"Alternative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "don't be so extreme, Helen. There would be many things to do; leave the consideration of slavery, or whatever the supposed wrong was, until you'd mastered all the virtues of the Bible: time enough to think of an alternative then,—eh, Ward? Well, thank Heaven, the war's over, or we'd have you a rank copperhead. Come! it's time to go into the house. I don't want any heavy ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... keeping almost in a direct line out into the lake. It was evident to all that he could not swim across the lake, as its farther shore was not even visible. He must either return to where they were, or drown; and knowing this to be his only alternative, they stood still and watched his motions. When he had got about half-a-mile from the shore, to the surprise of all, he was seen to rise higher and higher above the surface, and then all at once ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... awaited them at Constantinople; excommunication, fines, and a sentence, which did not respect the sacerdotal dignity, that they should be stripped naked and publicly whipped. [60] It was only by the alternative of hunger or dispute that the Greeks could be persuaded to open the first conference; and they yielded with extreme reluctance to attend from Ferrara to Florence the rear of a flying synod. This new translation was urged by inevitable necessity: the city was visited by the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... back without meeting the fierce brute in the teeth. There was no branch below within his reach, and none above, and he was fifty feet from the ground. To leap down appeared the only alternative to escape the clutches of the bear, and that alternative ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... going to cast himself on her mercy, to take whatever chance of life, love, and work there was in her having the smallest pity on him. If she would have none, then there was but one thing he could do: marry Christine and go abroad. He did not see how he could bring this alternative to bear upon Alma; even if she knew what he would do in case of a final rejection, he had grounds for fearing she would not care; but he brought it to bear upon himself, and it nerved him to a desperate courage. He could hardly wait for evening to come, before he went to see her; when it came, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... thirty years of peace. Domitian broke it, first, by claiming with unprecedented severity the tribute from the Jews and those "living a Jewish life;"[146] secondly, by putting the "atheists," that is, the Christians, to the alternative of giving up their faith or their life. These measures were abolished shortly after by Nerva, who sanctioned the rule that in future no one should be brought to justice under the plea of impiety or Judaism. The answer given by Trajan to Pliny the ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... expedient to Bernal, however, in the first spring of his new life, to make a final choice between early death and a life, of sin. Matters came to press upon him, and since virtue was useful only to get one into Heaven, it was not worth the effort unless one meant to die at once. This was an alternative not without its lures, despite the warnings preached all about him. It would surely be interesting to die, if one had come properly to the Feet. Even coming to but one of the Feet, as he had, might make it still more interesting. Perhaps he would not, for this reason, be always ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... far as begging is concerned, to go without them. Whether this means that the passion is less fierce than it used to be, or that the men find sexual satisfaction among themselves, I cannot say definitely. But from what I know of their disinclination to adopt the latter alternative, I am inclined to think that the passion may be dying out somewhat. I am sure that women are not more numerous "on the road" than formerly, and that the change, if real, has not been caused by them. So much for my finding in the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... his style is of less importance than the fact that he applied it almost wholly to the carrying out of that rejuvenescence of romance of which we have been speaking, and which may be taken, as anybody pleases, either for a mere alternative to the domestic novel or as a definite revolt against it. It was speedily taken up by writers mostly still living, and so not to be dwelt ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... sight of the grand aspirations that had animated their early manhood? To forget, as it were, the objects and aims of their holy mission, and to sink into the mere paterfamilias, like other good masters of families? There seemed no alternative; the routine of domestic duties must be accomplished; the sick must be attended to; hungry mouths must be fed, fast-coming forms must be clothed. Where was the time to go forth seeking the heathen or compelling him to come in? The wife and children ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... Vinoy's corps, poor, harassed creatures, covered with dust and discolored with powder, pale with exertion and discouragement, were lying all along the road. Close behind them were the Uhlans. There was no alternative for them but flight, if they would escape the disaster that had befallen the army at Sedan. Defeat was written in their faces, demoralization was evident in their attitude, they were dejected and dirty, they were like ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... position to choose, and they chose to entrench in the high dry sections, leaving the low-lying swamps, the damp marshy lands, for us. We had no alternative. It was either to take a stand there on what footing was left or be wiped off the ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... words from me, O Sanjaya, hast thou heard, indicative of war, that thou apprehendest war? O sire, peace is preferable to war. Who, O charioteer, having got the other alternative would wish to fight? It is known to me, O Sanjaya, that if a man can have every wish of his heart without having to do anything, he would hardly like to do anything even though it might be of the least troublesome kind, far less would ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... introducing the Jubilee Singers to the English public, with the further purpose of either remaining abroad to manage the affairs of the Singers in Great Britain, or of returning and temporarily taking Mr. Pike's place in Connecticut and New York, as District Secretary of the Association. The latter alternative was finally decided upon, and Mr. Powell assumed these duties in the latter part of the year 1873. A year afterwards, on the resignation of Rev. Dr. Patton from our Chicago office, Mr. Powell, who had shown remarkable gifts as a speaker, was at once selected as District Secretary of our ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 2, February 1888 • Various
