Quotes & Sayings About Volition

Objections to Christianity ... are phrased in words, but that does not mean that they are really a matter of language and analysis and argument. Words are tokens of the will. If something stronger than language were available then we would use it. But by the same token, words in defense of Christianity miss the mark as well: they are a translation into the dispassionate language of argument of something that resides far deeper in the caverns of volition, of commitment. Perhaps this is why Saint Francis, so the story goes, instructed his followers to "preach the Gospel always, using words if necessary." It is not simply and straightforwardly wrong to make arguments in the defense of the Christian faith, but it is a relatively superficial activity: it fails to address the core issues. — Alan Jacobs

...and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live. We are wrong, of course, but it doesn't matter. It's too late. — Toni Morrison

Power, of course. The primitive fear of being controlled. It does not matter whether it is an invasion from outer space or power wielded from a subterranean command post: some alien force is about to take control on us, to dominate - and, if necessary in the process, to terminate our existence. We never stop to think - or, at best, a secondary consideration is whether such a force might be for the good, that humanity might indeed be improved by such a takeover. Volition, to which we desperately cling, is the very definition of our mature completion as social beings. — Wole Soyinka

Empirical debunking cannot reach the deepest fear of the reactionary mind, which is that the state - that devouring leviathan - will soon swallow up all traces of human volition and dignity. The conclusion is based on conservative moral convictions that reason can't shake. — Rick Perlstein

But what is there in man older and deeper than the religious sentiment?
There is man himself; that is, volition and conscience, free-will and law, eternally antagonistic. Man is at war with himself: why?
"Man," say the theologians, "transgressed in the beginning; our race is guilty of an ancient offence. For this transgression humanity has fallen; error and ignorance have become its sustenance. Read history, you will find universal proof of this necessity for evil in the permanent misery of nations. Man suffers and always will suffer; his disease is hereditary and constitutional. Use palliatives, employ emollients; there is no remedy. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

I have no knack for volition. — Jill Alexander Essbaum

Reason, in a strict sense, as meaning the judgment of truth and falsehood, can never, of itself, be any motive to the will, and can have no influence but so far as it touches some passion or affection. Abstract relations of ideas are the object of curiosity, not of volition. And matters of fact, where they are neither good nor evil, where they neither excite desire nor aversion, are totally indifferent, and whether known or unknown, whether mistaken or rightly apprehended, cannot be regarded as any motive to action. — David Hume

Only the human spirit can act with volition and consciously change itself; it is the only thing in all creation that is not entirely at the mercy of forces outside itself, and it is, therefore, the most powerful and valuable form of energy in the universe. For a time, the spirit may become flesh, but when that phase of its existence is at an end, it will be transformed into a disembodied spirit once more. — Dean Koontz

To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility; it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb. Oh vast gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death! Why was the living banished thither companionless, conscious? Why, if there is no Devil; nay, unless the Devil is your God? — Thomas Carlyle

This was the way he had to go; he had no choice. He had never had any choice. He was only a dreamer. — Ursula K. Le Guin

No one could leave the group by his or her own volition and put the group at risk of having its secrets revealed. — Judith Spencer

You're a stubborn, ill-trained horse." she said
The horse snorted and walked towards the North Road of his own volition.
"Hey!" Karigan pulled back on the reins. "Whoa. Who do you think is in charge here? — Kristen Britain

All I knew was that I couldn't have him right now. It was impossible. Could I have him in a year? Two years? Five years? Ten years? I didn't know. All I knew was that although the universe was pushing us together, it was also pushing us apart. — Lily Paradis

Liberty is not an Idea belonging to Volition, or preferring; but to the Person having the Power of doing, or forbearing to do, according as the Mind shall chuse or direct. — John Locke

I've always been accused by my detractors of some sort of moral failure, cowardice, or even lack of humanity by not portraying the human form. I respond that I do better by portraying traces of character and intentions of human volition that no mug or body shot can ever exude. — Robert Polidori

God the Son, by being truly human without ceasing to be truly God, is both equal to the Father and less than the Father - equal by nature and less by volition to service. By this paradox, the usual logic of equality is turned upside down. — Thomas C. Oden

If volition is bound to social imperatives, as William James believed, and it's therefore easier to go to war than it is to quit smoking, one could say that Liz Norton was a woman who found it easier to quit smoking than to go to war. — Roberto Bolano

