"Alternative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... horn. In an essay like the present (first intended as a paper to be read before the Royal Society) one cannot be too exact; and I will concede that my theory of the gradual vire-scence of our satellite is to be regarded rather as an alternative theory than as a law finally demonstrated and universally accepted by the scientific world. It is a hypothesis that holds the field, as the scientists say of a theory when there is no evidence for ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... The alternative lay between the entire suppression of the work for an indefinite period, and the publication of by far the larger portion of it with the omission of a few passages which touched too nearly on our contemporaries. Upon the whole, the latter ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... he had no alternative but Paris, although it was several weeks ahead of his schedule. As a matter of fact, it was several weeks too early. The city was not quite ready for him. The trees in the Champs Elysees were in much the condition of a lady half an hour before an expected caller. The broad vista to the triumphal ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... So as an alternative I decided to enroll for membership at a gymnasium where I could have company at my exercising and make a sport of what otherwise would be in the nature of a punishment. This I did. With a group of ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... simultaneously her mainmast went by the board, she began to fill and settle down, and soon became a forlorn wreck. A short consultation was held between the officers and men as to what was best to be done. There was, however, no alternative but to take to the boats, and make the best effort possible to save life. There was no time to lose. Five boats were quickly launched, and manned, and supplied with such provisions and water as could be procured in the hurry of the moment. An officer took command of each boat, and Tite managed ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... that the men would back-fire. But while this would save them from the flames it would at the same time remove their cover, and my rifle could then have a whole man to bite at instead of merely his head and shoulders, or less. They would have no alternative now but to come forward quickly or retreat. I think Doloria realized that anything might be about to happen, for she laid the other rifle in position on the parapet, ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... on talking? It is a serious question, one on which the happiness of thousands depends. For there is no more wearing social demand than that of compulsory conversation. All day long we must either talk, or—dread alternative—listen. Now, that were very well if we had something to say, or our fellow-sufferer something to tell, or, best of all, if either of us possessed the gift of clothing the old commonplaces with charm. But men with that ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... alternative did not suit our principles, and of course we adopted the former. In 1827, the subject came again before Congress, on a proposition to afford some relief to the branch of wool and woollens. We looked upon the system of protection as being fixed and settled. ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... The faces that surrounded Hollis in the semi-darkness showed plainly that their owners had given up thoughts of assistance. Grim, hard lines came into them; two or three sneered. Of course they would fight Dunlavey; there was no alternative, for they could not stand idly by and see their cattle slain—Dunlavey could not drive them from water, they would have to be shot. They had reckoned on securing help from Hollis; he held one side of the Rabbit-Ear and with his support they ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... and, as if in the depths of a smooth water, to gather fold over patient fold of the submerged self, safe from wounds; the happiness was not noble, but it breathed and was harmless, and it gave me rest when the alternative ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that London was very richly supplied with playhouses in Pepys's day. But public theatres in active work at this period of our history were not permitted by the authorities to exceed two. "The Opera" and "the Duke's House" are merely Pepys's alternative designations of the Lincoln's Inn Field's Theatre; while "the Theatre," "Theatre Royal," and "the King's House," are the varying titles which he bestows on ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... the United States, and there learned a smattering of Yankee law, was resolved to make his voice heard in the case. The inability of the prisoner to pay the fine of course made it necessary to fall back upon the alternative—thirty days in jail, which jail was a hundred and odd miles off. There was no conveyance to take him thither; and no roads even if there had been; and ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... exercised patience to beyond the verge of proper forbearance.... I deeply regretted, and now deeply regret, the fact that the Colombian Government rendered it imperative for me to take the action I took; but I had no alternative, consistent with the full performance of my duty to my own people, and ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... California passengers, seemed to be a good deal worried by General Walker. Their business was no longer profitable, and their families lived in a state of continual alarm between the combatants; yet they were not allowed the alternative of flight; for it was General Walker's policy, wise or unwise, when he had got a man into Nicaragua who was useful to him, to keep him there; and the last Transit Company, being entirely in his interest, carried no emigrant out of the Isthmus unfurnished with a passport ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... relieved his mind by writing a letter to a newspaper. He did not send it in the end, for his better judgment prevented, but he had to do something by way of protest, and the only alternative was to tell his wife about it, when she would look half puzzled, half pained, and probably reply with some remark about the general cost of living. So he ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... 