... In the alternative, which she afterwards places before her lover with such a charming mixture of conscious delicacy and girlish simplicity, there is that jealousy of female honor which precept and education have infused ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... all along that we could be more helpful to the Allies out of the war than in it, because we could send munitions and supplies. If we agree to withdraw that aid, where are we? Helping Germany, all the time we are pretending to mind our own business! If our only alternative is to be at the bottom of the sea, ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... material benefits, if its most glorious conquests become instruments to advance selfishness, if its progress merely increases physical wretchedness and makes moral decadence more terrible than before, if the head continues to silence the appeals of the heart, then divine Compassion will have no alternative but to destroy beneath the waters of another flood this cruel, implacable civilisation, which has transformed earth ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... provision for the child about to be born, and so should have talked about it or have made clothes, etc., for it. The punishment for concealment is imprisonment for any term not exceeding two years. The charge of concealment is very often alternative to infanticide. To substantiate the charge, however, it must be proved that there had been a secret disposition of the dead body of the infant, as well as an endeavour to conceal ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... something must be done. In mild cases of shoulder lameness, then, the indications are water, either in the cold douche or by showering, or by warm fomentations. Warm, wet blankets are of great service; in addition, or as alternative, anodyne liniments, camphor, belladonna, either in the form of tincture or the oils, are of benefit, and at a later period stimulating friction with suitable mixtures, sweating liniments, blistering compounds, subcutaneous injections over the region of the muscle of 1-1/2 grains of veratrin ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... out of which a choice is to be made. Nor should I do justice to the virtues which on other occasions have marked the character of our fellow citizens if I did not cherish an equal confidence that the alternative chosen, whatever it may be, will be maintained with all the fortitude and patriotism which ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Thomas Jefferson • Thomas Jefferson
... defiance; and the foremost troops who advanced to the assault were checked or destroyed by showers of arrows from every side of the intrenchments. It was determined, in a general council of war, to besiege the King of the Huns in his camp, to intercept his provisions, and to reduce him to the alternative of a disgraceful treaty or an unequal combat. But the impatience of the barbarians soon disdained these cautious and dilatory measures; and the mature policy of Aetius was apprehensive that, after the extirpation of the Huns, the republic ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... Claudius, "you are one of those hardened sceptics for whom nothing can be hoped save a deathbed repentance. When you are mortally hit and have the alternative of marriage or death set before you in an adequately lively manner, you will, of course, elect to marry. Then your wife, if you get your deserts, will rule you with a rod of iron, and you will find, to your cost, that the ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... Portuguese influence in the Persian Gulf. He therefore left Cochin with twenty-three ships on Feb. 10, 1510, and on his way to the island of Anchediva [Anjidiv], whence he intended to start for Arabia, he anchored off the port of Mergeu [Mirjan]. {71} He there considered an alternative scheme of campaign, namely, to attack Goa, for it was suggested to him by a native pirate or corsair captain, named Timoja or Timmaya, that it was a particularly suitable time for a sudden attack ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... passage of water over the soil inevitably results in the collection of organic matter; and it is no exaggeration to say that the time will inevitably come in this country, as it has already in Germany, when no surface supply will be considered satisfactory unless the water is filtered. The only alternative is water gathered from areas that are owned by the individual and on which, therefore, all dwellings may be prohibited, all cultivated land avoided, and where the primeval forest may be restored, making the watershed equal to that from ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... that would have been respected on the Mississippi. My own appearance in high-heeled French boots and other corresponding gear, for a tramp over stubble and marsh, amused him equally; but my wardrobe was exclusively metropolitan, and there was no alternative.' It was hard and exciting work, the novice discovered, to trudge through peas, beans, turnips, and corn, soaked with showers, and muddied to the knees till his Parisian boots were reduced to the consistency of brown paper. ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... music may be, yet still more lofty and inspiring is the conversation, and the boxes are therefore compelled to an alternative, and very naturally and properly choose their own talk to the music. The decision of the authorities may be consequently held to be designed to secure a continuation of conversation in the boxes upon ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... deal more strength and patience was needed than Christie had at her disposal. She would gladly have changed with her sisters for their harder places in the fields; but the cold of the spring and autumn mornings chilled her, and the heat of summer exhausted her, and there was no alternative but the work of the house. This would have been wearisome enough under any circumstances to a child not very strong; and it was sometimes rendered more than wearisome by the needless chidings of ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... to the contrary from Johnson, I shall let him go, and bid him God speed. If, however, I should receive orders to continue to hold him, or even to deliver him over to his savage captors, which God forbid, I can conceive of no alternative ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... Stewart's philosophy approximates to the empirical school, because the Utilitarians were apt to misconceive the position. They took Stewart to be the adequate representative of all who accepted one branch of an inevitable dilemma. The acceptance of 'intuitions,' that is, was the only alternative to thoroughgoing acceptance of 'experience.' They supposed, too, that persons vaguely described as 'Kant and the Germans' taught simply a modification of the 'intuitionist' view. I have noticed how emphatically ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... prospector's optimism that had he been permitted to live manana surely would have seen the turning of the tide. Old O'Valley's only son and his son's wife survived him until their ability to borrow was at an end and work would have been their only alternative. So they left a small, black-haired, blue-eyed young man named Stephen O'Valley to battle single-handed with the world and bring honour to ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... of it, is named after a brother of Admiral Sir William Burnaby, who lived for some time in the neighbourhood. Beyond is Stadium Street, named after Cremorne House when it was used as a national club, and bore the alternative name of The Stadium. To the south of Lots Road are the wharves of Chelsea and Kensington. Chelsea Creek runs in here, cutting past the angle of Lots Road and turning northward to the King's Road, where it is crossed by Stanley Bridge. The ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... two the latter alternative is more likely to happen. We abuse and imitate them. They laugh at, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Socialist holds, is not only cruel and unjust to the innocent child, but an entirely barbaric and retrogressive thing to do. It is a frank abandonment of all ideas of progress and world betterment. He puts it aside, therefore, and turns to the alternative. In doing that he comes at once into harmony with all the developmental tendencies of the last hundred years. For a hundred years there has been going on a process of supplementing ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... large salmon does this it is absolutely impossible to stop him. Only two courses are open to the fisher—either to hold on and let him break the tackle; or follow him as fast as possible. The former alternative, we need hardly say, is only adopted when following is impracticable or involves serious danger. In the present case it was neither impossible nor dangerous, but it was difficult; and the way in which Giles Jackman went after that fish, staggering among pebbles, leaping obstructions, crashing ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... all the means at his command. And perhaps also there would be some pleasure in the downcast look of her eye, as she accepted the tender of his love. Something of that pleasure he had known already. And then he remembered the other alternative. It was quite upon the cards that she should decline his offer. He did not by any means shut his eyes to that. Did she do so, his friendship should by no means be withdrawn from her. He would be very careful from the onset that she should understand ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... was to allow the foreclosures to continue, credit to be withheld and money to go into hiding, and thus forcing liquidation and bankruptcy of banks, railroads and insurance companies and a recapitalizing of all business and all property on a lower level. This alternative meant a continuation of what is loosely called "deflation", the net result of which would have been extraordinary hardships on all property owners and, incidentally, extraordinary hardships on all persons working for wages through an increase in unemployment and a ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... I had no alternative but to step back to the easier slope, and regain my position, while Esau went on tramp, tramp, balancing himself steadily, but instead of striking up the slope he kept straight on for a time, and gradually sinking lower and lower as he ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... spite of the boredom involved? Would life be always just a constant ringing of the changes on paying the rent, paying the instalment on the furniture, paying the doctor, paying the nurse, paying to go for one anxious week to Littlehampton? Wasn't there some alternative? ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... information as well as to spy in turn on their own countrymen. On the other hand, Hsiao Shih-hsien says that we pretend not to have detected him, but contrive to let him carry away a false impression of what is going on. Several of the commentators accept this as an alternative definition; but that it is not what Sun Tzu meant is conclusively proved by his subsequent remarks about treating the converted spy generously (ss. 21 sqq.). Ho Shih notes three occasions on which converted spies were used with conspicuous success: (1) by T'ien Tan in his defense ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... or "legal term" (invented, of course, by the stewards or bailiffs of the lord) may have become naturalised among those of the inhabitants of the Moor whom it concerns. The tenants or retainers of a manor have no alternative but to submit to any generic name by which the steward may please to distinguish them. Thus the "priors" and "censors" of Dartmoor forest are content to be called by those names, because they were designated as "prehurdarii" and "censarii" in the court rolls some hundred years ago. The tenants ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 79, May 3, 1851 • Various
