Chosen Quotes - Page 13

• There is a time in every life when paths are chosen, character is forged. I could have chosen a different path. But I didn’t. I failed myself.

  Libba Bray

  Character, Different, Path

  Libba Bray (2010). “A Great and Terrible Beauty”, p.214, Simon and Schuster

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• For I am the daughter of Elrond. I shall not go with him when he departs to the Havens: for mine is the choice of Luthien, and as she so have I chosen, both the sweet and the bitter.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Daughter, Sweet, Choices

  J. R. R. Tolkien (1980). “The Lord of the Rings: The return of the King”

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• Solitude is a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and predator to prey, a beginning or an end. Every choice is a world made new for the chosen.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Choices, Solitude, World

  Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “Prodigal Summer”, p.353, Faber & Faber

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• But you see," said Roark quietly, "I have, let’s say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I’ve chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I’m only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards—and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one.

  Ayn Rand

  Years, Joy, May

  Ayn Rand (2011). “Ayn Rand Novel Collection”, p.36, Penguin

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• Much of your pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility: For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen, And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.

  Khalil Gibran

  Pain, Grief, Healing

  Khalil Gibran (2014). “The Prophet - Der Prophet”, p.84, Lulu.com

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• Its a toss-up when you decide to leave the beaten track. Many are called, few are chosen.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Track, Toss, Beaten

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• You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another.

  C. S. Lewis

  Chosen One, Christian Friends

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• The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce variety and uncompromising divergences of men…In a large community, we can choose our companions. In a small community, our companions are chosen for us. Thus in all extensive and highly civilized society groups come into existence founded upon sympathy, and shut out the real world more sharply than the gates of a monastery. There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing which is really narrow is the clique.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Real, Men, Community

  "Heretics". Chapter XIV: "On Certain Modern Writers and the Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, Institution of the Family", 1905.

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• I confess to wincing every so often at a poorly chosen word, a mangled sentence, an expression of emotion that seems indulgent or overly practiced. I have the urge to cut the book by fifty pages or so, possessed as I am with a keener appreciation for brevity.

  Barack Obama

  Appreciation, Book, Cutting

  Barack Obama (2007). “Dreams From My Father”, p.9, Canongate Books

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• Even the best weapon is an unhappy tool, hateful to living things. So the follower of the Way stays away from it. Weapons are unhappy tools, not chosen by thoughtful people, to be used only when there is no choice, and with a calm, still mind, without enjoyment. To enjoy using weapons is to enjoy killing people, and to enjoy killing people is to lose your share in the common good. It is right that the murder of many people be mourned and lamented. It is right that a victor in war be received with funeral ceremonies.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  War, Thoughtful, People

  Ursula K. Le Guin, Jerome P. Seaton (2009). “Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way”, p.48, Shambhala Publications

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• A crow may put on human shape or crow shape, but we remain crows,” he replied firmly. “Hawks, too, are the same, whether they are born in human nests or hawk ones. The nestlings must always be protected. Since you have chosen to protect these, I and mine will protect you.

  Tamora Pierce

  Crow, Shapes, May

  Tamora Pierce (2014). “Trickster's Duet”, p.275, Random House Books for Young Readers

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• They thought that it would be a disgrace to go forth as a group. Each entered the forest at a point that he himself had chosen, where it was darkest and there was no path. If there is a path it is someone else's path and you are not on the adventure.

  Joseph Campbell

  Adventure, Groups, Would Be

  Joseph Campbell (1990). “The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work”, New World Library

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• If there was anything at all in the Book, anything of hope and peace for His blind and bewildered spawn which He had chosen above all others to offer immortality, THOU SHALT NOT KILL must be it.

  William Faulkner

  Book, Blind, Immortality

  William Faulkner (2012). “A Rose for Emily and Other Stories: A Rose for Emily; The Hound; Turn About; That Evening Sun; Dry September; Delta Autumn; Barn Burning; An Odor of Verbena”, p.164, Random House

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• Still, no one finally knows what a poet is supposed either to be or to do. Especially in this country, one takes on the job—because all that one does in America is considered a "job"—with no clear sense as to what is required or where one will ultimately be led. In that respect, it is as particular an instance of a "calling" as one might point to. For years I've kept in mind, "Many are called but few are chosen." Even so "called," there were no assurances that one would be answered.

  Robert Creeley

  Country, Jobs, Years

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• The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil. It is not for you to choose what he shall know, what he shall do. It is chosen and foreordained and he only holds the key to his own secret.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspiring, Education, Lying

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2745, Delphi Classics

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• True masters are those who've chosen to make a life rather than a living.

  Neale Donald Walsch

  Inspirational, Conversations With God, Masters

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• You never get it right, you people, do you? Either we've got Fudge, pretending everything's lovely while people get murdered right under his nose, or we've got you, chucking the wrong people into jail and trying to pretend you've got 'The Chosen One' working for you!

  J. K. Rowling

  Jail, People, Lovely

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• If, in the end, you have not chosen Jesus Christ it will not matter what you have chosen.

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Jesus, Matter, Christ

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• ...we rarely confide in those who are better than we. Rather, we are more inclined to flee their society. Most often, on the other hand, we confess to those who are like us and who share our weaknesses. Hence we don't want to improve ourselves and be bettered, for we should first have to be judged in default. We merely wish to be pitied and encouraged in the course we have chosen. In short, we should like, at the same time, to cease being guilty and yet not to make the effort of cleansing ourselves.

  Albert Camus

  Hands, Effort, Wish

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• That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is out chance to chose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last forever. We must take it or leave it.

  C. S. Lewis

  Giving, Forever, Today

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• It's a very remarkable story." "Remarkable's a well-chosen word. It doesn't give you away.

  James Hilton

  Giving, Stories, Remarkable

  James Hilton (1941). “Three Famous Novels: Lost Horizon, Good-bye, Mr. Chips [and] Random Harvest”

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• I walk up and down the rows. The heads look like rubber halloween masks. They also look like human heads, but my brain has no precedent for human heads on tables or in roasting pans or anywhere other than on top of a human bodies, and so I think it has chosen to interpret the sight in a more comforting manner. - Here we are at the rubber mask factory. Look at the nice men and woman working on the masks.

  Mary Roach

  Nice, Halloween, Men

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• The stories that unfold in the space of a writer's study, the objects chosen to watch over a desk, the books selected to sit on the shelves, all weave a web of echoes and reflections of meanings and affections, that lend a visitor the illusion that something of the owner of this space lives on between these walls, even if the owner is no more.

  Alberto Manguel

  Wall, Book, Reflection

  Alberto Manguel (2011). “The Library at Night”, p.175, Vintage Canada

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• It is quite rare for God to provide a great man at the necessary moment to carry out some great deep, which is why when this unusual combination of circumstance does occur, history at once records the name of the chosen one and recommends him to the admiration of posterity.

  Alexandre Dumas

  Men, Names, Doe

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• He had stylized himself--life was easier that way. He had chosen a physical mould just as writer chooses a technical form.

  Graham Greene

  Way, Easier, Form

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