Choose you this day whom ye will serve† but as for me and my house, we will serve the L.

-Bible (Old Testament)
ORDJoshua 24:15.

A woman can hardly ever choose†she is dependent on what happens to her. She must take meaner things, because only meaner things are within her reach.

-Eliot, George pseudonym of  MaryAnn Evans
  Felix Holt, ch.27.

I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my countryand betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.

-Forster, E(dward) M(organ)
Two Cheers for Democracy,'What I Believe'.

The pace of science forces the pace of technique. Theoretical physics forces atomic energy on us; the successful production of the fission bomb forces upon us the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb.We do not choose our problems, we do not choose our products; we are pushed, we are forcedöby what? Bya system which has no purpose and goal transcending it, and which makes man its appendix.

-Fromm, Erich
  The Sane Society.

   Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwistöslack they may beöthese last strands of man In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can; Cansomething, hope, wish daycome, not choose not to be.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins
  'Carrion Comfort'.

How few of his friends' houses would a man choose to be at when he is sick.

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
  Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.4.

Were I (who to my loss already am One of those strange prodigious creatures, Man) A spirit, free to choose for my own share What case of flesh and blood I'd choose to wear, I'd be a dog, a monkey, or a bear.

-Rochester,JohnWilmot, 2nd Earl of
  'A SatyrAgainst Mankind', l.1^5 (published1679).

Vous e"  tes libre, choisissez, c'est-a'  -dire, inventez. Aucune morale ge¤  ne¤  rale ne peut vous indiquer ce qu'il y a a' faire. You are free, therefore chooseöthat is to say, invent. No rule of general moralitycan show you what you ought to do.

-Sartre,Jean-Paul
  L'Existentialisme est un humanisme (Existentialism and Humanism,1948) (translated by Philip Mairet).

I have come to the borders of sleep, The unfathomable deep Forest, where all must lose Their way, however straight Or winding, soon or late; They cannot choose.

-Thomas, (Philip) Edward
  'Lights Out'.