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 ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... et nous ne devons pas avoir l'air de manquer a nos engagements. Nous serions donc places dans une alternative bien triste si l'Autriche elle-meme ne semblait pas deja nous inviter de ne point rompre toute negociation. Or en reflechissant aujourd'hui a cette situation, je me disais: ne pourrait-on pas repondre ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... feet high to every vine, separately. The vine-stock is sometimes three or four feet high. They find these two methods equal in culture, duration, quantity, and quality. The former, however, admits the alternative of tending by hand or with the plough. The grafting of the vine, though a critical operation, is practised with success. When the graft has taken, they bend it into the earth, and let it take root above the scar. They begin to yield an indifferent wine at three years old, but not a good one till ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... without notably impairing the other. He might be embarrassed, if the case were really such as sophisters represent it in their paltry style of debating. But in this, as in most questions of state, there is a middle. There is something else than the mere alternative of absolute destruction or unreformed existence. Spartam nactus es; hanc exorna. This is, in my opinion, a rule of profound sense, and ought never to depart from the mind of an honest reformer. I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... lived a little in Fanny's intimacy—at a moment when circumstances helped to bring us extraordinarily close—I understood why you had done this; why you had let her take what view she pleased of your failure, your passive acceptance of defeat, rather than let her suspect the alternative offered you. You couldn't, even with my permission, betray to any one a hint of my miserable secret, and you couldn't, for your life's happiness, pay the particular price that I asked." She leaned toward him in the intense, almost childlike, effort ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... insistence upon unbecoming freedoms of intercourse and movement, this questioning spirit and a gaucherie of manner that might almost be mistaken for an aversion from his person, were due to any essential evil in her nature; he clung almost passionately to the alternative that she was the victim of those gathering forces of discontent, of that interpretation which can only be described as decadent and that veracity which can only be called immodest, that darken the intellectual skies of our time, a sweet thing he held ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... joined by a small force of infantry. Washington and Rochambeau had agreed on the necessity of getting the cooperation of the West Indies fleet in an offensive directed either at Clinton in New York or at Cornwallis at Yorktown. Rochambeau preferred the latter alternative, because it involved fewer difficulties, and the message to de Grasse was accompanied by a private memorandum from him to the effect that he preferred the Chesapeake as the scene of operations. Accordingly de Grasse ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... headland, when all at once a gale sprang up again, the bare and uninviting coast was hidden in heavy rain, and we had the choice of waiting for an indefinite time or continuing our voyage. Without much hesitation we chose the latter alternative. It might be tempting enough to come in contact with other men, especially as they were fellow-countrymen, but it was even more tempting to have done with the remaining 4,000 miles that lay between us and ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... then that love might rise, love so close to agony that agony cannot last: the love that will search ceaselessly, in the slums, in the dives, throughout all life, for the inevitable, and will accept no alternative and ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... lives to be linked together. At first letters were eagerly written and constantly received, but in time even this comfort failed, as ways became still further divided, and Ellen found herself faced with the alternative of complete isolation or such friendships as she could make on ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... mortal soul! Leah, my darling, has promised to marry me, and not go to Europe, as her father had determined. She told me last night, when I met her in the park, that her mind was made up. She would not go. She did not wish to go, and to marry me was her only alternative. She loves me, though, and we shall be happy, I am sure. My parents are bitterly opposed, and hers will be, to such a union, but we will be married, for all that. Helen alone is in my confidence; ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... The latter alternative was chosen, and they proceeded to retrace their steps down the Thomson, and on reaching the junction of the Barcoo they continued south and west. In fact, following Kennedy's route, they soon found themselves involved in the same difficulties that had beset that explorer. The river — now ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... soon as you've thought things over, please. Or, better still, wire: "Advise yes," or—but I won't think of the alternative. ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... consider all possible objections. It is a curious example, however, of the danger of reasoning by a method of exclusion in Natural Science. Finding that the waters which formed the terraces in the Glen Roy region could not possibly have been dammed back by barriers of rock or of detritus, he saw no alternative but to regard them as the work of the sea. Had the idea of transient barriers of glacier-ice occurred to him, he would have found the difficulties vanish from the lake-theory which he opposed, and he would not have been unconsciously led to minimise the altogether ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... you do not think that he shot himself, either deliberately or inadvertently, there remains the alternative that he was shot by somebody else, either deliberately or, very improbably, by inadvertence," Rand said. "I think the latter can be safely disregarded. Let's agree that it was murder and go on ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... crossing of the Simplon, and, having travelled by way of Sion and Geneva, arrived at Lyons on March 13. In Cassanate's first letter Paris had been named as the place of meeting; but, as a concession to Cardan's convenience, Lyons was added as an alternative, in case he should find it impossible to spare time for a longer journey. Cardan accordingly halted at Lyons, but neither Archbishop nor physician was there to meet him. After he had waited for more than a month, Cassanate appeared alone, and brought with him a heavy purse of money for ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... report was current in the capital that he had absconded with one or two servants. This pretty description of his campaign had not reached his ears, but the humiliation of his situation burned into his proud heart. Much as he would have liked to meet MacKay, there remained for him no alternative but flight. Flight was the only word which could describe his journey, and as he planned his course on the morrow, how he would ride to Invergarry, and then return on his course, and then make his way to Cluny, he started to his feet and paced the room in a fury of anger. What better was he than ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... secretly determined to take care that Alice brought her tea-cup and saucer, if the alternative was to be her sharing ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... justice in the world and furnish an adequate incentive to virtue was once thought the chief business of a future life. The Hebraic religions somewhat overreached themselves on these points: for the grotesque alternative between hell and heaven in the end only aggravated the injustice it was meant to remedy. Life is unjust in that it subordinates individuals to a general mechanical law, and the deeper and longer hold fate ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... strayed, for some purpose, in several defined directions. There was a way burst through the bushes, making a short cut across a loop of the wandering path; there was another forking out from it as an alternative way into the central space. But there was one especially which was unique, and which seemed to him, the more he studied it, to point to some essential ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... escape of fast steamers running the blockade, serves still further to demonstrate the great and palpable deficiency in the speed of our ships of war. We may start a hundred of our best steamers on the track of the Alabama, and, without an accident, they can never overtake her. The only alternative is to accept the lesson which her example teaches, and to surpass her in those qualities which constitute her efficiency and make her formidable as a foe. This we must do, or we must quietly surrender our commerce ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... have avoided this misfortune by giving up marriage; but the die was cast. His evil genius presented him with no other alternative than to rush on ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... afterwards; and I daresay I can do as they have done. If the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, I suppose the hawks and vultures take care of themselves. I have tried my luck as a shorn lamb, and the tempest has been very bitter for me; so I have no alternative but to ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... expressly indicates a preference for, or the media or official documents regularly use, a romanized spelling that differs from the transliteration derived from the US Government standard. In such cases, the Factbook uses the alternative spelling. ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... he wished us good-day and retired into his own premises. The landlord of "over there" was very civil. He had a shed for the horses, and could give us palm-mats to sleep upon on the floor, or on the shop-counter, which was very narrow, but long enough for us both; and this latter alternative we chose. ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... 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 ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... even then your chance was a poor one. He had been in hot water all his life, never out of difficulties and scrapes, once, as has been shown, kept from suicide by a mere accident, and was now reduced to the alternative of beggary or of marrying for a living. None of these circumstances, which would have taken the conceit out of most men, at all impaired his opinion of his talent and sharpness. Replying to my observation merely by a slight shrug and smile of pity for the man who thus misappreciated his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... 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 ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... single solid reason, or offering any alternative explanation, he rejected evolution as an unproved hypothesis. He played a most unfortunate part in the controversy as to the significance of the fossil human skulls of Spy and Neanderthal, and the comparison of them with the skull of the Pithecanthropus (Figure 2.283). All the interesting ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... her as she had been one of the best of cows, she looked so pittiful, & it called up so many assotiations in my mind that it affected me to tears. Drove on and encamped; turned out the cattle & put up the tent, then for a fire, no wood, but chips in abundance, no alternative, soon had a large pile of them, & set fire to them, when they immediately blazed up & burned like dry bark, it was laughable to see the boys jump around it, particularly Beth & saying it "wooled them" bad. On saying ...
— Across the Plains to California in 1852 - Journal of Mrs. Lodisa Frizzell • Lodisa Frizell
