Not Being First Choice Quotes & Sayings

Now, it is frequently asserted that, with women, the job does not come first. What (people cry) are women doing with this liberty of theirs? What woman really prefers a job to a home and family? Very few, I admit. It is unfortunate that they should so often have to make the choice. A man does not, as a rule, have to choose. He gets both. Nevertheless, there have been women ... who had the choice, and chose the job and made a success of it. And there have been and are many men who have sacrificed their careers for women ... When it comes to a choice, then every man or woman has to choose as an individual human being, and, like a human being, take the consequences. — Dorothy L. Sayers

being then just dinner-time, we went, first into the great kitchen, where every prisoner's dinner was in course of being set out separately (to be handed to him in his cell), with the regularity and precision of clock-work. I said aside, to Traddles, that I wondered whether it occurred to anybody, that there was a striking contrast between these plentiful repasts of choice quality, and the dinners, not to say of paupers, but of soldiers, sailors, labourers, the great bulk of the honest, working community; of whom not one man in five hundred ever dined half so well. But I learned that the 'system' required high living; and, in short, to dispose of the system, once for all, I found that on that head and on all others, 'the system' put an end to all doubts, and disposed of all anomalies. Nobody appeared to have the least idea that there was any other system, but THE system, to be considered. — Charles Dickens

You never want one thing at any given moment of life. Your mind always comes up with at least two choices. If your limbic system wins, the choice you make seems to be pleasurable at first but in the long run ends up being the wrong one. And if your prefrontal cortex wins the choice you make may appear rough at first, but in the long run it turns out to be the right one. — Abhijit Naskar

If actors could actually make a living doing theater, that would be my first choice. Sitcoms are the closest thing to being onstage in front of an audience. If I had to choose, it would be theater and doing the occasional movie once in a while, and spending time doing nothing. — Enrico Colantoni

Happiness is the first principle of life. Happiness basically means well-being. It is always good and always a choice ... We need to make the choice to be happy in a particular situation, just as it is, and at a given moment. — Alexandra Stoddard

...turning someone into a bigot is the first step in turning him into a terrorist. You find someone vulnerable - someone who's lost his confidence, his income, his pride, his agency. Someone who feels humiliated by life. And then you isolate him. You fill him with fear and fury, and you see to it that he regards anybody who's different as a faceless target - a silhouette at a shooting range like Calverton - rather than a human being. But even people who've been raised on hate since birth, people whose minds have been warped and weaponized, can make a choice about who they want to be. And they can be extraordinary advocates for peace, precisely because they've seen the effects of violence, discrimination and disenfranchisement firsthand. People who have been victimized can understand more deeply than anyone how little the world needs more victims. — Zak Ebrahim

As exercise is necessary to the development of physical muscle, so development of the moral nature is accomplished through temptation. The soul being given choice, may exercise it in whatever direction it chooses, for it learns just as well by its mistakes as by right action in the first place, perhaps even better. — Max Heindel

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

There have been so many interpretations of the story that I'm not going to choose between them. Make your own choice. They contradict each other, the various choices. The only choice that really matters, the only interpretation of the story, if you want one, is your own. Not your teacher's, not your professor's, not mine, not a critic's, not some authority's. The only thing that matters is, first, the experience of being in the story, moving through it. Then any interpretation you like. If it's yours, then that's the right one, because what's in a book is not what an author thought he put into it, it's what the reader gets out of it. — William Golding

But his graduate advisor, the eminent poverty scholar William Julius Wilson, promptly sent Venkatesh into the field. His assignment: to visit Chicago's poorest black neighborhoods with a clipboard and a seventy-question, multiple-choice survey. This was the first question on the survey: How do you feel about being black and poor? a. Very bad b. Bad c. Neither bad nor good d. Somewhat good e. Very good — Steven D. Levitt

There are a lot of women writers who never get married and don't have kids. I am married, but I didn't marry until I was 43. I knew when I was young that if I had to make a choice between being married and being a writer, I would have chosen to be a writer. I think it's a career where you have to put the career first. I don't have kids but - and luckily everyone isn't like this - I think if you have that passion, in a way, your career is your child. — Candace Bushnell