... accumulated store of idealism disappears in a laxer generation; or when it finds due vent in a more responsible, less narrow, less monotonously prosperous life than is lived by the average reader of fiction in America. I would rather see our literary taste damned forever than have the first alternative become—as it has not yet—a fact. The second, in these years rests upon the knees of ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... became slaves of their creditors, and thieves were made slaves of those whom they had robbed. The attempt to introduce Christianity into Japan and the resistance to it led to the slavery of many Christian converts, if they refused after torture to recant. This was an alternative to death. Slaves were tattooed with marks to show ownership. "Slaves were bought and sold like cattle in early times, or presented as tribute by their owners,—a practice constantly referred to in the ancient records." Their sex unions were not recognized. "In the seventh century, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... into his hand, and dashed off again without saying a word. The youngster was reluctant to display the weapons, for he was by no means sure that the sight of them would produce the desired effect. Yet there seemed to be no alternative, for the little band of men below—some eight or ten in number—were evidently determined to force the passage of the ladder. He therefore pointed both weapons straight at ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... light as she could and began to pack, working diligently, though all the while visited by the scenes that might take place on the coming day—now by the tiresome explanations and farewells, and the whirling journey toward a changed home, now by the alternative of staying just another day and standing again at the roulette-table. But always in this latter scene there was the presence of that Deronda, watching her with exasperating irony, and—the two keen experiences were inevitably revived together—beholding her again forsaken ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... with which I start out, may not seem necessary to all. "Forgive their sin—and if not, blot me I pray thee out of thy book," was Moses' prayer; and to me it seems that only by lethargy can any soul escape from facing this alternative. The human mind in so far as it is active always postulates, "Let that which I desire come to pass, or let me cease!" Nor is there any diversity possible as to what really is desirable: Man desires the full and harmonious development of his faculties. As to how ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... like being driven into the appearance of such inconsistency. After being known to oppose the scheme from the beginning, there is absurdity in the face of my joining them now, when they are exceeding their first plan in every respect; but I can think of no other alternative. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... of the North," he said sadly. "I would gladly have spared him—even though he is my enemy. But when he whirled with his rifle upon my heart, his finger upon the trigger, and murder in his eye, I had no alternative. It was his life or mine. I am glad I did not kill him." The words and the tone reassured Chloe, and when she answered, it was to ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... alternative, you'll not be a Bazelhurst long," he went on eagerly, suddenly taking her hands into his, forgetful of the wounded left. "I'm going to try trespassing myself. To-morrow I'm going to see your brother. It's regular, you know. I'm going to tell the head of your clan that you ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... Celio Benvoglio's dragon-service, for the Prince, forced either to overhear or interrupt the foregoing conversation, had fortunately chosen the former alternative. And here, perchance, should the story end, for the after-history of Joachim Murat is a tragical addendum ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... alternative, and was turning to go back for the blanket, when, all at once, my eye rested upon a clay-coloured line running across the prairie beyond where the animals were feeding. It was a break in the surface of the plain, a buffalo road, or the channel of an arroyo; in either case ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... instinct is the inevitable consequence of the organism, we ought to find in the two insects a strict similarity of habits; if instinct is, on the other hand, a special aptitude favoured by the organs, we must expect variations in the industry exercised. For the second time the alternative is forced upon our attention: do the implements govern the practice of the craft, or does the craft govern the employment of the implements? Is instinct derived from the organ, or is the organ instinct's servant? An old dead cherry-tree will ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... of adventures of late, but for this newest one he had little stomach. Nevertheless, he gritted his teeth and prepared to go ahead and follow his companion's lead, since need left no alternative. ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... broad smile. He knew that he himself would have spoken thus had he not been committed to another way of talking. Breakspeare, too, smiled, but with only half-assent; he reserved his bigamous alternative. Martin Blaydes took a long draught from his beaker, puffed half-a-dozen rings of smoke, and pursued his diatribe in the same ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... is not the only ending defeat might bring to the two islands. We must proceed then to discuss No. 2, the alternative fate reserved for Ireland in the unlikely event of a great British overthrow. This is, that if the existing partnership were to be forcibly dissolved, by external shock, it would mean for Ireland "out of the frying pan into ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... steps of a throne, and it depended only upon himself whether he would mount those steps, or whether, like General Monk, he would recall the fugitive king, and restore to him the sceptre of his forefathers. The brothers of Bonaparte desired the first; Josephine implored Heaven for the latter alternative. She was too completely a loving woman only, to long for the chilly joys of mere ambition; she was too entirely occupied with her personal happiness, not to fear every danger that menaced it. Should Bonaparte place a crown upon his head, he would ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... would be a wise precaution to disable the big automobile in case of accident. But between him and the carrying out of this resolve was an iron bar and a padlock. To attempt violence against the door would surely attract attention from the house. And all at once a simple and effective alternative suggested itself. If he himself were unable to enter the stable he would take measures to prevent the entrance of any other person. There was no difficulty about that and when five minutes later he strolled down the road toward the inn it was with the comforting ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... When their stock of wild fowl had been exhausted for more than two days, each began to fear they were now approaching that sad point of necessity, when, between death and casting lots who should be sacrificed to serve for food for the rest, no alternative remained. While horror at the bare contemplation of an extremity so repulsive occupied the thoughts of all, the horizon was observed to be suddenly obscured, and presently clouds of penguin alighted on the island. The low grounds were ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... she could not analyse, a sense of possibilities of what might have been after these perfect weeks together. But her feelings were dreamy; she had no sense of concrete alternative; she did not now—he had been too skilful—expect Edmund to ask her, nor did she wish him to ask her, to draw quite close to him. She only felt at the end of this interlude they had spent together ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... be asked by the defense why the accomplice, who was presumably Rex Holland, did not himself commit the crime. I could offer two or three alternative suggestions, all of which are feasible. The deceased man was shot at close quarters, and was found in such an attitude as to suggest that he was wholly unprepared for the attack. We know that he was in some fear and that he invariably went armed; yet it is fairly certain that he made no ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... stick to it, of course (unless a wire or letter from you meanwhile suggests some miraculous, agreeable, honourable alternative); but sufficient for the day is the ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... (even if all enemies in pursuit were thrown out of the question) it was held by those best acquainted with the difficult and obscure geography of these pathless steppes—that the loss of this one narrow strait amongst the hills would have the effect of throwing them (as their only alternative in a case where so wide a sweep of pasturage was required) upon a circuit of at least five hundred miles extra; besides that, after all, this circuitous route would carry them to the Torgai at a point ill fitted for the passage of their heavy baggage. The defile ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... of Ingrande; but the heirs of Gilles implored the interference of Charles VII. to stay the sale. Charles immediately issued an edict, which was confirmed by the Provincial Parliament of Brittany, forbidding him to alienate his paternal estates. Gilles had no alternative but to submit. He had nothing to support his extravagance but his allowance as a Marshal of France, which did not cover the one-tenth of his expenses. A man of his habits and character could not retrench his wasteful expenditure and live reasonably; ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... Another alternative suddenly suggested itself to Michael which he was almost ashamed of proposing, for it implied that his father put his own convenience as outweighing any other consideration. But he saw that if only Lord Ashbridge was selfish enough to consent to it, it had manifest merits. His mother ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... was afraid of her. It was inconceivable, it was mad, but it was true. He looked at her with disguised terror. His bravado was the slenderest mask. Every word he said was uttered tentatively, it was subject to her approval, and if she opposed a statement he dropped it instantly and adopted her alternative as one adopts a gift. This astonished her who had been prepared to be terrified. He kept a little distance between them as he walked, and when she looked at him he looked away. She had a vision of herself ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... such a subject seemed to have been exhausted for ever by that supreme effort. So the audience paid the increased price or stayed away from the theatre—for staying away from the theatre could now be calmly viewed as a reasonable alternative. "The play" was no more what once it had been, a sort of necessary of life. The example of the Opera manager was presently followed by all other theatrical establishments, and high-priced stalls became the rule everywhere. The pit lost its old influence—was, so to say, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... their lieutenants augmented? And all these measures were owing to you. They are not homicides then. It follows that in your opinion they are deliverers of their country, since there can be no other alternative. What is the matter? Am I embarrassing you? For perhaps you do not quite understand propositions which are stated