Chosen Quotes - Page 14

• Here's my advice to you: don't marry until you can tell yourself that you've done all you could, and until you've stopped loving the women you've chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise you'll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Marry when you're old and good for nothing...Otherwise all that's good and lofty in you will be lost.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Advice, Done, Lost

  Leo Tolstoy (2011). “War and Peace: Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky”, p.28, Vintage

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• Power is the sum total of the wills of the mass, transfered by express or tactic agreement to rulers chosen by the masses.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Agreement, Tactics, Mass

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• It is an anxious, sometimes a dangerous thing to be a doll. Dolls cannot choose; they can only be chosen; they cannot 'do'; they can only be done by.

  Rumer Godden

  Dolls, Done, Sometimes

  Rumer Godden (2015). “The Dolls' House”, p.9, Pan Macmillan

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• Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Life, Live In The Moment, Mindfulness

  Eckhart Tolle (2010). “The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment”, p.35, New World Library

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• …Even the idea of a city never entered his mind. It was as if he had walked under the millimeter of haze just above the inked fibers of a map, that pure zone between land and chart, between distances and legends, between nature and storyteller. The place they had chosen to come to, to be their best selves, to be unconscious of ancestry. Here, apart from the sun compass and the odometer mileage, and the book, he was alone, his own invention. He knew during these times how the mirage worked, the fata morgana, for he was within it.

  Michael Ondaatje

  Distance, Book, Land

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• When a man has seen the woman whom he would have chosen if he had intended to marry speedily, his remaining a bachelor will usually depend on her resolution rather than on his.

  George Eliot

  Men, Resolution, Bachelors

  George Eliot (2005). “Four Novels of George Eliot”, p.348, Wordsworth Editions

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• Being a reader is sort of like being president, except reading involves fewer state dinners, usually. You have this agenda you want to get through, but you get distracted by life events, e.g., books arriving in the mail/World War III, and you are temporarily deflected from your chosen path.

  Nick Hornby

  War, Book, Reading

  Nick Hornby (2004). “The Polysyllabic Spree”, McSweeneys Books

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• After the trial, I watched as another female pathologist collected maggots from a spinal column found in the desert. There was a decomposed head, too, and before leaving work she planned to simmer it and study the exposed cranium for contusions. I was asked to pass this information along to the chief medical examiner, and, looking back, I perhaps should have chosen my words more carefully. 'Fire up the kettle,' I told him. 'Ol'-fashioned skull boil at five p.m.

  David Sedaris

  Fire, Should Have, Skulls

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• Their Maker, she said, gives them the sky to carry because they are strong. These people do not know who they are, but if you see a lot of trouble in your life, it is because you were chosen to carry part of the sky on your head. -pg. 25

  Edwidge Danticat

  Strong, Sky, People

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• To Jack, there was nothing more powerful than a promise made over a handshake. He would have died ー literally chosen death ー before breaking his word.

  Lisa Kleypas

  Powerful, Promise, Made

  Lisa Kleypas (2008). “Blue-Eyed Devil: A Novel”, p.99, Macmillan

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• It's Nathaniel Hawthorne Month in English. Poor Nathaniel. Does he know what they've done to him? We're reading The Scarlet Letter one sentence at a time, tearing it up and chewing on its bones. It's all about SYMBOLISM, says Hairwoman. Every word chosen by Nathaniel, every comma, every paragraph break -- these were all done on purpose. To get a decent grade in her class, we have to figure out what he was really trying to say. Why couldn't he just say what he meant? Would they pin scarlet letters on his chest? B for blunt, S for straightforward?

  Laurie Halse Anderson

  Reading, Class, Symbolism

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• Repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Discipline, People, Way

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2001). “Flow: the psychology of optimal experience”

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• Everything is exactly as it is for a reason. The crumb on your table is no mystical reminder of this morning's cookie, it is there because you have chosen not to remove it. No exceptions.

  Richard Bach

  Morning, Cookies, Tables

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• A contest was held in 1994 to rename the Los Angeles Convention and Exhibition Center after an extensive renovation and expansion. The winning name, chosen from over ten thousand entries, was the Los Angeles Convention Center.

  James Frey

  Winning, Names, Expansion

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• The Wickans know that the gift of power is never free. They know enough not to envy the chosen among them, for power is never a game, nor are glittering standards raised to glory and wealth. They disguise nothing in trappings, and so we all see what we'd rather not, that power is cruel, hard as iron and bone, and thrives on destruction. ~ Deadhouse Gates

  Steven Erikson

  Games, Iron, Envy

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• Most people think, when they're young, that they're going to the top of their chosen world, and that the climb up is only a formality. Without that faith, I suppose, they might never start. Somewhere on the way they lift their eyes to the summit and know they aren't going to reach it; and happiness then is looking down and enjoying the view they've got, not envying the one they haven't.

  Dick Francis

  Eye, Thinking, Views

  Dick Francis (2005). “Reflex”, p.18, Penguin

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• Let us face a pluralistic world in which there are no universal churches, no single remedy for all diseases, no one way to teach or write or sing, no magic diet, no world poets, and no chosen races, but only the wretched and wonderfully diversified human race.

  Jacques Barzun

  Writing, Race, Political

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• A well-chosen book saves you from everything, including yourself.

  Daniel Pennac

  Book, Wells, Including

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• Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.

  Karl Marx

  Past, Men, Brain

  The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon pt. 1 (1852)

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• In order to live, man must act; in order to act, he must make choices; in order to make choices, he must define a code of values; in order to define a code of values, he must know what he is and where he is – i.e. he must know his own nature (including his means of knowledge) and the nature of the universe in which he acts – i.e. he needs metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, which means: philosophy. He cannot escape from this need; his only alternative is whether the philosophy guiding him is to be chosen by his mind or by chance.

  Ayn Rand

  Philosophy, Mean, Men

  "Philosophy, who needs it?". Book by Ayn Rand, 1982.

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• If God had not permitted the people of Jerusalem to be torn asunder and driven them from the land, but had let them keep it after before, no one could convince them that they are not God`s chosen people.

  Martin Luther

  Land, People, Jerusalem

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• One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.

  Abraham Maslow

  Life, Motivational, Fear

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• Lord, protect our decisions, because making Decision is a way of praying. Give us the courage after our doubts, to be able to choose between one road and another. May our YES always be a YES and our NO always be a NO. Once we have chosen our road, may we never look back nor allow our soul to be eaten away by remorse. And in order for this to be possible.

  Paulo Coelho

  Order, Giving, Decision

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• There is no one true church, no one chosen people.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  People, Church

  Terry Tempest Williams (2001). “Leap”, Vintage

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• But I also hoped that [she] had chosen California because she thought that was her true home, the place where she really belonged, where it was always warm and you could dance in the rain, pick grapes right off the vines, and sleep outside at night under the stars.

  Jeannette Walls

  Stars, Rain, Sleep

  Jeannette Walls (2009). “The Glass Castle: A Memoir”, p.276, Simon and Schuster

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