Life Is Your Choice Quotes & Sayings

Once the Choice is Made, Do Not Look Back, Do Not Second-Guess Your Decisions — Muhammad Ali

Here's the way it works. You're going to find yourself at a crossroads.. There's going to be a dcision you'll have to make, an action to be taken or not, a choice between polar opposites. All of what you are and what you have been and what you could be will be measured on your decision. And the consequences? They don't just affect you. They affect everyone. This is not simple life and death - it's about eternity. Yours. Others'. Do not understimate how far this goes. — J.R. Ward

Either to die the death or to abjure
For ever the society of men.
Therefore, fair Hermia, question your desires;
Know of your youth, examine well your blood,
Whether, if you yield not to your father's choice,
You can endure the livery of a nun,
For aye to be in shady cloister mew'd,
To live a barren sister all your life,
Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.
Thrice-blessed they that master so their blood,
To undergo such maiden pilgrimage;
But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd,
Than that which withering on the virgin thorn
Grows, lives and dies in single blessedness. — William Shakespeare

Change isn't a choice; it's already happening. You are atoms and molecules in motion ... you can't avoid change; you ARE change. The question is whether you will EMBRACE the power of change to enhance your life or continue to exhaust yourself in the pointless endeavor to halt it. — Steve Maraboli

And let me tell you my dearest friend,if you think that running away from it is the best solution, then you're wrong.You will never discovered your happiness. Trust me. I know because I've been in the exact situation as you are in now. And yes!There will be heartache and disappointment but you'll never regret the choice you've taken because everything turns out to be beautiful and this, my friend,is how I discovered you as the happiness of my life. — Songkee R. EEP

Since you own your life, you are responsible for your life. You do not rent your life from others who demand your obedience. Nor are you a slave to others who demand your sacrifice. You choose your own goals based on your own values. Success and failure are both the necessary incentives to learn and to grow. Your action on behalf of others, or their action on behalf of you, is only virtuous when it is derived from voluntary, mutual consent. For virtue can only exist when there is free choice. — Ken Schoolland

Has it ever occurred to you that a woman, when she is powerful, is more powerful than a man?" "Powerful in a different way, perhaps." Laud said: "It's a power partly based on fear. Perhaps the fear is atavistic, memories of babyhood. Women change the nappy, give the breast or withhold it." Langton said with a faint smile: "Not now, apparently. Fathers change nappies and it's usually a bottle." "But I'm right, Hubert, about power and fear. I wouldn't say it outside these walls, but life in Chambers would be a great deal easier if Venetia fell under that convenient Number 11 bus." He paused, and then asked the question to which he needed an answer. "So I have your support, have I? Can I take it that I'm your choice to succeed you as Head of Chambers? — P.D. James

You'll reach a comfort zone in your life and start to wonder how you got there, how did you miss the sign posts that directed your real inner truth? Don't feel so guilty, you know when your meant to know and I guess that's the thing they don't teach you; when growing up, pain is inevitable but staying the same is a choice. Don't question why your feeling ready for something new, question why you stayed the same for so long. — Nikki Rowe

The only choice once your world has been torn apart is to find your genius and live with that. 'Normal' is out of the question. The healing for veterans, or anyone going through great tragedy, is finding your natural spirit and your genius that was waiting to be found. That can now become the cohering principle in your life. The idea of patching someone up and back into normal when they've had extremely abnormal experiences is a misunderstanding. — Michael Meade

Every prayer is an agreement with yourself. The mind is asking the real you, which is life, to guide your decisions for every single choice that you make. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

Life pulls down every person to the least possible negativity and thrusts them outward to shine. It is the fight that matters; when you reach the bottom, you are left with no choice but to pick yourself up and climb every difficult step. Feeling down
and letting situations tear you apart proves that we all are human and nothing more or less. So, there is no need to worry about the devastating moments; there will come a moment
when you will be forced to stand for your rights and make one single move that will pull you into the world of success. Seize the moment and grow, that's all you can do and that's why you are born. — Kavipriya Moorthy

giving is a duty not a choice. Giving has no boundaries but it may be done under a noble discretion — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Life is absolutely balanced between the positive and the negative. Now it is your choice which side you want to be - in heaven or in hell. — Rajneesh