disjunctively. Still this is the sum total of my conclusion; that since they are acquitted by you of wickedness, they are at the same time pronounced most worthy of ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... that gentlest compassion which would permit no need of itself. Lucina, however her heart might have been swerved for a season to its natural inclination of love, had never yet admitted a lover, for, when it came to that last alternative of open or closed doors, she had immediately been seized with an impulse of flight into her fastness of ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the approved modes of discovery. By the former method the witch was stripped naked, securely bound (hands and feet being crossed), rolled up in a blanket or cloth, and carried to the nearest water, upon which she was laid on her back, with the alternative of floating or sinking. In case of the former event (the water not seldom refusing to receive the wretch, because—declares James I.—they had impiously thrown off the holy water of baptism) she ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... alternative, should we fail to obtain an abundance of meat, than to push on at once to Fort Ross," he observed. "You and I and Martin and Pat must go. I shall be very sorry to part from Robin, but we must, of course, leave him with his father, and endeavour as soon as possible to ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... side below it being concolorous with the thighs and fore-limbs. The rufous area of the back is confined between the two uppermost yellow lines; ears are large; all under-parts white, slightly washed here and there with yellowish; the tail moderately bushy, all the hairs annulated with four alternative orange and black bands, the terminal black band being occasionally tipped with white, and being as broad as the three remaining bands, so that the tail has a decidedly black tint washed with whitish, the orange bands, however, appearing through ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... and easy escape from it. These reflexions were assuredly present, unknown to himself, in the midst of the many thoughts that crowded his brain in that supreme hour, and they must have influenced him in forming his ultimate decision, though he did not guess that they were at work. He saw only the alternative possibilities of an ignoble life or of an honourable death, and he chose the more pleasant, the easier, the quicker. In the twinkling of an eye it would be done, and here would be no more Rex. Those left behind would think kindly of him; they ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... his most enlightened Anglo-Saxon brother. Only in this way can the Negro meet the rigid requirements of the ever-advancing standard of the proud, progressive Anglo-Saxon. The dominant race is naturally the criterion. Any other alternative would be abnormal and destructive in its far-reaching results. The ruling people in this country have the prestige of centuries of culture. Had the Negro's days of enslavement been years of culture and refinement equal to that of the best people ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... impulses. It was not indeed under the flag of that research that he offered himself for the Army almost immediately after his return to England—and even if when a young man was so essentially a poet we need see no act in him as a prosaic alternative. The misfortune of this set of letters from New York and Boston, from Canada and Samoa, addressed, for the most part, to a friendly London evening journal is, alas, in the fact that they are of so moderate a quantity; for we make him ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... public mind and make me, for one, anticipate an immediate word from Mr. Jeffrey calculated to establish the alibi he had failed to make out on the day we talked with him. But no such word came. His memory still played him false, and no alternative was left but to pursue the official inquiry in the line suggested by the ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... islands on the outside, and of much heavy ice which was pressing down upon us. The coast near us was so steep and rugged that no landing of the cargoes could be effected and we were preserved only by some men jumping on the rocks and thrusting the ice off with poles. There was no alternative but to continue along this dreary shore seeking a channel between the different masses of ice which had accumulated at the various points. In this operation both the canoes were in imminent danger of being crushed by the ice which was now ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... quite reasonable. It was natural that he should prefer to let the fugitive escape, to the alternative of losing his horse. George Leman was noted for three things in Redfield—his boat, his ugly dog, and his fast horse; and Harry, after stealing the boat and killing the dog, was in a fair way to deprive him of his horse, upon which ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... command, and have an understood though never fully expressed passion for her, which would be sending out lambent flames every now and then in interesting scenes. His departure had been a proportionate disappointment, and had sadly increased her weariness of Middlemarch; but at first she had the alternative dream of pleasures in store from her intercourse with the family at Quallingham. Since then the troubles of her married life had deepened, and the absence of other relief encouraged her regretful rumination over that thin romance which she had once fed on. Men and women make ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... knowledge of this mysterious transaction went no further; and even she was able to perceive that from so nebulous a starting-point no definite advance could be made. She had also heard of women selling their jewels, and wondered vaguely who were the convenient people who bought them; though this alternative did not commend itself to her in ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... The links between this teaching and after life did not seem to be satisfactorily established. The Board of Education showed