First, clarify what you really want. You've got a head start if you've already Started with Heart. If you know what you want for yourself, for others, and for the relationship, then you're in position to break out of the Fool's Choice. "What I want is for my husband to be more reliable. I'm tired of being let down by him when he makes commitments that I depend on." Second, clarify what you really don't want. This is the key to framing the and question. Think of what you are afraid will happen to you if you back away from your current strategy of trying to win or stay safe. What bad thing will happen — Kerry Patterson

Homoeopathic treatment is my first choice not only for me but also for my family. Homoeopathy should be developed as full- fledged alternative system of medicine. More research and more development are essential to make Homoeopathy more popular and useful Homoeopath treats their patients in more compassionate way. Homoeopathy is second largest system of medicine being practiced in India. — K. R. Narayanan

The fulfilment that is being in love with God is not the product of our knowledge and choice. It is God's gift. Like all being in love, as distinct from particular acts of loving, it is a first principle. So far from resulting from our knowledge and choice, it dismantles and abolishes the horizon within which our knowing and choosing went on, and it sets up a new horizon within which the love of God transvalues our values and the eyes of that love transform our knowing. — Bernard Lonergan

Unless we change our food choices, nothing else matters. Because it is meat that is destroying most of our forests. It is meat that pollutes the waters. It is meat that is creating disease which leads to all our money being diverted to hospitals. So, it's the first choice for anybody who wants to save the Earth. — Maneka Gandhi

One day a friend came by the job site and asked them separately what they were doing. The first said, "Aw, we're just laying brick. We've been doing this for thirty years. It's so boring. One brick on top of the other." Then the friend asked the second bricklayer. He just lit up. "Why, we're building a magnificent skyscraper," he said. "This structure is going to stand tall for generations to come. I'm just so excited that I could be a part of it." Each bricklayer's happiness or lack of it was based on their perspective. You can be laying a brick or you can be building a beautiful skyscraper. The choice is up to you. You can go to work each day and just punch in on the clock and dread being there and do as little as possible. Or you can show up with enthusiasm and give it your best, knowing that you're making the world a better place. — Joel Osteen

The shuttle is the worst $20 you'll ever save. It adds 90 minutes to whatever a Town Car or cab would have been. You have the unenviable choice between being dropped off last or being dropped off first and having a bunch of losers who can't afford cab fare and have no friends or loved ones with cars knowing exactly where you live. — Adam Carolla

I think being funny is not anyone's first choice. — Woody Allen

But these were days of self-fulfillment, where settling for something that was not quite your first choice of a life seemed weak-willed and ignoble. Somewhere, surrendering to what seemed to be your fate had changed from being dignified to being a sign of your own cowardice. There were times when the pressure to achieve happiness felt almost oppressive, as if happiness were something that everyone should and could attain, and that any sort of compromise in its pursuit was somehow your fault. — Hanya Yanagihara

The first act of honoring the self is the assertion of consciousness: the choice to think, to be aware, to send the searchlight of consciousness outward toward the world and inward toward our own being. To default on this effort is to default on the self at the most basic level. — Nathaniel Branden

ROSE: I married your daddy and settled down to cooking his super and keeping clean sheets on the bed. When your daddy walked through the house he was so big he filled it up. That was my first mistake. Not to make him leave some room for me. For my part in the matter. But at that time I wanted that. I wanted a house that I could sing in. And that's what your daddy gave me. I didn't know to keep up his strength I had to give up little pieces of mine. I did that. I took on his life as mine and mixed up the pieces so that you couldn't hardly tell which was which anymore. It was my choice. It was my life and I didn't have to live it like that.But that's what life offered me in the way of being a woman and I took it. I grabbed hold of it with both hands. — August Wilson

Unfortunately I am afraid, as always, of going on. For to go on means going from here, means finding me, losing me, vanishing and beginning again, a stranger first, then little by little the same as always, in another place, where I shall say I have always been, of which I shall know nothing, being incapable of seeing, moving, thinking, speaking, but of which little by little, in spite of these handicaps, I shall begin to know something, just enough for it to turn out to be the same place as always, the same which seems made for me and does not want me, which I seem to want and do not want, take your choice, which spews me out or swallows me up, I'll never know, which is perhaps merely the inside of my distant skull where once I wandered, now am fixed, lost for tininess, or straining against the walls, with my head, my hands, my feet, my back, and ever murmuring my old stories, my old story, as if it were the first time. — Samuel Beckett