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

....she has realized why people believe in a soul. It's because they have to for they have no other choice. It's hard to bear that all the conversations, all the memories you had with your parents,with your sisters, with the person you loved were burnt or buried, snuffed out of life. So conveniently, people invented the soul, not for the benefit of the deceased, but the loved ones he or she left behind, to make them feel that while they suffer, he or she is watching, and that they equally miss them, like they, too, think of them, and they, too, are watching him.
We can't think of the people we love as bodies buried in caskets or an urn full of ashes, so we think of them as a concentrated mist of nothingness which we call the human soul. No matter how hard they we try to make ourselves believe that they are around us, the truth is that they are gone. — Durjoy Datta

Every act of irreverence for life, every act which neglects life, which is indifferent to and wastes life, is a step towards the love of death. This choice man must make at every minute. Never were the consequences of the wrong choice as total and as irreversible as they are today. Never was the warning of the Bible so urgent: 'I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life, that you and your children may live.' — Erich Fromm

Life has taught you many things, and the people close to you want you to have a good future, but it isn't their future in the end ... its your choice you pick the path and lead the way. All your family will do is follow you while you are on that path and support you when you find the light at the end of your road. — Julia Serano

Your life is a trajectory. Every choice you make alters that trajectory, in a positive or negative way. Will you categorize that dinner with friends as a business expense? Will you be honest with your daughter? Will you take more credit than you're due? These are just the small questions that we face every day, and little by little, the answers influence the trajectory of our lives and beings. — Donald Van De Mark

The choice is to live a spiritual life; to live a bigger life; to live a life of service to Earth and the whole; it's choosing every day and every hour to live by your true nature at all levels of being rather than live as an individual person only on the material dimension of being. — Ilchi Lee

Infinite Jest is an endurance contest. You manage to get through it and you have no choice but to say you like it. Otherwise, you have to deal with the fact that you just wasted weeks of your life, — Gabrielle Zevin

You know, when a person is murdered, you can miss that person and put all of your anger into hating the killer, even if you don't know who the killer is. You also have the choice of forgiveness. But when someone takes her own life, she is the killer. — Sarah Ockler

When you're confronted by a really difficult thing in your life, you're faced with a choice: you can runaway from it, or you can face it, confront it, and work through it. But to work through it, sometimes feels like holding your own head below water when you're already drowning. Your natural instinct when drowning is to get back up to the surface and give yourself some relief from that terrible situation ... you just want to breathe again. — Buck 65

You have the choice to create the life your heart is yearning to live. — Mahatma Gandhi

Is there anything courageous or brave about making the only possible choice that will save your life? When you're drowning, you grab any hand that's offered. To me, bravery is a spontaneous decision to save somebody else's life when your own is in danger. — Claire Sylvia

His dreams contained no stories at all, but only the hard stones of thoughts: the unimaginably unlikely coincidence of being alive at the same time as the love of your life, the frequency with which a person was expected to bear the body and the burden of someone else, the idiocy of thinking that kindness can protect the person who is kind, and worst of all, the bottomless pit of truth that he had suddenly, sickeningly seen: that the world to come was not an afterlife at all, but simply this world, to come- the future world, your own future, that you were creating for yourself with every choice you made in it. — Dara Horn

Silence allows you to watch your mind and become aware of the thoughts that you may be acting on unconsciously. When you see the thoughts, you can make a conscious choice to act on the thought or change your mind, instead of going along with the noise. I have seen people who don't want to look at themselves keep going until something happens that makes them stop - a sickness or an accident - but it gives them that reflective, quiet space where they can face what is difficult in their mind. We each have a unique purpose to fulfill in this life and inklings can come in those quiet moments. — Sivananda Radha Saraswati

What's simple to do is also simple not to do." The magic is not in the complexity of the task; the magic is in the doing of simple things repeatedly and long enough to ignite the miracle of the Compound Effect. So, beware of neglecting the simple things that make the big things in your life possible. The biggest difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is that successful people are willing to do what unsuccessful people are not. Remember that; it will come in handy many times throughout life when faced with a difficult, tedious, or tough choice. — Darren Hardy