This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live. We are wrong, of course, but it doesn't matter. It's too late. At least on the edge of my town, among the garbage and the sunflowers of my town, it's much, much, much too late. — Toni Morrison

Many of us think of our daily nourishment only in terms of what we eat. But in fact, there are four kinds of food that we consume every day. They are: edible food (what we put in our mouths to nourish our bodies), sensory food (what we smell, hear, taste, feel, and touch), volition (the motivation and intention that fuels us), and consciousness (this includes our individual consciousness, the collective consciousness, and our environment). — Thich Nhat Hanh

To the question whether I would admit that the cause of the decision of the atom has something in common with the cause of the decision of the brain, I would simply answer that there is no cause. In the case of the brain I have a deeper insight into the decision; this insight exhibits it as volition, i.e. something outside causality. — Arthur Stanley Eddington

You've got to lapse out before you can know what sensual reality is, lapse into unkowingness, and give up your volition ... You've got to learn not-to-be before you can come into being. — D.H. Lawrence

What is a human mind? Memories. Memories are data. Character, personality, individual volition. Those are programming. — George R R Martin

Destiny' is the state of perfect mechanical causation in which everything is the consequence of everything else. If choice is an illusion, what's life? Consciousness without volition. We'd all be passengers, no more real than model trains. — Nick Harkaway

Listen with Ease Have you ever sat very silently, not with your attention fixed on anything, not making an effort to concentrate, but with the mind very quiet, really still? Then you hear everything, don't you? You hear the far off noises as well as those that are nearer and those that are very close by, the immediate sounds - which means really that you are listening to everything. Your mind is not confined to one narrow little channel. If you can listen in this way, listen with ease, without strain, you will find an extraordinary change taking place within you, a change that comes without your volition, without your asking; and in that change there is great beauty and depth of insight. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Here was the astounding fact: the race did go forward; the race did achieve; and in every way the race grew better. Progress through irrational and astounding blunders, whose outrageousness bedwarfed the wildest cliches of romance, was what Kennaston found everywhere. All this, then, also was foreplanned, just as all happenings at Storisende had been, in his puny romance; and the puppets, here to, moved as they thought of their own volition, but really in order to serve a denouement in which many of them had not any personal part or interest ... — James Branch Cabell

We see that every external motion, act, gesture, whether voluntary or mechanical, organic or mental, is produced and preceded by internal feeling or emotion, will or volition, and thought or mind. — Helena Blavatsky

So, how is it that you don't have a girlfriend?" I asked boldly.
Joel shrugged.
"Have you ever had a girlfriend?" There was no way that he'd never had a girlfriend.
He shrugged again.
"You're not serious."
"You're surprised?"
"I'm sorry, do you own a mirror?"
Joel laughed in that I'll-never-understand-women kind of way. "I've never wanted one," he admitted, though it seemed that there was more to it.
"What? A mirror? Or a girlfriend?"
He laughed again, even harder this time. "A girlfriend."
"Are you gay?"
He smiled. "No, I'm not gay."
"Oh." I blushed. Why was I being so nosy all of a sudden? — Shawn Kirsten Maravel

I pulled my chair up to the table and Alex sat down, following suit, unable to guard a smile from breaking onto his lips. He was handsome; I had to give him that. His hair was perfectly gelled and his face was smooth and free of stubble. I could even detect the scent of cologne, something I knew him to rarely wear.
"I didn't expect you to show up," he admitted.
"Then why'd you invite me?" I hoped that I hadn't sounded rude.
He chuckled and tucked his napkin into his lap. I did the same. "I guess I'm just a glutton for punishment. — Shawn Kirsten Maravel

What was the power that induced strong soldiers to put off their jackets and shirts, and present their hands to be tied up, and tortured for hours, it might be, under the scourge, with an air of ready volition? The moral coercion of despair; the result of an unconscious calculation of chances that satisfies them that it is ultimately better to do all that, bad as it is, than try the alternative. These unconscious calculations are going on every day with each of us, and the results embody themselves in our lives; and no one knows that there has been a process and a balance struck, and that what they see, and very likely blame, is by the fiat of an invisible but quite irresistible power. — J. Sheridan Le Fanu

The pure mystic wishes to approach his God only in the all-embracing love. The yogi, too, walks toward one single aspect of God. The bhakti-yogi keeps to the road of love and devotion, the raja and hatha yogi choose the path of self-control or volition, the jnana yogi will follow that of wisdom and cognition. — Franz Bardon

