β
Have you ever noticed how βWhat the hellβ is always the right decision to make?
β
β
Terry Johnson (Insignificance)
β
Everything tells me that I am about to make a wrong decision, but making mistakes is just part of life. What does the world want of me? Does it want me to take no risks, to go back to where I came from because I didn't have the courage to say "yes" to life?
β
β
Paulo Coelho (Eleven Minutes)
β
You must make a decision that you are going to move on. It wont happen automatically. You will have to rise up and say, βI donβt care how hard this is, I donβt care how disappointed I am, Iβm not going to let this get the best of me. Iβm moving on with my life.
β
β
Joel Osteen (Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential)
β
I have a history of making decisions very quickly about men. I have always fallen in love fast and without measuring risks. I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of reaching his highest potential. I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism.
β
β
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
β
Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
β
β
Ralph Waldo Emerson
β
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
β
β
T.S. Eliot
β
Don't let the expectations and opinions of other people affect your decisions. It's your life, not theirs. Do what matters most to you; do what makes you feel alive and happy. Don't let the expectations and ideas of others limit who you are. If you let others tell you who you are, you are living their reality β not yours. There is more to life than pleasing people. There is much more to life than following others' prescribed path. There is so much more to life than what you experience right now. You need to decide who you are for yourself. Become a whole being. Adventure.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett
β
Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do.
β
β
C.S. Lewis (The Silver Chair (Chronicles of Narnia, #4))
β
Ever morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision. You gone have to ask yourself, "Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?
β
β
Kathryn Stockett (The Help)
β
Cheshvan starts tonight," Rixon said, "What are you doing arsing around in a graveyard?"
"Thinking."
"Thinking?"
"A process by which I use my brain to make a rational decision.
β
β
Becca Fitzpatrick (Hush, Hush (Hush, Hush, #1))
β
Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision.
β
β
Erich Fromm (The Art of Loving)
β
Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backward.
β
β
E.E. Cummings
β
Correct." Kekrops sounded bitter, like he regretted his decision. "My people were the original Athenians--the gemini."
"Like your zodiac sign?" Percy asked. "I'm a Leo."
"No, stupid," Leo said. "I'm a Leo. You're a Percy.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Blood of Olympus (The Heroes of Olympus, #5))
β
It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.
β
β
Theodore Roosevelt
β
Did you just kiss me?" Will inquired.
Magnus made a slip-second decision. "No."
"I thought-"
"On occasion the aftereffects of the painkilling spells can result in hallucinations of the most bizarre sort."
"Oh," Will said. "How peculiar.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Prince (The Infernal Devices, #2))
β
The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood.
β
β
Voltaire
β
You die, I die too.β Tobias looks over his shoulder at me. βI asked you not to do this. You made your decision. These are the repercussions.
β
β
Veronica Roth (Insurgent (Divergent, #2))
β
Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don't blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being "in love", which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.
β
β
Shawn Slovo (Captain Corelli's Mandolin filmscript)
β
Do you want to know why men name their penis? So the most important decisions in their life aren't made by a stranger.
β
β
Linda Howard (After the Night)
β
You are not the victim of the world, but rather the master of your own destiny. It is your choices and decisions that determine your destiny.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett
β
Waiting hurts. Forgetting hurts. But not knowing which decision to take can sometimes be the most painful...
β
β
JosΓ© N. Harris (MI VIDA: A Story of Faith, Hope and Love)
β
Choosing to be with you, isn't a difficult decision, Jacqueline...It's easy. Incredibly easy.
β
β
Tammara Webber (Easy (Contours of the Heart, #1))
β
I do not believe in taking the right decision, I take a decision and make it right.
β
β
Muhammad Ali Jinnah
β
In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.
β
β
Theodore Roosevelt
β
Don't confuse poor decision-making with destiny. Own your mistakes. Itβs ok; we all make them. Learn from them so they can empower you!
β
β
Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
β
The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.
β
β
Malcolm Gladwell (Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking)
β
How tremendous the agony of unmade decisions.
β
β
M.L. Rio (If We Were Villains)
β
The decisions of our past are the architects of our present.
β
β
Dan Brown (Inferno (Robert Langdon, #4))
β
The only man who never makes mistakes is the man who never does anything.
β
β
Theodore Roosevelt
β
Elections belong to the people. It's their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.
β
β
Abraham Lincoln
β
You can't make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen.
β
β
Michelle Obama
β
All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.
β
β
Noam Chomsky
β
Life is a tapestry woven by the decisions we make.
