Quotes & Sayings About Roads Not Taken

From then on, it was even twistier B-roads through a country so photgenically rural that I half expected to meet Bilbo Baggins around the next corner - providing he'd taken to driving a Nissan Micra. — Ben Aaronovitch

You look at the road you could have taken, you know, I just think that's interesting ... I've been on a lot of roads and I had to hitchhike on a couple of 'em ... I have to be very honest: There's not an awful lot of regret in my life. I think that, you know, you learn from everything, and then, sometimes, you don't. — Polly Bergen

66/ 'Two roads diverge in a yellow wood,' I think. It didn't ultimately matter which one you took; that was the real point of Frost's poem. The roads were pretty much the same. That stuff about the one less traveled making all the difference was bullshit. — Kim Addonizio

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

The word 'aloha,' in foreign use, has taken the place of every English equivalent. It is a greeting, a farewell, thanks, love, goodwill. Aloha looks at you from tidies and illuminations; it meets you on the roads and at house-doors. It is conveyed to you in letters: the air is full of it. — Isabella Bird

Sometimes he fantasised that at the end of his life, he would be shown a home movie of all the roads he had not taken, and where they would have led. — Anne Tyler

The photographs had made him aware how much the street and the buildings meant to him. Like an extended family that he'd taken for granted and ignored, assuming it would always be there. But buildings and roads and spaces were as fragile as human beings, you had to cherish them while you had them. — Rohinton Mistry

There's mistakes that I have made. Some chances I just threw away. Some roads I never should've taken. Been some signs I didn't see. Hearts that I hurt needlessly. Some wounds that I wish I could have one more chance to mend, but it don't make no difference: The past can't be rewritten. You get the life you're given. — Carrie Underwood

By definition, an actor's life is a recipe for regret. There are always roads you could have taken. But I've lived long enough to realise that each road has its own rewards. — Elizabeth McGovern

There are many roads to prosperity, but one must be taken. Inaction leads nowhere. — Robert Zoellick

One always wonders about roads not taken. — Warren Christopher

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

When comparing 100 years of experience to 1, there is a way to close the gap. One must simply understand the choices that were taken, the roads that were walked, and that there are no guarantees to an unseen future. — Lionel Suggs

Just as books are read one word at a time, roads are taken one step at a time. — Xinran

If you're turned away from one road, there's always another
filled with risk but also adventure. Roads less taken are always the most rewarding ones. — Max Allan Collins

One would expect that private property taken by eminent domain would become land available for public use such as parks and roads. Unfortunately, this decision creates a loophole for government to manipulate the definition of public use simply to generate greater tax revenue. — Jim Ryun

I wonder about all the roads not taken and am moved to quote Frost ... but won't. It is sad to be able only to mouth
other poets. I want someone to mouth me. — Sylvia Plath

For since men for the most part follow in the footsteps and imitate the actions of others, and yet are unable to adhere exactly to those paths which others have taken, or attain to the virtues of those whom they would resemble, the wise man should always follow the roads that have been trodden by the great, and imitate those who have most excelled, so that if he cannot reach their perfection, he may at least acquire something of its savour. Acting in this like the skilful archer, who seeing that the object he would hit is distant, and knowing the range of his bow, takes aim much above the destined mark; not designing that his arrow should strike so high, but that flying high it may alight at the point intended. — Niccolo Machiavelli

She saw the stubborn set of my face. "I've never felt blessed," I said. "There must be free will to choose. Do you know the poem about the two roads, and the one not taken?"
Yes. That has always amused me, because who created the two roads in the first place?"
It was a question I had never considered. — Tan Twan Eng

Those more deeply informed about the period are much more cognisant of the roads not taken. — Yuval Noah Harari

I often wished that I could split myself a hundred ways and live a hundred separate lives [ ... ]. But in the end, I supposed, we only had one life to lead, and the roads not taken would always outnumber and outshine the roads we end up taking, day by day, without plan. — Davy Rothbart

Direct my attention to the flurry of snow outside. It's everywhere, white and crisp and completely innocent looking as it shines under the sun. It's a false innocence though, because the icy roads here have caused many accidents and taken many lives. — Jessica Sorensen

