Everybody likes to go their own way--to choose their own time and manner of devotion
Source: Mansfield Park (1814)
Topic
Choice in this collection is most honest when it acknowledges what choosing actually costs. Lincoln's two-faced remark is the opening deflection — the joke that refuses the question by performing it. Wilde on choosing friends for looks, acquaintances for character, and enemies for intelligence is the taxonomy of selection: different relationships require different criteria, and confusing them is a persistent social error. Washington on being courteous to all but intimate with few is the social calibration. Jonson on true happiness consisting not in the multitude of friends but in their worth and choice applies the same principle to attachment: quality over quantity in all things. Voltaire on playing whatever cards life deals you is the meta-choice: you do not choose the situation, only the play. What the collection argues is that choice is never free — it always costs the other options — and the most important choices are the ones about what criteria to use for the rest.
Everybody likes to go their own way--to choose their own time and manner of devotion
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.
It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.
You can control nothing but your own mind.
Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission.
It is pleasant to be admitted into the birth-chamber of a great idea destined to be translated into action.
The plain intention of an honest man.
The credulous man is father to the liar and the cheat.
We have no reason to fear lest a habit of conscientious inquiry should paralyze the actions of our daily life.
We may believe the statement of another person, when there is reasonable ground for supposing that he knows the matter of which he speaks, and that he is speaking the truth so far as he knows it.
For your reward you must demand the bronze ring which has the power to grant you everything you desire.
I have no fear, no matter how fast you go.
Say yes or no without fear.
I wish to go back to my palace and see my Beast again.