β
β
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Kiss of the Night (Dark-Hunter, #4))
β
Think Thousand times before taking a decision But - After taking decison never turn back even if you get Thousand difficulties!!
β
β
Adolf Hitler
β
I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision.
β
β
Maya Angelou
β
She finally understood that, no matter how hard you try, you can't make someone love you. You can't stop them from making the wrong decision. There's no magic for that.
β
β
Sarah Addison Allen (First Frost (Waverley Family, #2))
β
I must have a prodigious amount of mind; it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up!
β
β
Mark Twain
β
Taking a deep breathe, I made one of the hardest decisions of my life.
I walked away.
β
β
Richelle Mead (Vampire Academy (Vampire Academy, #1))
β
Thinking. A process by which I use my brain to make a rational decision.
β
β
Becca Fitzpatrick (Hush, Hush (Hush, Hush, #1))
β
That's why I want you there, he said. You're unpredictable, and that can be the difference between success and failure. Most people make decisions in anger, fear, love, or obligation. You make decisions to irritate people.
β
β
Kim Harrison (For a Few Demons More (The Hollows, #5))
β
It's funny the decisions you make because you like someone, he says, and then your whole life is different. I think we're at that weird age where life can change a lot from small decisions.
β
β
Sally Rooney (Normal People)
β
But a knife ain't just a thing, is it? It's a choice, it's something you do. A knife says yes or no, cut or not, die or don't. A knife takes a decision out of your hand and puts it in the world and it never goes back again.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
It may be the wrong decision, but fuck it, it's mine.
β
β
Mark Z. Danielewski (House of Leaves)
β
Making the decision to have a child - it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.
β
β
Elizabeth Stone
β
Kitten, you need to make a decision. Either we stay here and behave or we leave now and I promise youββhis voice dipped lower and the words fell against my lipsββif we leave, I wonβt behave.
β
β
Jeaniene Frost (Halfway to the Grave (Night Huntress, #1))
β
The problem, simply put, is that we cannot choose everything simultaneously. So we live in danger of becoming paralyzed by indecision, terrified that every choice might be the wrong choice.
β
β
Elizabeth Gilbert (Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage)
β
The past is dead. Tomorrow will become whatever decision you make it. ~ Acheron.
β
β
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Acheron (Dark-Hunter, #14))
β
It's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.
β
β
Roy Disney
β
Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.
β
β
Wendell Berry
β
I would rather be punished for making the right decision than live with the guilt of making the wrong one for the rest of my life.
β
β
Shannon Messenger (Keeper of the Lost Cities (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #1))
β
Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people--they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress.
β
β
Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)
β
She is the embodiment of a bad decision. The twin of danger and desire. The fine line between deadly and divine. And I can feel myself drowning.
β
β
Lauren Roberts (Powerless (The Powerless Trilogy, #1))
β
making a decision was only the beginning of things. When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision.
β
β
Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)
β
No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?
β
β
George Orwell (Animal Farm)
β
I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.
β
β
Stephen R. Covey
β
Sometimes, if you want to change a man's mind, you have to change the mind of the man next to him first.
β
β
Megan Whalen Turner (The King of Attolia (The Queen's Thief, #3))
β
Being in command means making tough decisions. Not being in command means shutting up and doing what you're told.
--Artemis Fowl
β
β
Eoin Colfer (The Artemis Fowl Files)
β
Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
'I don't much care where -' said Alice.
'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
'- so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation.
'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.
β
β
Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)
β
All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it's impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.
β
β
NiccolΓ² Machiavelli
β
It is perhaps the misfortune of my life that I am interested in far too much but not decisively in any one thing; all my interests are not subordinated in one but stand on an equal footing.
β
β
SΓΈren Kierkegaard
β
Do you want a cookie?
- What?
- A cookie. Like an Oreo. Do you want one?
- No.
- How can you not want a cookie?
- I just don't.
- Okay, fine,let's say you did want a cookie. Let's say you were dying for a cookie, and there were cookies in the cupboard. What would you do?
- I'd eat a cookie?
- Exactly. That's all I'm saying.
- What are you saying?
- That if people want cookies, they should get a cookie. It's what people do.
- Let me guess. Dad won't let you have a
cookie?
- No. Even though I'm practically starving to death, he won't even consider it. He says I have to have a sandwich first.
- And you don't think that's fair.
- You just said you'd get a cookie if you wanted one. So why can't I? I'm not a little kid. I can make my own decisions.