A relationship will either make the majority of your life happy or miserable. It is important to take your time and make sure that it is a wise choice before making a commitment. — Pamela Cummins

But the Queen Arwen said: 'A gift I will give you. For I am the daughter of Elrond. I shall not go with him now when he departs to the Havens; for mine is the choice of Luthien, and as she so I have chosen, both the sweet and the bitter. But in my stead you shall go, Ring-bearer, when the time comes, and if you then desire it. If your hurts grieve you still and the memory or your burden is heavy, then you may pass into the West, until all your wounds and weariness are healed. But wear this now in memory of Elfstone and Evenstar with whom your life has been woven!'
And she took a white gem like a star that lay upon her breast hanging upon a silver chain, and she set the chain around Frodo's neck. 'When the memory of the fear and the darkness troubles you,' she said, 'this will bring you aid. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I don't believe in fate. I don't believe in cushioning your insecurities with a system of belief that tells you 'Don't worry. This may be your life but you're not in control. There is something or someone looking out for you
it's already organised.' It's all chance and choice, which is far more frightening. — Maggie O'Farrell

She cried, 'No choice! No choice!' She doesn't know. If she doesn't speak, she is making a choice. If she doesn't try, she can lose her chance forever.
I know this, because I was raised the Chinese way: I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people's misery, to eat my own bitterness.
and even though I taught my daughter the opposite, she still came out the same way! Maybe it is because she was born to me and she was born a girl. And I was born to my mother and I was born a girl. All of us are like stairs, one step after another, going up and down, but all going the same way.
I know how it is to be quiet, to listen and watch, as if your life were a dream. You can close your eyes when you no longer want to watch. But when you no longer want to listen, what can you do? I can still hear what happened more than sixty years ago. — Amy Tan

Pay close attention. Listen carefully. Let's look at what happens when fear is in charge.

With fear in charge, you can never fully relax, let your guard down, be your true self. You can't open up because you are afraid of how people will respond if they were to meet the real you. When fear is in charge, you simply cannot take that chance. Fear will not allow honesty, fear despises spontaneity, and fear refuses to believe in you. Fear may mean well, but it ruins everything by overprotecting you, insisting that you stay hidden and keep a low profile, that your time is coming....sometime later.

Fear is bold, but insists that you be timid. Take a chance and there will be hell to pay: fear will call on its dear friend, shame, to meet you on the other side of your risk taking, to tell you what you should not have done. Fear will trip you, tackle you, smother you, do whatever it takes to cause you to hesitate, to stop you. In this way fear is fearless. — Thom Rutledge

Every day of your life, you are faced with opportunities. Unfortunately, the choices that face you are not heroic choices. They are bamboo tree choices. They are small, but progressive choices that steer you in a positive direction and over time you're bound to meet success. For most of us, we spend all our lives waiting for that life changing moment that will change the course of our lives and make us successful. Unfortunately, the clock is ticking. Every day, we choose not to tend to our bamboo tree, a choice is made for us and by the time we realize it, the seasons have passed and we have nothing to show for it. — Mary Maina

The way to control your life is to control your choice of words and thoughts. No one thinks in your mind but you. — Louise L. Hay

What you make of life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need - what you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours. Stay mindful of your choices! — John C. Maxwell

Basically it is your choice. No matter what spiritual path you have taken, no matter what experiences you have had, choice is still choice. Spiritual development doesn't happen automatically. It is choosing the eye of Tao that sees both the whole view of things from a distance and the core of reality from deep inside. — Ilchi Lee

The myth is that women and their families don't have to make trade-offs to have an 'extreme career'; they absolutely do. How you prioritize your life and career is your choice. Once you make a decision, stick to it; don't always second-guess yourself. — Angela Braly

There are no footprints on the sea and no road-signs, not a single guard-stone or post, and no bends, only paths of light and dark from which to choose, the choice is always a difficult navigation and the storm's wingspan immeasurable as the depths and the horizon, but the sea holds you in its mighty hand your life is a sea-blue tale of love and death. — Ase-Marie Nesse

Your death has not been waiting for your arrival at the appointed hour: it has, for all the years of your life, been racing towards you with the fierce velocity of time's arrow. It cannot be evaded, it cannot be bargained with, deflected or placated. All that is given to you is the choice: meet it with open eyes and peace in your heart, go gentle to your reward. Or burn bright, take up arms, and fight the bitch. — Mark Lawrence

