making choices Quotes

“Just as it is important to know when to make choices, it is also important to know when not to make choices: to let things be.”

“I see it is there. I still fall in… it’s a habit. My eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault… I get out immediately.”

“I walk down another street.”

“If the essence of freedom were merely the act of choice, then the mere fact of making choices would perfect our freedom.”

“Past hurts can make you bitter or better—the choice is yours.”

“Ole Golly says there is as many ways to live as there are people on the earth and I shouldn’t go round with blinders but should see every way I can. Then I’ll know what way I want to live and not just live like my family.”

“Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices.”

His parents smile after reading this, and his father says, “Well, we’d better buy a chess set.” Subtle account of how children can take action against something with which they disagree.

“And so, dear friends, let us not be gripers in dealing with people - especially pipers! Sometimes it’s not in our power to choose just what we keep and what we lose. And those who can’t see beyond the cost should consider this tale and what was lost. It ought to sway even a doubting Thomas: Better to lose your purse and keep your promise!”

Every day after work Pedro’s parents and neighbors sit around the radio in his home listening to broadcasts from a “long way away.”

“I go out and play soccer…we sit at the table and I eat…after supper my father and mother sit on the sofa and play chess and I do my homework.

Pedro discusses the paper with his classmate Juan, asking him if he is against the dictatorship. Juan replies with “Of course I am…they took my father away up north.”

“When he asks his parents about what happened, he learns that Daniel’s father, as well as his own parents, are against the government dictatorship. ”

“There should be no room in your life for regret. If in the moment of doing you felt clarity, you felt certainty, then why feel regret later?”

“Will you give up Heathcliff hereafter, or will you give up me? It is impossible for you to be my friend and his at the same time; and I absolutely require to know which you choose.”

When she mused on the past, she dwelt with pleasure, with tenderness, on the memories of her relations with Levin. The memories of childhood and of Levin’s friendship with her dead brother gave a special poetic charm to her relations with him. His love for her, of which she felt certain, was flattering and delightful to her; and it was pleasant for her to think of Levin. In her memories of Vronsky there always entered a certain element of awkwardness, though he was in the highest degree well-bred and at ease, as though there were some false note—not in Vronsky, he was very simple and nice, but in herself, while with Levin she felt perfectly simple and clear. But, on the other hand, directly she thought of the future with Vronsky, there arose before her a perspective of brilliant happiness; with Levin the future seemed misty.