- Hmm. I can see why this bothers you so
much.
- It's not fair. If he wants a cookie, he can have one. If you want a cookie,
you can have one. But if I want a cookie, the rules don't count. Like you
said, it's not fair.
- So what are you going to do?
- I'm going to eat a sandwich. Because I have to. Because the world isn't fair
to ten-year-olds.
β
β
Nicholas Sparks (The Last Song)
β
There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always like a sketch. No, "sketch" is not quite a word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture.
β
β
Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)
β
It's not hard to decide what you want your life to be about. What's hard, she said, is figuring out what you're willing to give up in order to do the things you really care about.
β
β
Shauna Niequist (Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way)
β
The decisions I made after that moment were not the ones she would have made. They were the choices of a changed person, a new self.
You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal.
I call it an education
β
β
Tara Westover (Educated)
β
Some beautiful paths can't be discovered without getting lost.
β
β
Erol Ozan
β
The hardest thing about the road not taken is that you never know where it might have led.
β
β
Lisa Wingate (A Month of Summer (Blue Sky Hill #1))
β
Yes, my mind was wandering. I wished I were there with someone who could bring peace to my heart someone with whom I could spend a little time without being afraid that i would lose him the next day. With that reassurance, the time would pass more slowly. We could be silent for a while because we'd know we had the rest of our lives together for conversation. I wouldn't have to worry about serious matters, about difficult decisions and hard words.
β
β
Paulo Coelho (By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept)
β
So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
β
β
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1))
β
One thing I do know about intimacy is that there are certain natural laws which govern the sexual experience of two people, and that these laws cannot be budged any more than gravity can be negotiated with. To feel physically comfortable with someone else's body is not a decision you can make. It has very little to do with how two people think or act or talk or even look. The mysterious magnet is either there, buried somewhere deep behind the sternum, or it is not. When it isn't there (as I have learned in the past, with heartbreaking clarity) you can no more force it to exist than a surgeon can force a patient's body to accept a kidney from the wrong donor. My friend Annie says it all comes down to one simple question: "Do you want your belly pressed against this person's belly forever --or not?
β
β
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
β
He'd written me up a proposal of why dating him was a sound decision. It had included things like "I'll give up cigarettes unless I really, really need one" and "I'll unleash romantic surprises every week, such as: an impromptu picnic, roses, or a trip to Parisβbut not actually any of those things because now they're not surprises.
β
β
Richelle Mead (Spirit Bound (Vampire Academy, #5))
β
I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business. I do it because I like this kind of life.
β
β
Warren Buffett
β
Living is a risk,β I snapped at him. βEvery decision, every interaction, every step, every time you get out of bed in the morning, you take a risk. To survive is to know youβre taking that risk and to not get out of bed clutching illusions of safety.
β
β
Maria V. Snyder (Magic Study (Study, #2))
β
I love Tris the Divergent, who makes decisions apart from faction loyalty, who isnβt some faction archetype. But the Tris whoβs trying as hard as she can to destroy herself β¦ I canβt love her.β
I want to scream. But not because Iβm angry, because Iβm afraid heβs right. My hands shake and I grab the hem of my shirt to steady them.
He touches his forehead to mine and closes his eyes. βI believe youβre still in there,β he says against my mouth. βCome back.
β
β
Veronica Roth (Insurgent (Divergent, #2))
β
Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.
β
β
Theodore Roosevelt (Strenuous Life (Books of American Wisdom))
β
It's hard for an educated woman to turn her head off. That's part of the joy of being a submissive. None of the decisions are yours. When you can't refuse anything and can't even move, those voices in your head go silent. All you can do, and all you are permitted to do, is feel.
β
β
Cherise Sinclair (Dark Citadel (Masters of the Shadowlands, #2))
β
If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading
β
β
Gautama Buddha
β
Even a book can be dangerous in the wrong hands, and when that happens, you blame the hands, but you also read the book.
β
β
Erika Johansen (The Queen of the Tearling (The Queen of the Tearling, #1))
β
In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisionsβwe draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come.
β
β
Amor Towles (Rules of Civility)
β
Words have a magical power. They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair; they can transfer knowledge from teacher to student; words enable the orator to sway his audience and dictate its decisions. Words are capable of arousing the strongest emotions and prompting all men's actions.
β
β
Sigmund Freud
β
Sometimes, making the wrong choice is better than making no choice. You have the courage to go forward, that is rare. A person who stands at the fork, unable to pick, will never get anywhere.
