sarah Jio

You discover your true faith when you start flowing with your conscience. After lessons, visions, and theories validate themselves to you, you build faith in that hypothesis/ feeling/ idea that originated from your own heart and mind - not that of others. Before you submit to any one religion, create your own and find which one out there resonates closest with the one already in your heart. This is the way to choose your faith. — Suzy Kassem

What about free will? . . . There's that too. I never understood why people think they're mutually exclusive. Ask me, our entire lives aren't planned out for us- just some things. Specific events along the way, crossroads we're meant to come to. Tests, maybe, to measure our progress. But we always have choices, and those choices can send us along an unplanned path . . . there are some things that are meant to happen at a certain moment and in a certain way. No matter which path you choose, which decisions you make along your own particular journey, those pivotal moments appear to be set in stone. Maybe they represent the specific lessons we're meant to learn . . . Things we have to face. Things we have to learn. Responsibilities we have to fulfill. And mistakes we have to correct. — Kay Hooper

Choose food, clothing, and shelter that accords with nature.Rely on your own body for transportation. Allow your work and your recreation to be one and the same. Do exercise that develops your whole being and not just your body. Listen to music that bridges the three spheres of your being. Choose leaders for their virtue rather than their wealth or power. Serve others and cultivate yourself simultaneously. Understand that true growth comes from meeting and solving problems of life in a way that is harmonizing to yourself and to others. If you can follow these simple old ways, you will be continually renewed. — Lao-Tzu

When a person pauses in mid-sentence to choose a word, that's the best time to jump in and change the subject! It's like an interception in football! You grab the others guy's idea and run the opposite way with it! The more sentences you complete, the higher your score! The idea is to block the other guy's thoughts and express your own! That's how you win!

Conversations aren't contests!

Ok, a point for you, but I'm still ahead. — Bill Watterson

To my mind, there are two things that, in life, you can do about death. Either you can choose to ignore it, in which case you may have some success in making the idea of it go away for a limited period of time, or you can confront the prospect of your own death and try to analyze it and, in so doing, try to minimize some of the inevitable suffering that it causes. Neither way can you actually overcome it. — Dalai Lama

When you choose your own way, you lose your happiness — Sunday Adelaja

The way to choose happiness is to follow what is right and real and the truth for you. You can never be happy living someone else's dream. Live your own. And you will for sure know the meaning of happiness. — Oprah Winfrey

Happiness is a choice, To make a choice is utilizing your freewill to choose. Courage is getting out of your own way to let Happiness happen in your life in Abundance! — Sereda Aleta Dailey

That's the blessing and the curse of loss: You don't get to choose what falls within the inevitable dissolution of recollection or what lingers and haunts you late at night, your head heavy with memories, while your husband dreams of scaling walls in spandex tights.This is who I am: someone who simultaneously longs for and fears the commitment of remembering. There is the forgetting, the disintegration of memory, morsel by morsel; and there is the impossibility of forgetting, the scar tissue, with is insulated layers of padding. Both haunt me in their own way. — Julie Buxbaum

This was how it worked. You lived. You did your best. You got out of the way. You let those who come after you choose. You let them decide for themselves, live their own lives. This was the way. — Hugh Howey

You are the driver steering your own dreams. Choose to knock down whatever crosses your way. — Israelmore Ayivor

Tragedy may hit all of us in one way or another, but fate's not our enemy, Brooke. We are. By locking yourself away from the world, you choose your own mistakes and destroy any chance of ever finding happiness. You cannot control life, but you can chose who you are and what you make of it. — J.C. Reed

The last of the human freedoms: to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you become the plaything to circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity ... — Viktor E. Frankl

I think happiness is a choice. I believe luck is your attitude. It sounds like a really annoying bumper sticker. But there is such a great truth in that. You choose how you want to feel about what happens to you. I could have been a miserable failure. I haven't had anybody looking over me, and I've found my own way through optimistic exploration and fire-burning mistakes. I am a very happy person with an extraordinary life, so I must be doing a lot of things right. I really believe when you peel away the layers, the worlds is a beautiful place filled with beautiful people. — Drew Barrymore

The best thing a mother can give her child is a happy and fulfilled mom. There are many paths to happiness and fulfillment
follow your heart and choose your own way. — Lisa Hammond

It's easier to make your way if you choose your own soundtrack — Fredrik Backman

You are not allowed to get lost unless I want to lose you. You aren't allowed to be found, unless it's me doing the finding. And the only way you're allowed to die is if I choose to kill you with my own hands. Your life doesn't belong to you anymore, and if I have to murder you tonight and paint the snow with your blood to make you understand that, I will. You are mine, Kingsley. End of discussion. — Tiffany Reisz

So long as you believe yourself to be 'only human' you have accepted life in a prison cell whose door remains locked only by your own mind.
By saying, 'well, I'm only human', you have blindly submitted to all the limitations, fears, pettiness, greed and hatreds which make the common person weak and fragile.
Most never become aware that another way is possible.
You are human, but much more, too.
The much-moreness is the vast, brilliant freedom and power which has confined itself in your humanity.
If you are willing (and not everyone is, which is also a perfectly valid choice), you can begin to explore your native powers and experience freedom within limitation. When you do this, you live fully while you are here and you are no longer afraid to die.
When you are not afraid of death but seek to live in a state of always-discovering, this is when life is transformed and you accept your birthright to choose and create in extraordinary fashion. — Jacob Nordby

So, as I wrote in the paperback edition of The Lexus and the Olive Tree, I started telling anyone who asked "Is God in cyberspace?" that the answer is "no" - but He wants to be there. But only we can bring Him there by how we act there. God celebrates a universe with such human freedom because He knows that the only way He is truly manifest in the world is not if He intervenes but if we all choose sanctity and morality in an environment where we are free to choose anything. As Rabbi Marx put it, "In the postbiblical Jewish view of the world, you cannot be moral unless you are totally free. If you are not free, you are really not empowered, and if you are not empowered the choices that you make are not entirely your own. What God says about cyberspace is that you are really free there, and I hope you make the right choices, because if you do I will be present." The — Thomas L. Friedman

Life is nothing like a choose your own adventure. Except for when it is, in its randomness: a cancer sell splitting and spreading ruthlessly within the bloodstream; a storm raising on a deadly lake. Except for when it is, in the way the ending changes - in memory in meaning father than substance. — Carrie Snyder

You cannot convince someone to see something that they do not want to see, no matter how much you know it would improve their lives. You have to love and accept them exactly as they are today. If you cannot do that, you have to let them go and find their own way, in their own time, if they ever choose to do so.
Otherwise, you'll be giving them the power over your happiness, too. — Doe Zantamata