In quick succession, Qhuinn reviewed his answers: No, of course not, the knife was acting of its own volition. I was actually trying to stop it ... No, I only meant to give him a shave ... No, I didn't realize that slicing open someone's jugular was going to lead to death. — J.R. Ward

Never in a million years would he have imagined her to look at him like that - eyelids batting of their own volition and her lips puckering in expectation as she leaned slightly forward. Yet here she was doing precisely that - it was much too comical to stop the smile crossing his face.
And that was when she hit him.
It wasn't a faint slap on the cheek. No, Alexandra put all her weight behind the right hook that landed squarely across his jaw, throwing him completely off balance.
Damnation! — Sophie Barnes

For our sake loosing within Himself the bonds of bodily birth, He granted us through spiritual birth, according to our own volition, power to become children of God instead of children of flesh and blood if we have faith in His Name (cf. Jn. 1:12-13). For the Savior the sequence was, first of all, incarnation and bodily birth for my sake; and so thereupon the birth in the Spirit through baptism, originally spurned by Adam, for the sake of my salvation and restoration by grace, or, to describe it even more vividly, my very remaking. — Maximus The Confessor

But if it were true that his life had somehow been molded by acts of power of which he was unaware - then it would follow that he had never acted of his own volition; never had a moment of true self-consciousness. Everything he had ever assumed about himself was a lie, an illusion. And if this were so, how was he to find himself now? — Amitav Ghosh

The college of that day had a very laudable desire to get students, and having admitted them, it was equally alert in striving to keep them and help them get an education, with the result that very few left of their own volition and almost none were dropped for failure in their work. There was no marked exodus at the first examination period, which was due not only to the attitude of the college but to the attitude of the students, who did not go there because they wished to experiment for a few months with college life and be able to say thereafter they had been in college, but went because they felt they had need of an education, and expected to work hard for that purpose until the course was finished. There were few triflers. — Calvin Coolidge

The life of faith can be called the life of the will since faith is impervious to how one feels but chooses through volition to obey God's mind. — Watchman Nee

if this store of cosmic prana were inanimate, without a will and a direction of its own, we could very well flatter ourselves that every thought and fancy that we have is the product of our own volition. but since we are ourselves the products of this superintelligent cosmic power, it would be illogical to the last degree to presume that our individual ideas and fancies are exclusively our own creations and have no relationship to the ocean of which we are but a tiny drop. when it is once admitted that mind and consciousness are cosmic entities, it would then be ridiculous to suppose that the thoughts and ideas in an individual atom of this cosmic consciousness can have an entirely independent existence and not reflect the will and design of the cosmic whole. — Gopi Krishna

I was investing more and more of myself into an outcome I couldn't predict and would very likely be disappointed by. But for me there was no other option. — Shawn Kirsten Maravel

Because what is man without his volition but a stop on a barrel-organ cylinder? — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Joel sat back in his chair and laughed at what seemed to be an inside joke, one in which I wanted very much to be let in on. An amiable smile stretched across his lips quoted by perfect dimples. I stared at him wanting nothing more than to indulge myself in that smile. — Shawn Kirsten Maravel

And suddenly, without the slightest volition on my part, there was the most crashing discharge of wind, like the report of a mortar. My horse started; Cardigan jumped in his saddle, glaring at me ... Be Silent! snaps he, and he must have been in a highly nervous condition himself, otherwise he would never have added, in a hoarse whipser: Can you not contain yourself, you disgusting fellow?
Flashman at the start of the Charge of the Light Brigade. — George MacDonald Fraser

Some comfort it would have been, could I, like a Faust, have fancied myself tempted and tormented of the Devil; for a Hell, as I imagine, without Life, though only Diabolic Life, were more frightful: but in our age of Downpulling and Disbelief, the very Devil has been pulled down, you cannot so much as believe in a Devil. To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility: it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb. — Thomas Carlyle

Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off. — John Banville

As far as you are concerned the present is your point of action, focus and power, and from that point of volition you form both your future and past. Realizing this, you will understand that you are not at the mercy of a past over which you have no control. — Seth

A world in which deliberate practice is a normal part of life would be one in which people had more volition and satisfaction. — Anders Ericsson

This kind of internal "telepathic" intercourse, which was to serve me in all my wanderings, was at first difficult, innefective, and painful. But in time I came to be able to live through the experiences of my host with vividness and accuracy, while yet preserving my own individuality, my own critical intelligence, my own desires and fears. Only when the other had come to realize my presence within him could he, by a special act of volition, keep particular thoughts secret from me. — Olaf Stapledon

What would you ask for if you were given the freedom to chose something of your own volition (marjiyaat)? There is nothing in [all] mandatory (tasks) in which one can remain still. One after another, the needs will continue. It is only in the state of own's own Self [the Soul], that one can remain burden-free. — Dada Bhagwan

Any creation of art is conceived and born under influences, amidst the atmosphere of reverie and the most customary volition of the artist. It is there, in any case, that his work arises from. — Emile Galle

You see," I explained to Joshua, "what Joy is doing is ironic, yet that's not her intent. That's the difference between irony and sarcasm. Irony can be spontaneous, while sarcasm requires volition. You have to create sarcasm."
"No kidding?" said Josh.
"Why do I waste my time with you? — Christopher Moore

The Practising Manager's Growth Mantra

-Growth in an enterprise is created through remarkable achievements, not incremental achievements like efficiency or effectiveness.

-Remarkable achievements are possible only in complexity.

-Only volitional engagement can work in complexity. Luckily, there is no certainty in complexity. Hence, motivational engagement cannot work.

-People who make choices based on the purpose can only be volitionally engaged - they are the growth managers, the leaders. — Amit Chatterjee

I have brain damage, remember? I'm not responsible for my actions
or for the actions of my hand, which acted of its own volition and without my knowledge.' Cam to Bailey — Linda Howard

My experience to date has been that change, particularly relative to business, rarely happens in a revolutionary way. That isn't to say there are not times when major change happens, but my experience is that particularly when you're encouraging businesses to change of their own volition, the change is more slow over time. I don't think global trade is going to go away. I think it's unlikely that global trade and multinationals are not going to be around. — Jeffrey Hollender

Because you want to have everything in your own volition, your deliberate voluntary consciousness. You want it all in that loathsome little skull of yours, that ought to be cracked like a nut. For you'll be the same till it is cracked, like an insect in its skin. If one cracked your skull perhaps one might get a spontaneous, passionate woman out of you, with real sensuality. As it is, what you want is pornography
looking at yourself in mirrors, watching your naked animal actions in mirrors, so that you can have it all in your consciousness, make it all mental. — D.H. Lawrence

One's own free and unfettered volition, one's own caprice, however wild, one's own fancy, inflamed sometimes to the point of madness - that is the one best and greatest good, which is never taken into consideration because it cannot fit into any classification and the omission of which sends all systems and theories to the devil. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Light. Space. Light and space without time, I think, for this is a country with only the slightest traces of human history. In the doctrine of the geologists with their scheme of ages, eons and epochs all is flux, as Heraclitus taught, but from the mortally human point of view the landscape of the Colorado is like a section of eternity- timeless. In all my years in the canyon country I have yet see a rock fall, of its own volition, so to speak, aside from floods. To convince myself of the reality of change and therefore time I will sometimes push a stone over the edge of a cliff and watch it descend and wait- lighting my pipe- for the report of its impact and disintegration to return. Doing my bit to help, of course, aiding natural processes and verifying the hypotheses of geological morphology. But am not entirely convinced. — Edward Abbey

Most of those who have written about the Affects, and men's way of living, seem to treat, not of natural things, which follow the common laws of nature, but of things that are outside nature. Indeed they seem to conceive man in nature as a dominion within a dominion. For they believe that man disturbs, rather than follows, the order of nature, that he has absolute power over his actions, and that he is determined only by himself. — Baruch Spinoza

Voila! In view humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the "vox populi" now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin, van guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous.
Verily this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honour to meet you and you may call me V. — Alan Moore

My hand moves of its own volition, probably more out of shock than anything else, and I slap him hard right across the face. The room falls silent, and everyone's looking at me like I'm some kind of crazy person. — L. H. Cosway

If the laws of physics are not strictly causal the most that can be said is that the behaviour of the conscious brain is one of the possible behaviours of a mechanical brain. Precisely so; and the decision between the possible behaviours is what we call volition. — Arthur Stanley Eddington

The individual does actually carry on a double existence: one designed to serve his own purposes and another as a link in a chain, in which he serves against, or at any rate without, any volition of his own. — Sigmund Freud

An icon didn't do anything of its own volition. A symbol didn't act of its own accord. Both cities projected what they wanted onto me, and wanted me to stay still as they did it. — Sarah Rees Brennan

The thirst we shared for one another made it clear that the distraction would only come from deprivation. Charlotte was always on my mind. In my dreams, her name balancing fatally on my lips at all times, the scent of her drove me on through my everyday tasks. It was in denying myself of her soft skin and intoxicating presence that I truly began to lose touch. — Shawn Kirsten Maravel

What Artistic and Scientific Experience Have in Common - Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking, and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science. If what is seen and experienced is portrayed in the language of logic, we are engaged in science. If it is communicated through forms whose connections are not accessible to the conscious mind but are recognized intuitively as meaninful, then we are engaged in art. Common to both is the loving devotion to that which transcends personal concerns and volition. — Albert Einstein

That's the difference between irony and sarcasm. Irony can be spontaneous, while sarcasm requires volition. You have to create sarcasm. — Christopher Moore

We must look deeply into the nature of our volition to see whether it is pushing us in the direction of liberation from suffering and toward peace and compassion, or in the direction of affliction and misery. What is it that we really want deep in our heart? Is it money, fame, power? Or is it finding inner peace, being able to live life fully and enjoy the present moment? — Nhat Hanh

Botha swimmer and a drowned man are in the water; the latter is borne by the water and controlled by it, while the swimmer is borne along by his own power and of his own volition. Every movement made by the drowned man - indeed, every act and word that issue from him - comes from the water, not from him ... The saints are like this. They have died before death. — Rumi

This is one of man's oldest riddles. How can the independence of human volition be harmonized with the fact that we are integral parts of a universe which is subject to the rigid order of nature's laws? — Max Planck

All athletic accomplishments begin with volition; that is, the desire and willpower necessary to succeed. Volition affects more than thoughts and feelings - it affects physical performance. — Charles Garfield

She lay down and never stirred. To move hand or foot, or even so much as one finger, would have been an exertion beyond the powers of either volition or motion. She was so tired, so stunned, that she thought she never slept at all; her feverish thoughts passed and repassed the boundary between sleeping and waking, and kept their own miserable identity. — Elizabeth Gaskell

I never do anything I don't want to do. Nor does anyone, but in my case I am always aware of it. — Robert A. Heinlein

Don Juan, in the teacings of Carlos Castaneda, makes the same point. You have to fool people into seeking knowlege. People will not do it of their own volition. — Frederick Lenz

Freedom of Will" - that is the expression for the complex state of delight of the person exercising volition, who commands and at the same time identifies himself with the executor of the order - who, as such, enjoys also the triumph over obstacles, but thinks within himself that it was really his own will that overcame them. In this way the person exercising volition adds the feelings of delight of his successful executive instruments, the useful "underwills" or under-souls - indeed, our body is but a social structure composed of many souls - to his feelings of delight as commander. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Though Napoleon at that time, in 1812, was more convinced than ever that it depended on him, verser (ou ne pas verser) le sang de ses peuples1 - as Alexander expressed it in the last letter he wrote him - he had never been so much in the grip of inevitable laws, which compelled him, while thinking that he was acting on his own volition, to perform for the swarm-life - that is to say for history - whatever had to be performed. — Leo Tolstoy

So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast. — William James

The humble sinner will sometimes be interpreted as one of the filthiest in the eyes of man yet immersed in the eyes of God, and this is due to the volition of honesty regarding his own corruption. — Criss Jami

No power, no event, no circumstance, can compel a man to evil and unhappiness. He himself is his own compeller. He thinks and acts by his own volition. No being, however wise and great
not even the Supreme
can make him good and happy. He himself must choose the good, and thereby find the happy. — James Allen

My case is a species of madness, only that it is a derangement of the Volition, and not of the intellectual faculties. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Most philosophers do not want intellectual matters to reduce to a question of morality (obedience or rebellion to God's Word). They want to hold the intellect or reason to be above matters of moral volition. They hold that truth is obtainable and testable no matter what ethical condition the thinker is in.
Hence, they maintain that all disputes must be rationally resolvable, and a rational case for a philosophic position relies on a valid chain of discursive argumentation that takes us back to incontestable first principles or facts. — Greg L. Bahnsen

The Marxist combination of materialism and determinism is fatally anti-humanistic. It denies a consciousness, a mind, that is independent of material conditions and class relations. It denies a will and volition that are capable of shaping the course of history. It denies an individuality that is not reducible to class. It denies both the idea and the reality of freedom, a freedom that is something more than the "bourgeois" freedom to buy and sell. It denies a morality that transcends class interests. And it denies the spirituality of man. — Gertrude Himmelfarb

We write or we are written upon. The whole of our lives is the clumsy attempt to wield the pen with grace. — Vincent Louis Carrella

" Science is beginning to encroach on every level of our volition". And to me, that is a frightening social concept. It doesn't have anything to do with the right to have an abortion verses the right to life. It has to do with the ability of science to keep things alive and the ability of science to really control our lives. — Stephen King

'I froze. Like an idiot I froze. He was staring right at me. ( ... ) He wore an innocent and mesmerizing smile directed right at me. I did my best to ignore it but having a gorgeously naked man staring at me like I was the only girl in the world was impossible to brush off. — Shawn Kirsten Maravel

Jewish status is defined by the divine election of Israel and his descendants. One does not become a Jew by one's own volition. — David Novak

Innate directs its vital energy through the nervous system to specialize the coordination and sensation and volition through the cumulative and vegetative functions. — Daniel D. Palmer

The other thing I like, in fact, several months ago I introduced a bill to end the absurd catch and release policy where our government has been giving tickets, essentially, to people who enter illegally and then letting them go and show up of their own volition. — John Doolittle

I'm using my own person in pieces, but I'm trying to turn my person into a nonperson in the sense of a person without will, without volition. I'm subjecting myself to a scheme. — Vito Acconci

I have a choice. That's why I'm still here. — Amy Neftzger

The man of wisdom is devoid of ego even though he may appear to use it. His vacant or fasting mind is neither doing anything nor not doing anything. He is outside of volition, neither this nor that. He is everything and nothing. — Ramesh S Balsekar

The reduced sense of responsibility and the absence of effective volition in turn explain the ordinary citizen's ignorance and lack of judgement in matters of domestic and foreign policy which are if anything more shocking in the case of educated people and of people who are successfully active in non-political walks of life than it is with uneducated people in humble stations. — Joseph Alois Schumpeter

I look up into the sky to see all the drops falling on the ground before they make contact. I realize the drops have more in common with me than I think. We're all just falling until we're not falling, and we don't really have a choice where we land. — Lily Paradis

Literature remains an indispensable human activity, in which the reader and the writer are engaged of their own volition. Hence, literature has no duty to the masses or society, and ethical or moral pronouncements added by busybody critics are of no concern to the writer. — Gao Xingjian

She whimpered, the sound lost in Mike's mouth. She was entirely his, completely without willpower or volition. His mouth ate at hers, his shoulders curved in to her like some powerful wall of flesh. He moved his hips against her in short, stabbing movements, hands lifting her hips against his. — Lisa Marie Rice

David knew that the very quality of his worship was not based on his own volition but on the object of his worship - the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Though our affections for God may wax and wane, His character is unchanging! We even see David speaking to his own soul, demanding of it, "Bless the Lord!" — Laura Story

The acquisition of mental skills is a matter of volition and focused effort; it is not a special mystical gift given to the few. — Dalai Lama XIV

If someone suffers enough pain and abuse, his volitional capacities will diminish to nothing. — David L. Conroy

I believe stories have a will of their own, one that surpasses in volition that of their teller. In realms of Storytelling, stories control their bearers, and eventually, their hearers as well. — Ibraheem Hamdi

Since nature does not endow all men with equal beauty or equal intelligence, and the faculty of volition leads men to make different choices, the egalitarians propose to abolish the "unfairness" of nature and of volition, and to establish universal equality in fact - in defiance of facts. It is not equality before the law that they seek, but inequality: the establishment of an inverted social pyramid, with a new aristocracy on top - the aristocracy of non-value. — Ayn Rand

The Brother looked right into Xcor's eyes. "I am Hharm's son. So are you. We are brothers by blood." Xcor's heart began to pound so hard his head hurt. And then he felt his stare narrow of its own volition on Tohr's face. "It's the eyes," the Brother said. "You'll see it in the eyes. And no, I didn't really know him, either. I gather he was not a good male." "Hharm?" Wrath muttered. "No, he wasn't. And that's all I'll say about it." Xcor — J.R. Ward

She'd probably rip his nuts off and choke him with them for even suggesting it. But hey, at least then she'd be touching me of her own volition. — Eve Langlais

When we fall in love, we feel that this person is ours and we are theirs by our mutual volition, and we know they could leave - we know that because they are free, and their freedom is part of the thrill. — Samantha Harvey