You are in a concentration camp. In Auschwitz ... "
A pause. He was observing the effect his words had produced. His face remains in my memory to this day. A tall man, in his thirties, crime written all over his forehead and his gaze. He looked at us as one would a pack of leprous dogs clinging to life.
"Remember," he went on. "Remember it always, let it be graven in your memories. You are in Auschwitz. And Auschwitz is not a convalescent home. It is a concentration camp. Here, you must work. If you don't you will go straight to the chimney. Work or crematorium
the choice is yours. — Elie Wiesel

You always have a choice. Destiny deals you your hand and what you do with the cards is up to you — Kenneth Eade

When you are standing at a crossroads in your life, realize
that the greatest block that you can put in front of your Self is the idea
that there is a 'right' choice. — Story Waters

Your one certainty in life, your power as a human being, is that you have a choice in every situation about what you do next and about how you take what has happened to you. — Ben Whishaw

If I, as a child, claim that something awful has happened - that someone has done something terrible to me - and everyone around me acts as if nothing is the matter, then either I must be crazy, or all of them are. And when you're a kid and your life depends on all these people, there is no choice: of course, I must be crazy. — E. Sue Blume

They think that your body creates a desire and makes a choice for you just about in some such way as if iron ore transformed itself into railroad rails of its own volition. Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. — Ayn Rand

The business aspect is one of the most important things about having a music career, because every choice you make in a management meeting affects your life a year-and-a-half from now. — Taylor Swift

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DIGNITY AND CHOICE

By the One who set the earth with rivers pouring through in mist below the mountains, and two oceans with a strip of land between (27:61), we move the elements into various shapes without their consent, but human beings, unlike the water and trees, have a choice. They are given dignity, discernment, and the evolutionary wisdom that can move from death to new life, again to die and be restored on another level of existence. You have many choices about the ways you live and work and change and survive. Say you fall into an ocean. You may give up and sink, or you may try to swim to shore. Salvation is your decision. — Bahauddin

Because when you love someone," she met my gaze in the mirror and said without a flicker in her confidence, "their world interests you more than your own. So much so that you disappear into them, and the only choice you have is to merge your life with theirs. Because otherwise, you cease to exist at all. — Laurelin Paige

The only freedom of choice you have is the ability to define your own path and destiny. — Lailah Gifty Akita

One of the greatest feelings in life is the conviction that you have lived the life you wanted to live-with the rough and the smooth, the good and the bad-but yours, shaped by your own choices, and not someone else's. — Michael Ignatieff

This short interval was sufficient to determine d'Artagnan on the part he was to take. It was one of those events which decide the life of a man; it was a choice between the king and the cardinal - the choice made, it must be persisted in. To fight, that was to disobey the law, that was to risk his head, that was to make at one blow an enemy of a minister more powerful than the king himself. All this young man perceived, and yet, to his praise we speak it, he did not hesitate a second. Turning towards Athos and his friends, "Gentlemen," said he, "allow me to correct your words, if you please. You said you were but three, but it appears to me we are four." "But you are not one of us," said Porthos. "That's true," replied d'Artagnan; "I have not the uniform, but I have the spirit. My heart is that of a Musketeer; I feel it, monsieur, and that impels me on." "Withdraw, — Alexandre Dumas

You are not the victim of the world, but rather the master of your own destiny. It is your choices and decisions that determine your destiny. — Roy T. Bennett

Should I go to graduate school? What if I made the wrong choice? These questions arise not because there is no pat but because we expect there to be a single one. Uncertainty should invite curiosity and reflection, but instead it generates fear.
Learn to accept uncertainty as an important step to true self-discovery. To start finding your path, begin listening to that inner voice. Tap into what you think and feel, what you truly care about. Don't worry about finding your passion and life's calling immediately. Those usually takes time. But do avoid becoming a passenger in your own life. — Rachel Simmons

How can you come to understand your life when even the beginning is so complicated: a single cell imprinted with the color of your eyes and the shape of your face the pattern on your palm and the moods that will shadow you through your life. How can you be alive when every choice you make breaks the world into a thousand filaments each careless step branching into long tributaries of alternate lives shuddering outward and outward like sheet lightning. — Dan Chaon