the first signs of a change of outlook by the readjustment in the curriculum giving an alternative syllabus for girls, and the latitude in this direction is widening by degrees. It begins to be whispered that even in some boys' schools the laboratory is only used under compulsion or by exceptional students, and the wave seems likely to go down as rapidly ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... the reeds, and drove along rapidly under bare poles, out of sight of the Hattie, separated at nightfall by miles of raging sea. We rode before the wind to the foot of the lake, where we were confronted by the alternative of a toilsome and unsafe paddle around the coast against the storm's full force, or camping in mutual anxiety as to the fate of the unseen party—a by no means pleasant sedative for a night's rest upon wild and uninhabited shores. We decided ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... was preserved from the cruel alternative which he pathetically laments, of destroying or of being himself destroyed: and the seasonable death of Constantius delivered the Roman empire from the calamities of civil war. The approach of winter could not detain the monarch at Antioch; and his favorites durst not oppose his impatient ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... had an alternative brain-wave. He thought that if he pinched the latchkey of Dahlia's Bloomsbury flat, broke in at night, and made a show of assaulting her modesty he could prove to her that she was only a poor weak woman after all. Nothing, you would say, could well have been more ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... to stay, however, there remained no alternative for the burgher, but patience. Although apprehension of some indiscreet exposure was certainly the feeling uppermost in his mind, he was not entirely without some of the weakness which caused Oloff Van Staats to listen and to gaze with so much obvious interest ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... by far the larger number of cases such a difference between costs is more than the carrier can get. Usually there is some alternative mode of procuring goods at B which does not involve actually making them on the spot at a serious disadvantage. It may be possible to convey them to B from a third locality, C, where they are made in an advantageous way. If this carrying is ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... court, because the complainant would not forego the charge, was compelled to bind him over to this court for trial. Since then he has changed his mind and has admitted his guilt to the district attorney. He would not be brought before you except we have no alternative. He has to be brought here now in order to clear ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... perhaps be cautious in our censures. It is possible to hold an opinion quite honestly, and yet to hesitate about dying for it. We consider ourselves, at the present day, persuaded honestly of many things; yet which of them should we refuse to relinquish if the scaffold were the alternative—or at least seem to ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... we had been hailed from Moro Castle and had returned the usual answer. A couple of doubloons in gold made the boarding officer conveniently blind, and a similar fee thrust quietly into the doctor's hand insured a "clean bill of health," under which we were permitted to land! The alternative ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... the protector of a woman placed in a cruel dilemma—an alternative between losing her fortune and her children, and being regarded as her husband's enemy," she said, "you accuse me, monsieur! You suspect my motives! You must own that your ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... Ticke; and then sardonically: "Waterloo Bridge at ebb tide is such a nasty alternative. I could never get over the idea of ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... shall we account for the inhumanity of those societies, in which punishments the most disproportionate to the crime, unmercifully take away the lives of men, whom the most urgent necessity, the dreadful alternative of famishing in a land of plenty, has obliged to become criminal? It is thus that in a great number of civilized nations, the life of the citizen is placed in the same scales with money; that the unhappy wretch who is perishing from hunger, who is writhing under the most ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... in one thing. Of course she told her mother, and of course her mother told her father. Before dinner that evening the whole affair was being debated in the family conclave. They all agreed that Fanny had had no alternative but to reject the proposition at once. That, indeed was so thoroughly taken for granted, that the point was not discussed. But there came to be a difference between the Rector and Fanny on one side, and Mrs. Clavering and Mary on the other. ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... alternative plan should also be borne in mind. Suppose that a capable student is taught to let no trifles escape him. The danger then is that, to the extent that he is earnest, he will fall in love with little ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... let her try it herself? By the time she had discovered his whereabouts, and brought suit for divorce, he would probably—wherever he was—be earning enough to pay her a sufficient alimony. And the alternative was to let Mattie go forth alone, with far less ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... Rosenthal was but temporary. At any moment it might be lost, and then would follow another dreary hunt for work, with all its rebuffs, and sooner or later the delicately nurtured woman would succumb and go under in a mental or physical collapse, the hospital her only alternative. ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... that the possessions of a rich man are not represented, as they used to be, by wedges of gold or coffers of jewels, but by masses of men variously employed, over whose bodies and minds the wealth, according to its direction, exercises harmful or helpful influence, and becomes, in that alternative, Mammon either of ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... chance in a chase across the pampa, with the red Centaurs pursuing. Therefore, not for an instant, or only one, entertains he thought of flight. In a second he sees it would not avail them, and decides on the other alternative—concealment. He has already made a hasty inspection of the ground near by, and sees, commencing at no great distance off, and running along the water's edge, a grove of sumac trees which, with their parasites and other ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... was utterly beyond all control. So great was its pace that there was no alternative but to try and cling on to the castle. Up there we were beyond its reach. To have leapt off, even if we had avoided having brains dashed out or limbs smashed by the fall, would have been to put ourselves at once at a frightful disadvantage. The mammoth would have ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... young man catch even a fleeting glimpse of its owner. It was, he told himself, unlikely that she would come to the Spence house again. When her property was repaired she probably would expect some one either to let her know, or bring it to her. It was to the latter alternative that Bob was pinning his hopes. The errand would provide a perfectly natural excuse for him to go to the Brewster home, and once there he would meet the girl's family and perhaps be asked to come again. Until the ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... They were unwilling to consider whether his claim to be the Son of God was true; they only wished to be sure that he made the claim. When they had made sure of this, they agreed that he must die as a blasphemer. Their logic was so far true. There is no other alternative. In the presence of Christ there can be no neutrality. Either he was an impostor who deserves our contempt, or else he is the divine Son of God whom we must worship and obey. Every soul must choose between the sanhedrin ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... to the interior was granted hy Menelek to a French company in 1894. The company having met with numberless difficulties and financial troubles, the French government, on the extinction of the company's funds, came to the rescue and provided money for the construction. (In the alternative British capitalists interested in the company would have obtained control of the line.) The French government's help enabled the railway to be completed to Dire Dawa, 28 m. from Harrar, by the last day of 1902. Difficulties arose over the continuation of the railway to Adis ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... avec Chagrin que vous vous tourmentes et mois aussi bien innutillement, et en tout sans [sens]. Ou vous voules me servire, ou vous ne Le voules pas; ou vous voules me protege, ou non; Il n'y a acune autre alternative en raison qui puis etre. Si vous voules me servire il ne faut pas me soutenire toujours que Blan [blanc] est noire, dans Les Chose Les plus palpable: et jamais Avouer que vous aves tort meme quant vous Le santes. Si vous ne voules pas me servire, ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... The alternative was a dismal one, but Dangle saw no third way. Which course was least to be desired he could not for the life of him decide. A fight with Rollitt he knew would end disastrously. But to ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... up my mother. There is no other alternative but that of giving up you; and in this case I can hesitate, indeed, but I cannot decide ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... whatever you please, for I will not enter the lists with any sect of philosophers: here is an alternative which no philosopher can avoid. Either matter can become a thinking substance, without adding anything to it, or matter cannot think at all, and so what thinks in us is a substance distinct from matter, and ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... delicious pleasure of torturing the young princess's jealousy to desperation. To convince Nehushta that Zoroaster was deceiving her, and really loved herself, the queen; to force Zoroaster into some position where he must either silently let Nehushta believe that he was attached to Atossa, or, as an alternative, betray the king's secrets by speaking the truth; to let Nehushta's vanity be flattered by the king's admiration,—nay, even to force her into a marriage with Darius, and then by suffering her again to fall into her first love for Zoroaster, bring her to a public ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... sculpture and Gothic architecture, and the mere name of the creator does not signify. George Frederick Watts is reported to have said, "If I were asked to choose whether I would like to do something good, as the world judges popular art, and receive personally great credit for it, or, as an alternative, to produce something which should rank with the very best, taking a place with the art of Pheidias or Titian, with the highest poetry and the most elevating music, and remain unknown as the perpetrator of the work, I should choose the latter." ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... deft and telling. Laodice started with the suddenness of the accusation embodied in it. And while she stood, wrestling with the intolerable alternative, the Greek smiled at her ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... Shih-yin's wife, upon hearing the tidings, had such a fit of weeping that she hung between life and death; but her only alternative was to consult with her father, and to despatch servants on all sides to institute inquiries. No news was however received of him, and she had nothing else to do but to practise resignation, and to remain dependent upon the support ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... after his defeat by the Austrians left no alternative to his son and successor, Victor Emmanuel II., but that of signing a disastrous peace with Austria. In a short time the stout-hearted young King called to his councils Count Cavour, the second son of ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose |
