Path Not Taken Quotes & Sayings

She could have melded with the masses, folded into the flock, and crowd-surfed her way to an utterly comfortable existence. The road "more traveled," however, was not on her map. She wanted the other path, the one so overgrown, overlooked, and abandoned that the earth had literally taken it back. She knew that if dreams were indeed out there, this must be where they reside. — Patricia Mahon

In the West we have a tendency to be profit-oriented, where everything is measured according to the results and we get caught up in being more and more active to generate results. In the East
especially in India
I find that people are more content to just be, to just sit around under a banyan tree for half a day chatting to each other. We Westerners would probably call that wasting time. But there is value to it. Being with someone, listening wihtout a clock and without anticipation of results, teaches us about love. The success of love is in the loving
it is not in the result of loving.
These words, taken from the book A Simple Path, are the words of one of the Missionaries of Charity Sisters, not of Mother Teresa. — Mother Teresa

In an incomprehensible reversal of all righteous and pious thinking, God declares himself guilty to the world and thereby extinguishes the guilt of the world. God himself takes the humiliating path of reconciliation and thereby sets the world free. God wants to be guilty of our guilt and takes upon himself the punishment and suffering that this guilt brought to us. God stands in for godlessness, love stands in for hate, the Holy One for the sinner. Now there is no longer any godlessness, any hate, any sin that God has not taken upon himself, suffered, and atoned for. Now there is no more reality and no more world that is not reconciled with God and in peace. That is what God did in his beloved Son Jesus Christ. Ecce homo - see the incarnate God, the unfathomable mystery of the love of God for the world. God loves human beings. God loves the world - not ideal human beings but people as they are, not an ideal world but the real world. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

We are born into this time and must bravely follow the path to the destined end. There is no other way. Our duty is to hold on to the lost position, without hope, without rescue, like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who, during the eruption of Vesuvius, died at his post because they forgot to relieve him. That is greatness. That is what it means to be a thoroughbred. The honorable end is the one thing that can not be taken from a man. — Oswald Spengler

I'm the weirdo. There have been multitudes of times in my career where I could have taken an easier road or a more commercial path, and I've been just like, that's not gonna make me happy. — Chris Robinson

There exists [a] word in German, Geschichte, which designates not accomplished history, but history in the present, doubtless determined in large part, yet only in part, by the already accomplished past; for a history which is present, which is living, is also open to a future that is uncertain, unforeseeable, not yet accomplished, and therefore aleatory. Living history obeys only a constant (not a law): the constant of class struggle. Marx did not use the term 'constant', which I have taken from Levi-Strauss, but an expression of genius: 'tendential law', capable of inflecting (but not contradicting) the primary tendential law, which means that a tendency does not possess the form or figure of linear law, but that it can bifurcate under the impact of an encounter with another tendency, and so on ad infinitum. At each intersection the tendency can take a path that is unforeseeable because it is aleatory. — Louis Althusser

We are born haunted, he said, his voice weak, but still clear. Haunted by our fathers and mothers and daughters, and by people we don't remember. We are haunted by otherness, by the path not taken, by the life unlived. We are haunted by the changing winds and the ebbing tides of history. And even as our own flame burns brightest, we are haunted by the embers of the first dying fire. But mostly, said Lord Jim, we are haunted by ourselves. — Jonathan Evison

No matter how happy anyone is with their choices, I believe it's human nature to wonder about the path not taken. — Jen Lancaster

depressive symptoms are a sign to the suffering individual that all is not right with him or her and major adjustments need to be made. Many of the case histories I have used to demonstrate other principles can also be used to illustrate this one: that the unpleasant symptoms of mental illness serve to notify people that they have taken the wrong path, that their spirits are not growing and are in grave jeopardy. — M. Scott Peck

I have not one feeling of regret at the step which I have taken but count it a privilege to go forth in the name of my Master, cheerfully bearing the toil and privation that we expect to encounter. May you be encouraged and inspired by her bravery to know that in whatever path you are traversing, no matter how difficult, the Master will walk alongside you, helping you each step of the way. — Jody Hedlund

Because we cannot see the roads we have not taken, we become, by defaults, advocates for the path our life is on. — Ethan Watters

I nod, thinking the whole concept of the path not taken is partly what has always troubled me. — Emily Giffin

Well. There was noting to be done for it. Things had happened as they did, time's arrow had yet to be reversed by humans, done was done. If a man spent his life looking over his shoulder at every possible branching of his path he could have taken, he would never accomplish anything. One must learn from history so as not to repeat it, but one must not waste one's energy or time worrying about what might have been. Sorry ... but people die every day and the galaxy continues on quite well without them. Consider yourself lucky you are one of those as yet unselected by the Fates. — Steve Perry

I did not know why, maybe because he had suffered and gained experience in his distress; because his rebellion had freed him from established ways of thinking that bind us, and he had no prejudices; because he had purged himself of fear and taken a path that led nowhere; because he was already condemned and was only delaying his death heroically. Such people know a lot, more than those of us who stagger from learned rules to fear of sin, from habits to worries of possible guilt. And although I would never have taken the path of a renegade, not even in my thoughts, I would gladly have listened to his truth. But what was his truth? — Mesa Selimovic

I bet a lot of couples have wondered, if they'd met under different circumstances, perhaps they would've taken a different path and never ended up together. And in a way, you got that opportunity. You chose me twice. If that's not meant to be, then I don't know what is. — Jenn Bennett

He felt that he was still groping in the dark; he had chosen his path but kept looking back, wondering whether he had misread the signs, whether he should not have taken the other way. — J.K. Rowling

But [Sunday] as you saw, it was obviously [the media] took some more than initiative to try to get me to kind of go down the wrong path. I know the last two teams that I've been on, I felt like I left those teams prematurely due to media interviews that I've done and things kind of taken out of context and they created sort of a media whirlwind in the locker room and things kind of went downhill from there. I'm just trying to do the best job I can do as far as answering the questions and trying to be a better teammate and not try to throw people under the bus. — Terrell Owens

Walden - all his books, indeed - are packed with subtle, conflicting, and very fruitful discoveries. They are not written to prove something in the end. They are written as the Indians turn down twigs to mark their path through the forest. He cuts his way through life as if no one had ever taken that road before, leaving these signs for those who come after, should they care to see which way he went. — Virginia Woolf

It would be very curious to record by means of photographs, not the stage of the picture, but its metamorphoses. Perhaps one would perceive the path taken by the mind in order to put its dreams into a concrete form. But what is really very curious is to observe that fundamentally the picture does not change, that despite appearances the initial vision remains almost intact. — Pablo Picasso

Once in a While
Once in a while you regret the road not taken
Start giving up on the plans you made
Once in a while you feel so forsaken
Wondering why so many took, not gave
Once in a while you ask, how could this happen?
How did I end up in these shoes?
But once in a while you meet a special someone
Someone who chose the same path as you
And suddenly it stops feeling so lonely
Out on that road that you had to choose
And that's when you know it all was worth it
Because once in a while dreams do come true — Meg Cabot

The Hamas has taken the path of avoiding causing harm to Zionist interests outside of Palestine, not from weakness or lack of ability to do so, but because Hamas does not wish for further fronts to be opened against it around the world — Ahmed Yassin

It seems there is always a road with bends and forks to choose, and taking one path means you can never take another one. There's no starting over nor undoing the steps I've taken. It isn't like I'd want to not have my little ones and Jack and that ranch, it is part of life to have to support yourself. It's just that I want everything, my insides are not just hungry, but greedy. I want to find out all the things in the world and still have a family and a ranch. Maybe part of passing that test was a marker for where I've been, but it feels more like a pointer for something I'll never reach. (November 29, 1887 entry, pg 309) — Nancy E. Turner

Consolation All are not taken; there are left behind Living Beloveds, tender looks to bring And make the daylight still a happy thing, And tender voices, to make soft the wind: But if it were not so - if I could find No love in all the world for comforting, Nor any path but hollowly did ring Where "dust to dust" the love from life disjoined, And if, before those sepulchers unmoving I stood alone (as some forsaken lamb Goes bleating up the moors in weary dearth) Crying "Where are ye, O my loved and loving?" - I know a Voice would sound, "Daughter, I am. Can I suffice for Heaven and not for earth? — Dan Pollock

Just calling one's practice "approach and accomplishment" and staying in retreat for years will produce nothing but hardship. Completing hundreds of millions of mantras will not even bring the warmth of the ordinary qualities that mark one's progress on the path! In other words, if the essential points of the path are not taken into account, perseverance will amount to nothing more than chasing a mirage. — Patrul Rinpoche

Fallen. Who tracks our footsteps, I wonder? We who are the forgotten, the discounted and the ignored. When the path is failure, it is never willingly taken. The fallen. Why does my heart weep for them? Not them but us, for most assuredly I am counted among them. Slaves, serfs, nameless peasants and labourers, the blurred faces in the crowd - just a smear on memory, a scuffing of feet down the side passages of history.
Can one stop, can one turn and force one's eyes to pierce the gloom? And see the fallen? Can one ever see the fallen? And if so, what emotion is born in that moment?
There were tears on his cheeks, dripping down onto his chafed hands. He knew the answer to that question, knife-sharp and driven deep, and the answer was ... recognition. — Steven Erikson

In his very first encyclical Pius X had uttered a warning: ... We shall take the greatest care to see that the members of the clergy do not allow themselves to be taken in by the insidious maneuvers of a certain new science which dons the mask of truth and from which one does not discern the fragrance of Jesus Christ; it is a mendacious science which, using fallacious and perfidious arguments, tries to beat a path to the errors of rationalism and semi-rationalism, and against which the Apostle was already warning his beloved Timothy when he wrote: Guard the deposit, avoiding profane novelties in language as well as in the arguments of a knowledge falsely so-called, whose enthusiasts, with all their promises, have failed in the faith.19 — Anonymous

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

Every journey conceals another journey within its lines: the path not taken and the forgotten angle. — Jeanette Winterson

Every journey taken always includes the path not taken, the detour through hell, the crossroads of indecision and the long way home. — Shannon L. Alder

These men of the special forces have had other optinos in their lives, other paths, easier paths they could have taken. But they took the hardest path, that narrow causeway that is not for the sunshine patriot. They took the one for the supreme patriot, the one that may require them to lay down their lives for the United States of America. The one that is suitable only for those who want to serve their country so bad, nothing else matters. That's probably not fashionable in our celebrity-obsessed modern world. But special forces guys don't give a damn about that either ... They are of course aware of a higher calling, because they are sworn to defend this country and to fight its battles. — Marcus Luttrell

Doing what you love, with those you love, is an adventurous type of success. The kind that can not be taken away, often discovered by those who have had much taken away, and saw it as an opportunity to re-access their path, and reset from the crucible of shared and beneficial dreams. — Tom Althouse

Choose a master, for without him this journey is full of tribulations, fears, and dangers. With no escort, you would be lost on a road you would have already taken. Do not travel alone on the Path. — Rumi

Charles did not know it, but in those brief poised seconds above the waiting sea, in that luminous evening silence broken only by the waves' quiet wash, the whole Victorian Age was lost. And I do not mean he had taken the wrong path. — John Fowles

One of the conflicts inherent in having choice is that we all make different ones. There is always an opportunity cost, and I don't know any woman who feels comfortable with all her decisions. As a result, we inadvertently hold that discomfort against those who remind us of the path not taken. Guilt and insecurity make us second-guess ourselves and, in turn, resent one another.' — Sheryl Sandberg

A sane person who dwells among the mad will become insane because they will act like the mad. One who cares and treats the insane will have mad traits. A sane man who lives among the mad will be made mad by virtue of his associations and dealings. No sane person can dwell among the mad unless if that person is mad himself/herself. A mad person percieves madness and has no clear object or picture that can come out of his mind. Remember sore grapes can ruin good tasty grapes when taken together.You can't live amongst pigs if you are not a pig yourself. Therefore how can the mad treat their fellow mad. That is vanity too be treated by a mad physician who thinks he is sane. The treatment of a mad person speaks volumes and appears to suggest and show that they are treated in a haphazard way without a clear path in regard to recovering their sanity. — David Ssembajjo

When we travel down the path of life, we have so many forks, so many choices, but we have no idea where each path will take us. But there are times when we can look across the abyss and see where we might have been, had we taken the other path. But we cannot go back; we cannot change our past. We can only wonder about the path not taken and continue on the path that we have chosen. — Frank Karkota

They would return to unwanted jobs, unloved families, unchosen friends, to drawing rooms, evening clothes, cocktail glasses and movies, to unadmitted pain, murdered hope, desire left unreached, left hanging silently over a path on which no step was taken, to days of effort not to think, not to say, to forget and give in and give up. — Ayn Rand

The greatest victories are therefore never without the shadow of loss; every path you take, no matter how lofty or effulgent, aches not only with the memory of what you left behind, but with the ghosts of all the untaken paths, now never to be taken, running parallel. — Paul Murray

A particularly poignant moment for me today was after being given two quotes which caused me to spend time reflecting on the path that my own life has taken so far, and might take in the future: "Whatever does not make your heart sing was not meant for you in this life" "Whatever you lose time doing, you should be doing in life — Rachel Stainer

Let me begin with a caveat to any and all who find these pages. Do not trust large bodies of water, and do not cross them. If you, dear reader, have an African hue and find yourself led toward water with vanishing shores, seize your freedom by any means necessary. And cultivate distrust of the colour pink. Pink is taken as the colour of innocence, the colour of childhood, but as it spills across the water in the light of the dying sun, do not fall into its pretty path. There, right underneath, lies a bottomless graveyard of children, mothers and men. I shudder to imagine all the Africans rocking in the deep. Every time I have sailed the seas, I have had the sense of gliding over the unburied.
Some people call the sunset a creation of extraordinary beauty, and proof of God's existence. But what benevolent force would bewitch the human spirit by choosing pink to light the path of a slave vessel? Do not be fooled by the pretty colour, and do not submit to its beckoning. — Lawrence Hill

The philosopher Odo Marquard has noted a correlation in the German language between the word zwei, which means 'two,' and the word zweifel, which means 'doubt' - suggesting that two of anything brings the automatic possibility of uncertainty to our lives. Now imagine a life in which every day a person is presented with not two or even three but dozens of choices, and you can begin to grasp why the modern world has become, even with all its advantages, a neurosis-generating machine of the highest order. In a world of such abundant possibility, many of us simply go limp from indecision. Or we derail our life's journey again and again, backing up to try the doors we neglected on the first round, desperate to get it right this time. Or we become compulsive comparers - always measuring our lives against some other person's life, secretly wondering if we should have taken her path instead. — Elizabeth Gilbert

We can approach belief from an intellectual path, but in the end, God must be taken on faith. Proofs are for things of this world, things in time and of time, not beyond time. — Dean Koontz

The path not taken, was not taken. No point wondering. — Philip Palmer

Every man's death is a standing in for every other. And since death comes to all there is no way to abate the fear of it except to love that man who stands for us. We are not waiting for his history to be written. He passed here long ago. That man who is all men and who stands in the dock for us until our own time come and we must stand for him. Do you love him, that man? Will you honor the path he has taken? Will you listen to his tale? — Cormac McCarthy

To take a stand for the future is to bring forth an opportunity not borne of the path we've taken in the past, but borne of a vision which we would create for ourselves. — Werner Erhard

He wandered over them again. He had called them into view, and it was not easy to replace the shroud that had so long concealed them. There were the faces of friends, and foes, and of many that had been almost strangers peering intrusively from the crowd; there were the faces of young and blooming girls that were now old women; there were faces that the grave had changed and closed upon, but which the mind, superior to its power, still dressed in their old freshness and beauty, calling back the lustre of the eyes, the brightness of the smile, the beaming of the soul through its mask of clay, and whispering of beauty beyond the tomb, changed but to be heightened, and taken from earth only to be set up as a light, to shed a soft and gentle glow upon the path to Heaven... — Charles Dickens

Your greatest regret at the end of your life will be the lions you didn't chase. You will look back longingly on risks not taken, opportunities not seized, and dreams not pursued. Stop running away from what scares you most and start chasing the God-ordained opportunities that cross your path. — Mark Batterson

Struggle hard and then if you do not succeed, you are not to blame. Let the world praise or blame you. Let all the wealth of the earth come to your feet, or let you be made the poorest on earth. Let death come this moment or hundreds of years hence. Swerve not from the path you have taken. All good thoughts are immortal and go to make Buddhas and Christs. — Swami Vivekananda

Will!"
He turned at the familiar voice and saw Tessa. There was a small path cut along the side of the hill, lined with unfamiliar white flowers, and she was walking up it, toward him. Her long brown hair blew in the wind - she had taken off her straw bonnet, and held it in one hand, waving it at him and smiling as if she were glad to see him.
His own heart leaped up at the sight of her. "Tess," he called. But she was still such a distance away - she seemed both very near and very far suddenly and at the same time. He could see every detail of her pretty, upturned face, but could not touch her, and so he stood, waiting and desiring, and his heart beat like the wings of seagulls in his chest.
At last she was there, close enough that he could see where the grass and flowers bent beneath the tread of her shoes. He reached out for her - — Cassandra Clare