Once you have started seeing the beauty of life, ugliness starts disappearing. If you start looking at life with joy, sadness starts disappearing. You cannot have heaven and hell together, you can have only one. It is your choice. — Rajneesh

Is there such a thing as a life without any regrets? I've never believed so. We spend our lives aiming for happiness and fulfilment in work, in love and with our friends and family, and yet often our energy is spent lamenting bad boyfriends, wrong career turns, fallouts with friends and opportunities missed. Or is that just me? I admit I'm naturally a glass-half-empty kind of girl, but I know regrets are a burden to happiness and I'm trying to let go of them because I've learned that it's all about choice. You can choose to turn regrets into lessons that change your future. Believe me when I say I'm really trying to do this. But the truth is, I'm failing. Because all I can think right now is: maybe I deserve it. Maybe this is my penance. — Ali Harris

Remember that in life, everything that you want is outside of your comfort zone. Because if something is inside your comfort zone, it's either something you already have or something so trivial as to be undesirable: you don't want something you already have. So in order to get what you want but don't yet have, you have no choice but to venture outside of your comfort zone. — Ali Binazir

Nobody's going to do your life for you. You have to do it yourself, whether you're rich or poor, out of money or raking it in, the beneficiary of ridiculous fortune or terrible injustice. And you have to do it no matter what is true. No matter what is hard. No matter what unjust, sad, sucky things befall you. Self-pity is a dead-end road. You make the choice to drive down it. It's up to you to decide to stay parked there or to turn around and drive out. — Cheryl Strayed

Today, live your life to the fullest because tomorrow is a mystery, don't enter it with regrets — Abie Sigauke

Who are you' is a question of both substance and position. In other words, what is the authority of your voice, service, product or performance in relation to the needs of those you intend to serve? Secondly, have you defined and demystified yourself enough to be accepted as the solution of choice? — Archibald Marwizi

Mercy is stronger than your sword. — P.C. Cast

No price is too high to pay, to be the author of your fate. — Johnathan Jena

Life is never boring but some people choose to be bored. The concept of boredom entails an inability to use up present moments in a personally fulfilling way. Boredom is a choice; something you visit upon yourself, and it is another of those self-defeating items that you can eliminate from your life. — Wayne Dyer

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

My life is an open book, like it or limp it ... your choice — Rashied Davids

I know how it is to live your life like a dream. To listen and watch, to wake up and try to understand what has already happened.
You do not need a psychiatrist to do this. A psychiatrist does not want you to wake up. He tells you to dream some more, to find the pond and pour more tears into it. And really, he is just another bird drinking from your misery.
My mother, she suffered. She lost her face and tried to hind it. She found only greater misery and finally could not hide that. There is nothing more to understand. that was China. That was what people did back then. They had no choice. they could not speak up. they could not run away. That was their fate. — Amy Tan

A healthy choice for your overall health and well-being is one of a happy and positive disposition. — Steve Maraboli

Choice is the basis of every part of your existence, but so is fear. The difference is, choice creates movement, where fear limits movement. — Rene Gaudette

Grief reunites you with what you've lost. It's a merging; you go with the loved thing or person that's going away. You follow it a far as you can go.
But finally,the grief goes away and you phase back into the world. Without him.
And you can accept that. What the hell choice is there? You cry, you continue to cry, because you don't ever completely come back from where you went with him
a fragment broken off your pulsing, pumping heart is there still. A cut that never heals.
And if, when it happens to you over and over again in life, too much of your heart does finally go away, then you can't feel grief any more. And then you yourself are ready to die. You'll walk up the inclined ladder and someone else will remain behind grieving for you. — Philip K. Dick

Suppose you could be hooked up to a hypothetical 'experience machine' that, for the rest of your life, would stimulate your brain and give you any positive feelings you desire. Most people to whom I offer this imaginary choice refuse the machine. It is not just positive feelings we want: we want to be entitled to our positive feelings. — Martin Seligman

This wordly life is like a shadow. If you try to catch it, you will never be able to do so. If you turn your back towards it, it has no choice but to follow you. — Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya

People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, 'If you keep a lot of rules I'll reward you, and if you don't I'll do the other thing.' I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To — C.S. Lewis

Life is full of choices.
Your choice is your true freedom. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Margaret ... you must know that you could never change your own life. You are a girl: girls have no choice. You could never even choose your own husband: you are of the royal family. A husband would always have been chosen for you. It is forbidden for one of royal blood to marry their own choice. You know this too. And finally, you are of the House of Lancaster. You cannot choose your allegiance. You have to serve your house, your family, and your husband. I have allowed you to dream, and I have allowed you to read, but the time has come to put aside silly stories and silly dreams and do your duty. — Philippa Gregory

Infinite Jest is a masterpiece," Harvey had said. "Infinite Jest is an endurance contest. You manage to get through it and you have no choice but to say you like it. Otherwise, you have to deal with the fact that you just wasted weeks of your life," A.J. — Gabrielle Zevin

I will choose what enters me, what becomes
of my flesh. Without choice, no politics,
no ethics lives. I am not your cornfield,
not your uranium mine, not your calf
for fattening, not your cow for milking.
You may not use me as your factory.
Priests and legislators do not hold shares
in my womb or my mind.
This is my body. If I give it to you
I want it back. My life
is a non-negotiable demand. — Marge Piercy

Life is over so quickly. It is possible to reach the end with no regrets. It takes some bravery to live it right, to honour the life you are here to live but the choice is yours. ... Appreciate the time you have left by valuing all of the gifts in your life and that includes especially, your own, amazing self. — Bronnie Ware

Every act and choice you make is creating the real you and shaping your real life. — Elizabeth George

She couldn't change who she was, and she no longer wanted to, even if she could. She knew that who you are is a stone set deep inside you. You can spend all your life trying to dig that stone out, or you can build around it. Your choice. — Sarah Addison Allen

To ask any parent to suffer the loss of a child is to ask more than any parent can possibly give. But to deny any individual the right to walk the path they have chosen, because we cannot imagine our lives without them, carries a heavy price. You have never known this because you have never faced this choice. You've never had to sacrifice anything, because of your power to alter reality to suit your whims. I understand this truth. We mortals have tried to soften it in platitudes. 'The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.' 'Death before dishonor.' In the end, nothing makes it easier to accept. I've given my life once for those I love, and I'm about to do it again. To have made any other choice was to grant fear dominion. Your son is a remarkable individual. Don't ask him to be less than he is. He has made his choice. — Kirsten Beyer

For the person who wants to capture everything that passes before his eyes, [...] the only coherent way to act is to snap at least one picture a minute, from the instant he opens his yes in the morning to when he goes to sleep. This is the only way that he rolls of exposed film will represent a faithful diary of our days, with nothing left out. If I were to start taking pictures, I'd see this thing through, even if it meant losing my mind. But the rest of you still insist on making a choice. What sort of choice? A choice in the idyllic sense, apologetic, consolatory, at peace with nature, the fatherland, the family. Your choice isn't only photographic; it is a choice of life, which leads you to exclude dramatic conflicts, the knots of contradiction, the great tensions of will, passion, aversion. So you think you are saving yourselves from madness, but you are falling into mediocrity, into hebetude."

- from "The Adventure of a Photographer — Italo Calvino

Guess life is really a road marked by crossroads. It's not the long and winding stretches that will hurt you the most. It's the crossroads. You make a bad choice and it's a tumble and a rumble before you get back on your feet again. But you'll get back on your feet. You'll find yourself. And then you'll be off to your next adventure (crossroads, I mean). In my case, I always had a safety net - my faith in God. But then, I'm more like the millions of simple folk who travel this world. — Psyche Roxas-Mendoza

I think that the only choice that we have in life is whether we align ourselves with God or not. I think everything else is all taken care of for us. You know? If you choose to align with your source, with your spirit, then your life will go in a certain direction. If you choose to align yourself with your ego, and your false self, and the belief that who you are is what you accomplish and what other people think of you and what you accumulate, if you just go that route - the outer route, if you will, the outer path - your life will go in a different direction. — Wayne Dyer