Your day is full of choices . . . what to eat, where to go, how to talk, all kinds of things like that. Most of those choices involve a kind of choice within the choice: Do I simply choose what I want, or do I consider what's best for others while I consider what I want? When you choose what's best for others first, you're choosing to be selfless. Choose what you want without considering others and, obviously, you're being selfish. — Todd G. Gongwer

I tried to remember what Rita had said about being a bigger person. I could either calmly tell him that he was mistaken or let him have it. I could be the bigger person or I could be like any normal sixteen-year-old.
Like there really was a choice.
"First off, you ever call me a babe again and no medical team on earth will be able to tell that you were once a guy."
I was only sixteen after all. — Elizabeth Eulberg

Trauma and pain are the foundations of art. I believe that. When tragedy strikes, however, a muralist or a watercolorist has the opportunity to be a human being in the moment and an artist afterward. Faced with the death of a loved one, a sculptor or portraitist can first grieve, suffer, and heal--then create. Most artists go through life this way. They can react normally to the trials and tribulations of the human experience. They can pass through the world with compassion and comradeship. They can make their art later. Outside, elsewhere, beyond. But photography is immediate. It does not offer the luxury of time. Faced with blood, death, or transformation, a photographer has no choice but to reach for the camera. An artist first, a human being afterward. Photography is a neutral record of all events, a chronicle of things both sublime and terrible. By necessity, this work is made without emotion, without connection, without love. — Abby Geni

The first truth is the most basic affirmation of our faith: God loves us. This is not a general rule to which you, personally, may be an exception. It is not a conditional rule that applies only when you are good, pure, and lovable. God's passionate and personal love for each and every human being expresses who God is. Unfailing love is the divine nature and the divine choice in relation to us. God loves us with an overwhelming love that none of our sins can erase.While we can grieve and disappoint this love, nothing we do or fail to do can alter its depth or reality. It is a gift, a given.We cannot control whether God loves us by efforts to gain this love or even to lose it. Since we neither deserve nor earn such love, God's fondest dream is that we will receive and respond to it. — Marjorie, J. Thompson

I would never have expected anything that I did would ever appear in first-rate museums around the world. That was just a choice that I made, very early on. I was interested mainly in the entertainment arts. I wasn't as interested in being a fine artists. — Rick Heinrichs

By choice, we have become a family, first in our hearts, and finally in breath and being. Great expectations are good; great experiences are better. — Richard W. Fisher

I've decided being eaten alive by anything is my last choice of causes of death." "What's first choice?" "Kicking it at two hundred and twenty, minutes after being sexually satisfied by my thirty-five-year-old Spanish lover, and his twin brother." "There's something to be said for that, — J.D. Robb

If you're like most people, you'll do one thing for two to three years, then something else for two to three years, and then - somewhere in that five- to seven-year distance from Yale - you'll see a need to fully commit to something that's a longer-term project: graduate school, for example, or a job you need to stick with for some real time. The question is: where do you need to be with yourself such that when the time comes to 'cast your whole vote,' you're reasonably confident you're not being either fear-based or ego-driven in your choice . . . that the journey you're on is really yours, and not someone else's? If you think of your first few jobs after Yale in this way - holistically and in terms of your growth as a person rather than as ladder rungs to a specific material outcome - you're less likely to wake up at age forty-five married to a stranger." Yikes! — Marina Keegan

'Out' was my real breakthrough, the novel that became a hit in Japan and sold a lot of books, so it was sort of an obvious choice for being the first book to be translated into English. — Natsuo Kirino

But there was another option. He could choose to live in the world and guide other souls to enlightenment. Staying would mean never stepping through the door to Nirvana until every other living being was enlightened. It could take all eternity. No one knows how long it took him to make his decision. But Tibetans believe that he stayed. His realization made him a buddha - an enlightened being - but his choice also made him the first Bodhisattva: — Scott Carney

The question I'd long posed to myself - whether to be married or to be single - is a false binary. The space in which I've always wanted to live - indeed, where I have spend my adulthood - isn't between those two poles, but beyond it. The choice between being married versus being single doesn't even belong here in the twenty-first century. — Kate Bolick

There was no point in being an angel - that lesson had been drilled into him early and often. Hey, the Bible hadn't been his first choice of reading material, but once foisted on him, he twisted it to his advantage. According to the Good Book, angels got the short end of the stick. Lots of work for very little recognition.