There is no more disastrous mania, no more dangerous whim, than the speculation over roads not taken. — Juan Gabriel Vasquez

Our conventions humiliate the ass, inflicting on him beatings in real life and insults in our daily vocabulary. The ass pulls the cart, bears the burden, carries the weight of life; and life, we well know, is ungrateful and unjust towards those who come to its aid. Life allows itself to be carried away by rose-tinted novelettes and technicolor movies, and prefers radiant destinies to the plain prose of reality, so it is more taken with racehorses at Ascot than with humble donkeys on country roads. — Claudio Magris

Helen Vendler calls this kind of interrogation of a work "roads not taken," suggesting that it's useful, when writing critically, to consider what differences it makes to the work or the encounter with the work if changes are made. It's one way of better understanding your experience, comparing it to other possible experiences you can imagine having. — Laura Mullen

I look to historians for their power to illuminate not just the invisible lineaments of the present, but also that which is not present. What are the roads that were not taken that most shape our own time? — Rick Perlstein

When his mind turned to look back at the memories of a life gone off the track, everything appeared murky, like looking through a stagnant pond, covered completely with green algae, black beneath with the overabundance of bacteria and rot that made it incapable of supporting any other life besides. Through the murk he saw love, love that wasn't cultivated, love that was left to wither and die on the vine in his vain attempt to find happiness. Happiness that he didn't even know he might have had in his hands, had he done his part.
He saw missed opportunities, roads not taken, chances that asked too much of him. And his life, like a beautiful room that slowly emptied of all furnishings until it came down to only himself and the worn soiled carpet beneath him, the walls darkening to make the hell he thought would be his happiness - the hell that was his life. — Jason Huffman-Black

Maybe the man had taken the wrong turning, but at least he'd travelled some extraordinary roads. — Clive Barker

The Alpha was backing me up? Instead of Marc? Were the roads of hell slick with ice? Had pigs taken to the skies? — Rachel Vincent

Flight is many things. Something clean and swift, like a bird skimming across the sky. Or something filthy and crawling; a series of crablike movements through figurative and literal slime, a process of creeping ahead, jumping sideways, running backward.
It is sleeping in fields and river bottoms. It is bellying for miles along an irrigation ditch. It is back roads, spur railroad lines, the tailgate of a wildcat truck, a stolen car and a dead couple in lovers' lane. It is food pilfered from freight cars, garments taken from clotheslines; robbery and murder, sweat and blood. The complex made simple by the alchemy of necessity — Jim Thompson

One readon why it has taken so long to construct a quantum theory of gravity is that all previous quantum theories were background dependent. It proved rather challenging to construct a background independent quantum theory, in which the mathematical structure of the quantum theory made no mention of points, except when identified through networks of relationships. The problem of how to construct a quantum theoretic description of a world in which space and time are nothing but networks of relationships was solved over the last 15 years of the twentieth century. The theory that resulted is loop quantum gravity, which is one of our three roads. — Lee Smolin

There are no simple answers in life. There is a good and bad in everyone and everything. No decision is made without consequence. No road is taken that doesn't lead to another. What's important is that those roads always be kept open, for there's no telling what wonder they might lead to. — D.J. MacHale

Rhaegar had put his hand on Jaime's shoulder. When this battle's done I mean to call a council. Changes will be made. I meant to do it long ago, but ... well, it does no good to speak of roads not taken. We shall talk when I return. — George R R Martin

I have taken roads that I wished I had not traveled on. And I'm traveling on some pretty exciting ones, too. — Paul Newman

Here, in the vanguard, beyond the borders of knowledge, science becomes even more beautiful - incandescent in the forge of nascent ideas, of intuitions, of attempts. Of roads taken and then abandoned, of enthusiasms. In the effort to imagine what has not yet been imagined. Twenty — Carlo Rovelli

But it did no good to brood on lost battles and roads not taken. — George R R Martin

People were mirrors turned inward to infinity, where all choices and roads not taken led to an endless shifting of self. — Ann Aguirre