„I choose gentleness… Nothing is won by force. I choose to be gentle. If I raise my voice may it be only in praise. If I clench my fist, may it be only in prayer. If I make a demand, may it be only of myself.“

„Whate'er
I may have been, or am, doth rest between
Heaven and myself; I shall not choose a mortal
To be my mediator.“

—  George Gordon Byron, buch Manfred

Act III, scene i.
Manfred (1817)

„I live only because it is in my power to die when I choose to: without the idea of suicide, I'd have killed myself right away.“

—  Emil M. Cioran Romanian philosopher and essayist 1911 - 1995

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

„Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.“

—  Wendell Berry author 1934

A Warning To My Readers
Poems

„His fists clenched at his sides. 'Damn it! Where's your pride?'
'Pride? It's in my heart, of course.'
'You're letting me demean you!'
She smiled. 'You can't do that. I can only demean myself.“

—  Susan Elizabeth Phillips American writer 1948

Quelle: Kiss an Angel

„Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world.“

—  Wendell Berry author 1934

Poems
Kontext: Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.

A Warning To My Readers.

„I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.“

—  Leo Rosten American writer 1908 - 1997

Quelle: Captain Newman, M. D (1962), p. 328; this is also sometimes attributed to Leo Buscaglia, who often quoted it in his addresses and in his book Living, Loving and Learning (1982).

„If I can reconcile myself to the certainty of death only by forgetting it, I am not happy. And if I can dispose of the fact of human misery about me only by shutting my thoughts as well as myself within my comfortable garden, I may assure myself that I am happy, but I am not. There is a skeleton in the closet of the universe, and I may at any moment be in the face of it. Happiness is inseparable from confidence in action; and confidence of action is inseparable from what the schoolmen called peace -- that is, poise of mind with reference to everything I may possibly encounter in the chances of fortune.“

—  William Ernest Hocking American philosopher 1873 - 1966

Quelle: The Meaning of God in Human Experience (1912), Ch. XV : The Need of a God, p. 218.
Kontext: If I can reconcile myself to the certainty of death only by forgetting it, I am not happy. And if I can dispose of the fact of human misery about me only by shutting my thoughts as well as myself within my comfortable garden, I may assure myself that I am happy, but I am not. There is a skeleton in the closet of the universe, and I may at any moment be in the face of it. Happiness is inseparable from confidence in action; and confidence of action is inseparable from what the schoolmen called peace -- that is, poise of mind with reference to everything I may possibly encounter in the chances of fortune.
Now this perfect openness to experience is not possible if pain is the last word of pain. Unless there is something behind the fact of pain, some kind of mystery or problem in it whose solution shows the pain to be other than what it pretends, there is no happiness for man in this world or the next; for no matter how fair the world might in time become, the fact that it had been as bad as it is would remain an unbanishable misery, unbanishable by God or any other power.

„This I choose to do. If there is a price, this I choose to pay. If it is my death, then I choose to die. Where this takes me, there I choose to go. I choose. This I choose to do.“

—  Terry Pratchett, buch Wintersmith

Quelle: Wintersmith

„The only thing I want,
The only thing I need,
The only thing I choose,
The only thing that looks good on me…is you.“

—  Bryan Adams Canadian singer-songwriter 1959

The Only Thing That Looks Good on Me Is You
Song lyrics, 18 til I Die (1996)

„I can recollect nothing more to say at present; perhaps breakfast may assist my ideas. I was deceived — my breakfast supplied only two ideas — that the rolls were good and the butter bad.“

—  Jane Austen English novelist 1775 - 1817

Letter (1799-06-19) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

„Speak straight and clear! I only hear that manly prayer
which like a huge fist breaks my head against the stones.“

—  Nikos Kazantzakis Greek writer 1883 - 1957

Odysseus, Book VIII, line 530
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)

„There are worse things than a lie… I have found… that it may be well to choose one sin in order that another may be shunned.“

—  Anthony Trollope, buch Doctor Wortle's School

Doctor Wortle's School (1881) Ch. 6

„I only hope you may be able not only to listen, but also to hear me. Your charity must multiply my small voice and do some such miracle as was done when the loaves and fishes fed the multitude“

—  Julia Ward Howe American abolitionist, social activist, and poet 1819 - 1910

What is Religion? (1893)
Kontext: I only hope you may be able not only to listen, but also to hear me. Your charity must multiply my small voice and do some such miracle as was done when the loaves and fishes fed the multitude in the ancient tune which has just been spoken of.

„I encounter millions of bodies in my life; of these millions, I may desire some hundreds; but of these hundreds, I love only one.“

—  Roland Barthes, buch A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

Quelle: A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

„My life - my personality, my habits, even my speech - is a combination of the books I choose to read, the people I choose to listen to, and the thoughts I choose to tolerate in my mind“

—  Andy Andrews author and corporate speaker 1959

„Pleasure may be snatched from life’s clenched fists, not joy“

—  Yahia Lababidi 1973

Signposts to Elsewhere (2008)

„I am forced, as I have often said, to try to make myself laugh, that I may not cry: for one or other I must do.“

—  Samuel Richardson, buch Clarissa

Vol. 2, p. 231; Letter 92.
Clarissa (1747–1748)

„The subject being unusual, I fear that I shall not make myself intelligible, but I will do my endeavour, that the reasons of our judgment may be apprehended.“

—  John Holt (Lord Chief Justice) English lawyer and Lord Chief Justice of England 1642 - 1710

B. v. Knight and Burton (1699), 1 Raym. 527.

„I am against an adjournment. The day of judgment is either approaching, or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause of an adjournment: if it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. I wish therefore that candles may be brought.“

—  Abraham Davenport American politician 1715 - 1789

Davenport's response to a call for adjourning the Connecticut State Council because of fears that the deep darkness might be a sign that the Last Judgment was approaching, as quoted by Timothy Dwight, Connecticut Historical Collections 2d ed (1836) compiled by John Warner Barber, p. 403.