But everyone knew Satan. — S.E. Jakes

LOVE'S BAPTISM. I'm ceded, I've stopped being theirs; The name they dropped upon my face With water, in the country church, Is finished using now, And they can put it with my dolls, My childhood, and the string of spools I've finished threading too. Baptized before without the choice, But this time consciously, of grace Unto supremest name, Called to my full, the crescent dropped, Existence's whole arc filled up With one small diadem. My second rank, too small the first, Crowned, crowing on my father's breast, A half unconscious queen; But this time, adequate, erect, With will to choose or to reject. And I choose - just a throne. — Emily Dickinson

Not until you finally try to put down the stuff do you realize, with stinging clarity, precisely why you picked it up in the first place. All life, in this freshly nerve-flayed state, boils down to a choice of hells. The hell of being fucked-up on drugs or the hell of being fucked-up without them. — Jerry Stahl

In friendship ... we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another ... the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting
any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," can truly say to every group of Christian friends, "Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another." The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others. — C.S. Lewis

At the very beginning of my career, when I opened my business in Italy, I was also a ranked tennis player. I had won many tournaments. To be an athlete was my first choice. Second choice: designer. However! There was more money in being a designer at that time. — Oleg Cassini

I desire before I leave the world, as my best legacy to my family,, my serious, solemn advice, to make choice of my God for their God. He has been my father's God, and the God of your Mother's predecessors. I solemnly charge you to make it your first care to seek after peace with God, and being reconciled, to make it your study to please God in all things. — Robert Dabney

To be an African is not a choice, it is a condition ... To be an African is not through lack of being integrated in Europe ... neither is it from regret of the crimes perpetrated by "my people" ... No, it is simply the only opening I have for making use of all my sense and capabilities ... The African earth was the first to speak. I have been pronounced once and for all. — Breyten Breytenbach

So, what does all this tell us? First, that the seed of greatness exists in every human being. Whether it sprouts or not is our choice. Second, that there are no such things as natural-born under- or overachievers - there are simply people that tap into their true potentials and people that don't. What is generally recognized as "great talent" is, in almost all cases, nothing more than the outward manifestations of an unwavering dedication to a process. — Sean Patrick

Crucial to how we feel is being aware of how we are feeling in the moment. The sine qua non of that is to realize that you are being emotional in the first place. The earlier you recognize an emotion, the more choice you will have in dealing with it. In Buddhist terms, it's recognizing the spark before the flame. In Western terms, it's trying to increase the gap between impulse and saying or doing something you might regret later. — Paul Ekman

It was excruciating at first, getting over Trip. Not that I ever really did, mind you. But during those first years, I had no other choice but to go on with my life. Because do you ever really get over your first love? Even during your twenties, when you experience that initial taste of being a grown-up ... that teenager still lives inside you. That person you were before the world started telling you how to be, what to say, who you should be with. Before you lost yourself in expectations and plans, and could just be a work-in-progress with only the vaguest results in mind. — T. Torrest

Roughly a month into my stay in jail, I began the first of twelve letters. The choice of titles had much to do with my reason (or circumstances) for being incarcerated: I was a parent of a past-marriage; and though the courts had dissolved the marriage long ago, the matter of parenting was still being debated (by me) - but prohibited by the courts. I had to accept the possibility that my days as a father might be behind me while remaining dutiful to the possibility that, at anytime, circumstances could change. On the one hand, I am a former-father, but on the other hand, I cannot be anything but a father to my children - at any age. — H. Kirk Rainer

Certainly if I were to think in terms of a field that would have required a different mode of education, I think I would have leaned in the direction of being a therapist. And without the education, or a different kind of education, I think my first choice would be a landscape architect. I love to garden. — Jill McCorkle

My first kiss I regret. My first date I regret. But I do not regret the choice to say I love you for the first time. Even though that was the melodramatic story. Even though that one ended badly. I don't regret it.

Because that time ... that night, I was myself. I found my feelings and honored them. I loved myself enough to trust what I felt and say what I needed to say. And I chose to be myself. I was present as I delivered my awkward speech and felt each pound of my beating heart. I had never been more of myself than in that moment. — Stephen Lovegrove