Life is a choice. Your choices each day determine what outcomes happen in your life. It is by choice, not by chance, that will determine your life. An Unstoppable Life begins by taking responsibility for your choices. — Thomas Narofsky

You don't have that much choice in your life, which is one of the big lessons I've learned. I was going to be a designer whether I wanted to be a designer or not. — Donna Karan

You are born and you will die ... but BEING ALIVE is your choice. — Mayank Sharma

I want to be in the arena. I want to be brave with my life. And when we make the choice to dare greatly, we sign up to get our asses kicked. We can choose courage or we can choose comfort, but we can't have both. Not at the same time. Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it's having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it's our greatest measure of courage. A lot of cheap seats in the arena are filled with people who never venture onto the floor. They just hurl mean-spirited criticisms and put-downs from a safe distance. The problem is, when we stop caring what people think and stop feeling hurt by cruelty, we lose our ability to connect. But when we're defined by what people think, we lose the courage to be vulnerable. Therefore, we need to be selective about the feedback we let into our lives. For me, if you're not in the arena getting your ass kicked, I'm not interested in your feedback. — Brene Brown

I love you enough to tell you the truth whether you want to hear it or not, but what you do afterward is your choice alone. — Ashley Ormon

What I know for sure is this: The big secret in life is that there is no big secret. Whatever your goal for this year is, you can get there - as long as you're willing to be honest with yourself about the preparation and work involved. There are no back doors, no free rides. There's just you, this moment, and a choice. — Oprah Winfrey

Each and every one of you is a sovereign human being with free will granted to you by the Maker. But he didn't leave you to wander in this life without guidance. He whispers truth to you in the face of every moral dilemma you encounter. At every turn, with every choice, you have only to listen to your conscience to know the right and just course. — David A. Wells

My version of success is that my life is full, purposeful, beautiful and boundless. I attribute this success to my spirituality, my good health, and my community of positive relationships which have all come to me as a creation of choice. Success comes from finding your center and your self; being self-centered in a positive and peaceful way. — Bryant McGill

A very good career choice would be to gravitate toward those activities and to embrace those desires that harmonize with your core intentions, which are freedom and growth - and joy. Make a 'career' of living a happy life rather than trying to find work that will produce enough income that you can do things with your money that will then make you happy. When feeling happy is of paramount importance to you - and what you do 'for a living' makes you happy - you have found the best of all combinations. — Esther Hicks

Your responsibility as an adult is accept your childhood and make your own choice of life. — Kathy Mckeon

There is wisdom in knowing your limits and then daring to push past them. Choose to live an exceptional life. — Truth Devour

It always looks as if people had a choice, but that is an illusion. As long as your mind with its conditioned patterns runs your life, as long as you are your mind, what choice do you have? — Eckhart Tolle

The urge to move is natural and understandable. As will be the case throughout your life, no matter how long or brief, the choice is, in the end, yours. Simply bear in mind that most every choice will have consequences, and in this instance those consequences would likely be quite grave. — Ron Currie Jr.

If in life you choose something that is your second choice, whether it be clothes, a relationship, or a career, then don't choose it. Wait until you can have your first choice. Never settle for second best. — Steven Aitchison

The first kill would be the hardest, but the next would be easier, and the one after that easier still, because it's true: Even the most sensitive person can get used to even the most insensitive thing.
Cruelty isn't a personality trait. Cruelty is a habit.
He pushed that thought away. To call what he was doing cruel implied he had a choice. Choosing between your kind and another species wasn't cruel. It was necessary. Not easy, especially when you've lived the last four years of your life pretending to be no different from them, but necessary. — Rick Yancey

Life offers a cruel choice: you can be right or happy. Not both. This is true regardless of whom you may be involved with, but it is especially true if there is an emotional vampire in your life. — Albert J. Bernstein

You are your abilities and they are you. I can't put it to you more plainly. Do you know why I hate this cure? It's a statement that what we are is inherently wrong. It's a punishment for something that isn't our fault - all because they can't control their fear about what we can do, anymore than they can control their resentment that there are people out there stronger and more powerful than they are. They want to strip you of yourself - your ability to protect and enforce your right to make decisions about your life. Your own body. Mark my words: in the end, it won't be a choice. They'll decide this for you. — Alexandra Bracken