β
β
Terry Goodkind (Wizard's First Rule (Sword of Truth, #1))
β
Do you think the ability to sleep in counts as a special skill?β I asked Dad, trying to sound torn over the decision.
βYes, list that. And donβt forget to write that you can eat an entire meal in under five minutes,β he replied. I laughed. It was true; I did tend to inhale my food.
βOh, the both of you! Why donβt you just write down that youβre an absolute heathen!β My mother went storming from the room.
β
β
Kiera Cass (The Selection (The Selection, #1))
β
Courage doesnβt happen when you have all the answers. It happens when you are ready to face the questions you have been avoiding your whole life.
β
β
Shannon L. Alder
β
The worst illiterate is the political illiterate, he doesnβt hear, doesnβt speak, nor participates in the political events. He doesnβt know the cost of life, the price of the bean, of the fish, of the flour, of the rent, of the shoes and of the medicine, all depends on political decisions. The political illiterate is so stupid that he is proud and swells his chest saying that he hates politics. The imbecile doesnβt know that, from his political ignorance is born the prostitute, the abandoned child, and the worst thieves of all, the bad politician, corrupted and flunky of the national and multinational companies.
β
β
Bertolt Brecht
β
Every time we make the decision to love someone, we open ourselves to great suffering, because those we most love cause us not only great joy but also great pain. The greatest pain comes from leaving. When the child leaves home, when the husband or wife leaves for a long period of time or for good, when the beloved friend departs to another country or dies β¦ the pain of the leaving can tear us apart.
Still, if we want to avoid the suffering of leaving, we will never experience the joy of loving. And love is stronger than fear, life stronger than death, hope stronger than despair. We have to trust that the risk of loving is always worth taking.
β
β
Henri J.M. Nouwen
β
Over the last couple of years, the photos of me when I was a kid... well, they've started to give me a little pang or something - not unhappiness, exactly, but some kind of quiet, deep regret... I keep wanting to apologize to the little guy: "I'm sorry, I've let you down. I was the person who was supposed to look after you, but I blew it: I made wrong decisions at bad times, and I turned you into me.
β
β
Nick Hornby (High Fidelity)
β
Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.
β
β
Louis de BerniΓ¨res (Corelliβs Mandolin)
β
I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.
β
β
Haim G. Ginott (Teacher and Child: A Book for Parents and Teachers)
β
Unfortunately, some family members are so psychotic that no matter how hard you try to forge a healthy relationship, nothing will help. Now that you're an adult, take refuge in the fact that some things are beyond your control. You owe it to yourself to steer clear of people who are harmful to your health.
β
β
Andrea Lavinthal (Your So-Called Life: A Guide to Boys, Body Issues, and Other Big-Girl Drama You Thought You Would Have Figured Out by Now)
β
Iβve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. Itβs my personal approach that creates the climate. Itβs my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a childβs life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.
β
β
Haim G. Ginott
β
Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you...it means that you do not treat your body as a commodity with which to purchase superficial intimacy or economic security; for our bodies to be treated as objects, our minds are in mortal danger. It means insisting that those to whom you give your friendship and love are able to respect your mind. It means being able to say, with Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre: "I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all the extraneous delights should be withheld or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.
Responsibility to yourself means that you don't fall for shallow and easy solutions--predigested books and ideas...marrying early as an escape from real decisions, getting pregnant as an evasion of already existing problems. It means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short...and this, in turn, means resisting the forces in society which say that women should be nice, play safe, have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, and stay in the places assigned to us. It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. It means, therefore, the courage to be "different"...The difference between a life lived actively, and a life of passive drifting and dispersal of energies, is an immense difference. Once we begin to feel committed to our lives, responsible to ourselves, we can never again be satisfied with the old, passive way.
β
β
Adrienne Rich
β
If you obsess over whether you are making the right decision, you are basically assuming that the universe will reward you for one thing and punish you for another.
The universe has no fixed agenda. Once you make any decision, it works around that decision. There is no right or wrong, only a series of possibilities that shift with each thought, feeling, and action that you experience.
If this sounds too mystical, refer again to the body. Every significant vital sign- body temperature, heart rate, oxygen consumption, hormone level, brain activity, and so on- alters the moment you decide to do anything⦠decisions are signals telling your body, mind, and environment to move in a certain direction.
β
β
Deepak Chopra (The Book of Secrets: Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Your Life)
β
So, what can't you take? Decide which of the two options is harder, and do the other. That way, no matter how hard your choice turns out to be, at least you can find comfort in knowing you're avoiding something even worse.