He thought of his own by-now legendary novel, American Disillusionment, that cyclone which, for years, had woven its erratic path across the flatlands of his imaginary life, always on the verge of grandeur or disintegration, picking up characters and plotlines like houses and livestock, tossing them aside and moving on. It had taken the form, at various times, of a bitter comedy, a stoical Hemingwayesque tragedy, a hard-nosed lesson in social anatomy like something by John O'Hara, a bare-knuckles urban Huckleberry Finn. It was the autobiography of a man who could not face himself, an elaborate system of evasion and lies unredeemed by the artistic virtue of self-betrayal — Michael Chabon

I find over the next few days that acceptance is the way to go. You have to bend your mind around from the path it has always taken to a path where your own direction does not matter. You are there for someone else. It is easier if you don't struggle against that, if you simply bow your head down to it, acquiesce, comply, love. — Deborah Meyler

FINISTERRE
The road in the end taking the path the sun had taken,
into the western sea, and the moon rising behind you
as you stood where ground turned to ocean: no way
to your future now but the way your shadow could take,
walking before you across water, going where shadows go,
no way to make sense of a world that wouldn't let you pass
except to call an end to the way you had come,
to take out each frayed letter you brought
and light their illumined corners, and to read
them as they drifted through the western light;
to empty your bags; to sort this and to leave that;
to promise what you needed to promise all along,
and to abandon the shoes that had brought you here
right at the water's edge, not because you had given up
but because now, you would find a different way to tread,
and because, through it all, part of you could still walk on,
no matter how, over the waves. — David Whyte

In this world, the only easy path is the course of least resistance. This is the path always taken by a stream of water as it seeks lower and lower ground. It will never go over an obstacle, and even when it has to go around one, water will always find the easiest way around, the way that requires as little work as possible. This, you have have noticed, is what makes rivers crooked, and it makes men and women crooked too. The easy path never goes anywhere but downward, and spiritually, that is not the direction we want to go. Worthwhile destinations always take extra effort. — Gary Henry

To Renard's suspicious eye, Elizabeth's nebulous role at court had taken on a new and sinister signifiance. This unspoken Protestant heir presumptive was suddenly the greatest obstacle to Prince Philip's path to England and Renard had already resolved to dispose of her at his earliest conveneicne. Accordingly, he invited her to dance and tried his hand at a little subtle flattery. They manoevered delicately down the Hall, like two scorpions locked in mortal combat, but no matter how he tried, he could not get close enough to sting. — Susan Kay

Well, besides, I've arranged with the computer that anyone who doesn't look and sound like one of us will be killed if he - or she - tries to board the ship. I've taken the liberty of explaining that to the Port Commander. I told him very politely that I would love to turn off that particular facility out of deference to the reputation that the Sayshell City Spaceport holds for absolute integrity and security - throughout the Galaxy, I said - but the ship is a new model and I didn't know how to turn it off."
"He didn't believe that, surely."
"Of course not! But he had to pretend he did, as otherwise he would have had no choice but to be insulted. And since there would be nothing he could do about that, being insulted would only lead to humiliation. And since he didn't want that, the simplest path to follow was to believe what I said."
"And that's another example of how people are?"
"Yes. You'll get used to this. — Isaac Asimov

I think all of us, looking back on our careers and our lives, there'll probably be a "road not taken" that we'll regret and mourn. Certainly, artists will always feel that way, especially when the path taken was more commercial than the one not taken. — Liz Garbus

Neither blindness nor ignorance corrupts people and governments. They soon realize where the path they have taken is leading them. But there is an impulse within them, favored by their natures and reinforced by their habits, which they do not resist; it continues to propel them forward as long as they have a remnant of strength. He who overcomes himself is divine. Most see their ruin before their eyes; but they go on into it.1 Leopold von Ranke — Joachim Fest

And maybe I can let go of the sting and resentment of the path not taken, because the path not taken isn't just the inverse of who I am. It's an infinitely branching system that represents all the permutations of my life... — Blake Crouch

For every woman who's ever wondered about the path not taken, Fenton and Steinke mine - with tremendous humor and insight - the mixed blessing of unexpected second chances. — Emma McLaughlin