Quotes about Choice

I have hardly had time to think over all that you have told me. It's a big thing for a man to have to understand and to decide at one sitting. I should like to have a quiet hour by myself to make up my mind.

To be alone is the fate of all great minds—a fate deplored at times, but still always chosen as the less grievous of two evils.

A man cannot serve two masters: so it is either reason or the scriptures. - On Religion

You can do what you will: but at each given moment of your life you can will only one determined thing and by no means anything other than this one.

Conscience accompanies every act with the comment: You should act differently, although its true sense is: You could be other than you are.

Bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind. In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited.

A man can surely do what he wills to do, but he cannot determine what he wills.

In this world, either you're virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both, lady, not both.

There can be no justification for choosing any part of that which one knows to be evil.

I shall choose friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters. And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love and respect, but neither command nor obey. And we shall join our hands when we wish, or walk alone when we so desire.

Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice — and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man — by choice; he has to hold his life as a value — by choice; he has to learn to sustain it — by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues — by choice. A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.

You will follow me, if we are what we are, you and I, if we live, if the world exists, if you know the meaning of this moment and can't let it slip by, as others let it slip, into the senselessness of the unwilled and unreached.