β
β
Josephine Angelini (Starcrossed (Starcrossed, #1))
β
We do not get to choose how we start out in life. We do not get to choose the day we are born or the family we are born into, what we are named at birth, what country we are born in, and we do not get to choose our ancestry. All these things are predetermined by a higher power. By the time you are old enough to start making decisions for yourself, a lot of things in your life are already in place. Itβs important, therefore, that you focus on the future, the only thing that you can change.
β
β
Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability)
β
There's a reason we refer to "leaps of faith" - because the decision to consent to any notion of divinity is a mighty jump from the rational over to the unknowable, and I don't care how diligently scholars of every religion will try to sit you down with their stacks of books and prove to you through scripture that their faith is indeed rational; it isn't. If faith were rational, it wouldn't be - by definition - faith. Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be... a prudent insurance policy.
β
β
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
β
Another way to be prepared is to think negatively. Yes, I'm a great optimist. but, when trying to make a decision, I often think of the worst case scenario. I call it 'the eaten by wolves factor.' If I do something, what's the most terrible thing that could happen? Would I be eaten by wolves? One thing that makes it possible to be an optimist, is if you have a contingency plan for when all hell breaks loose. There are a lot of things I don't worry about, because I have a plan in place if they do.
β
β
Randy Pausch (The Last Lecture)
β
I'm sure that if woman laid out the rules- requirements- early on, and let her intended know that he could either rise up to those requirements, or just move on. A directive like that signals to a man that you are not a plaything-someone to be used and discarded. It tells him that what you have- your benefits- are special, and that you need time to get to know him and his ways to decide if he DESERVES them.
The man who is willing to put in the time and meet the requirments is the one you want to stick around, because tthat guy is making a conscious decision that he, too, has no interest in playing games and will do what it takes to not only stay on the job, but also get promoted and be the proud beneficiary of your benefits. And you, in the meantime, win the ultimate prize of maintaing your dignity and self-esteem, and earning the respect of the man who recognized that you were worth the wait.
β
β
Steve Harvey (Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment)
β
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!
β
β
William Hutchison Murray
β
But todayβs society is characterized by achievement orientation, and consequently it adores people who are successful and happy and, in particular, it adores the young. It virtually ignores the value of all those who are otherwise, and in so doing blurs the decisive difference between being valuable in the sense of dignity and being valuable in the sense of usefulness. If one is not cognizant of this difference and holds that an individualβs value stems only from his present usefulness, then, believe me, one owes it only to personal inconsistency not to plead for euthanasia along the lines of Hitlerβs program, that is to say, βmercyβ killing of all those who have lost their social usefulness, be it because of old age, incurable illness, mental deterioration, or whatever handicap they may suffer. Confounding the dignity of man with mere usefulness arises from conceptual confusion that in turn may be traced back to the contemporary nihilism transmitted on many an academic campus and many an analytical couch.
β
β
Viktor E. Frankl (Manβs Search for Meaning)
β
Make New Year's goals. Dig within, and discover what you would like to have happen in your life this year. This helps you do your part. It is an affirmation that you're interested in fully living life in the year to come.
Goals give us direction. They put a powerful force into play on a universal, conscious, and subconscious level. Goals give our life direction.
What would you like to have happen in your life this year? What would you like to do, to accomplish? What good would you like to attract into your life? What particular areas of growth would you like to have happen to you? What blocks, or character defects, would you like to have removed?
What would you like to attain? Little things and big things? Where would you like to go? What would you like to have happen in friendship and love? What would you like to have happen in your family life?
What problems would you like to see solved? What decisions would you like to make? What would you like to happen in your career?
Write it down. Take a piece of paper, a few hours of your time, and write it all down - as an affirmation of you, your life, and your ability to choose. Then let it go.
The new year stands before us, like a chapter in a book, waiting to be written. We can help write that story by setting goals.
β
β
Melody Beattie (The Language of Letting Go: Daily Meditations on Codependency (Hazelden Meditation Series))
β
Closing The Cycle
One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters - whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished.
Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents' house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden?
You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won't take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that. But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister, everyone will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill.
None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we try to understand the things that happen to us. What has passed will not return: we cannot for ever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards our parents, lovers who day and night relive an affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of coming back.
Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away. That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home. Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts - and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place.
Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them. Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else.
Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the "ideal moment." Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person - nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need. This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important.
Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust. Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.
β
β
Paulo Coelho