More than at any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads.One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

-Allen,Woody pseudonym of  Allen Stewart Konigsberg
  Side Effects,'My Speech to the Graduates'.

And see ye not yon braid, braid road, That lies across the lily leven? That is the path of Wickedness, Though some call it the Road to Heaven.

-Ballads
'Thomas the Rhymer'.

O L, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo,O L, thou knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.

-Bible (Old Testament)
ORDORDPsalms139:1^6.

Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing, Or where the beetle winds His small but sullen horn, As oft he rises midst the twilight path, Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum.

-Collins,William
  Odes on Several Descriptive and  Allegoric Subjects,'Ode to Evening', l.9^14.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura che¤   la diritta via era smarrita. In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself in a dark wood where the straight path was lost.

-Dante Alighieri originally Durante
c.1320  Divina Commedia,'Inferno', canto1, l.1^3.

Theyare not long, the days of wine and roses: Out of a misty dream Our path emerges for a while, then closes Within a dream.

-Dowson, Ernest
  'Vitae Summa Brevis'.

Virtue's his path; but sometimes 'tis too narrow For his vast soul; and then he starts out wide, And bounds into a vice.

-Dryden,John
  Of  Antony.  All for Love, or The World Well Lost, act1.

There, I believed, lay the greatest secrets of the past yet preserved inour world of today.Ihad cometotheturn of the road; and for better or worse I chose the forest path. 319

-Fawcett, Percy Harrison
  Of South  America. Collected in Brian Fawcett (ed) Exploration Fawcett (1953).

I would suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.

-Forster, E(dward) M(organ)
Two Cheers for Democracy,'Books That Influenced Me'.

O tell of his might,O sing of his grace, Whose robe is the light, whose canopy space. His chariots of wrath the deep thunder-clouds form, And dark is his path on the wings of the storm.

-Grant, Sir Robert
  'O worship the King, all glorious above', collected in Sacred Poems (1839).

The path up and down is one and the same.

-Heraclitus   fl.500
c.500  BC  Quoted in Kirk, Raven and Schofield (eds)  The Presocratic Philosophers (1957), ch.6.

You would not find out the boundaries of the soul, even by travelling along every path: so deepa measure doesit have.

-Heraclitus   fl.500
c.500  BC   Quoted in Kirk, Raven and Schofield (eds)  The Presocratic Philosophers (1957), ch.6.

Throw away thy rod, Throw away thy wrath: O my God, Take the gentle path.

-Herbert, George
'Discipline', collected in The Temple, Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (published posthumously,1633).

   The central propositions [of Descartes]†are these: There is a path that leads to the truth so surely that any one who will follow it must needs reach the goal† And there is one guiding rule by which a man mayalways find this path†give unqualified assent to no propositions but those the truth of which is so clear and distinct that they cannot be doubted.

-Huxley,T(homas) H(enry)
  Lay Sermons,  Addresses, and Reviews.

The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.

-Kennedy,John F(itzgerald)
   Address to the nation, 22 Oct.

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. Praise belongs to God, the Lord of all Being, the All-merciful, the All-compassionate the Master of the Day of Doom. Thee only we serve; toThee alone we pray for succour. Guide us in the straight path, the path of those whomThou hast blessed, not of those against whomThou art wrathful, nor of those who are astray.

-The Koran
Sura1, l.1^7.

I maintain that truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.

-Krishnamurti,Jiddu
  Speech in Holland. Quoted in Terry Lynn Taylor Messengers of Light, ch.32.

A jazz performance centers upon the process of creation. The final objective is not only the finished product, but the path and process taken towards it.

-Liebman, David
  Self-Portrait of a Jazz- Artist, ch.3.

One evening,Iwas walking along a path, the city was on one side and the fjord below. I felt tired and ill. I stopped and looked out over the fjordöthe sun was setting, and the clouds turning blood red.I sensed a scream passing through nature; it seemed to me that I heard the scream. Ipainted this picture, paintedthe cloudsas actual blood. The colour shrieked. This becameThe Scream.

-Munch, Edvard
  Diary.

   A body of work such as Pasteur's is inconceivable in our time: no manwould be given a chance to create a whole science. Nowadays a path is scarcely opened up when the crowd begins to pour in.

-Rostand,Jean
  'Pense¤  es d'un Biologiste', collected inTheSubstance of Man (translated by Irma Brandeis,1962).