... central figure, a man with a beard and full Spanish panoply. The interpretation of the picture-writing is this: 'Be baptized as this saved heathen, or be hanged as this damned heathen.' Doubtless some of the people preferred a third alternative, and rather than be baptized or hanged they chose to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... Had she been, she must have accepted the alternative of freedom offered her, and, on a liberal allowance, betaken herself to some selfish, worldly life which might have appealed to her. No, she was not logical. Had she been, she would never have loved this man as she now knew better ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... and had no desire to escape from them or her surroundings. If it meant to fly away to heaven—? Surely she did not wish that! The world and "the things that are in the world" were very attractive to the young soprano. She had no wish for heaven save as an alternative from hell. What did it mean? Was it a heart-rest that David longed for? But she had been conscious of no unrest—until just now. Honestly, the truth was that she had not meant anything! Was it worship? But her friends would tell her ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... the hospitals." He fumbled in a hip pocket for the bit of red school chalk which he used for marking hop-scotch squares on the sidewalks. "Come here and I'll put the cross on your arm. And," he offered as alluring alternative, "if you don't like that, I'll punch your face ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... vulgarity and materialness of existence so near to his morbid sensitiveness that he could not eat the meal he had himself prepared. He did not yet wish to die, and when starvation or society seemed to be the only alternative, he chose the latter. An Indian woman, so hideous as to scarcely suggest humanity, at stated times performed for him these offices. When she did not come, which was not infrequent, ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... my order and numbering, and my method of treating Straight Lines, Angles, Right Angles, and (most especially) Parallels. Leave me these untouched, and I shall look on with great contentment while other changes are made—while my proofs are abridged and improved—while alternative proofs are appended to mine—and while new Problems and Theorems are interpolated. In all these matters my Manual is capable of almost ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... developmental history of the one great organism.[337] Many of them wavered between the conception of evolution as an ideal process, as a Vorstellungsart, and the conception of it as an historical process. Bonnet, Oken, and the majority of the transcendentalists seem to have chosen the former alternative; Robinet, Treviranus, Tiedemann, Meckel, and a few others held evolution ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... martial law at once, and its operations will begin so soon as the general and his troops can be put in place. The dread alternative between its harsh rule and compliance with the terms of this measure is not suspended, nor are the people afforded any time for free deliberation. The bill says to them, take martial law first, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... has undertaken to seduce a man, which she would prefer,—to be convicted, in presence of the man whom she is engaged in conquering, of falsehood, perversity, cruelty, or to appear before him in an ill-fitting dress, or a dress of an unbecoming color. She will prefer the first alternative. She knows very well that we simply lie when we talk of our elevated sentiments, that we seek only the possession of her body, and that because of that we will forgive her every sort of baseness, but will not forgive ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... alone, for it was guarded by soldiers. If she could but reach the side of the sanctuary where she was expected, and where the road was in the shadow of the riding-school opposite, all would be well, and it seemed as though there was no alternative but for Alexander to lead his sister through by-ways to her destination. They had just made up their minds to this inevitable waste of time, when a young woman was seen coming toward them from one of the tents with a swift, light step, winged with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... you know the alternative. But it is a disagreeable subject. We won't talk of it now; I shall be round to-morrow morning. How's your excellent sister; as ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... suspicion, as if she had been mistaken, to humiliate herself before the impostor, and ask forgiveness for the insanity of her conduct; for, having publicly renounced her accusation by refusing to swear to it, she had no alternative left. In order to sustain her part and to save the honour of her children, she must treat this man as her husband and appear submissive and repentant; she must show him entire confidence, as the only means of rehabilitating him and ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... double-edged blade of Von Mackensen's terrible scissors. The Russian retreat to the Wisloka was a serious disaster for Dmitrieff; he had been caught napping, and had to pay dearly in men and guns for not having created a row of alternative positions. His force had been a cover for Brussilov's operations on both sides of the western passes as well as for the whole Russian line in the Carpathians. Now that Von Mackensen had pried the lid off, Brussilov's men ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... satisfied of my patron's innocence. As to his guilt, I could scarcely bring myself to doubt that in some way or other, sooner or later, I should arrive at the knowledge of that, if it really existed. But I could not endure to think, almost for a moment, of that side of the alternative as true; and with all my ungovernable suspicion arising from the mysteriousness of the circumstances, and all the delight which a young and unfledged mind receives from ideas that give scope to all that imagination ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... citizens declared that the people could no longer sustain the labors and sufferings of a defence. "And of what avail is our defence," said they, "when the enemy is determined to persist in the siege?—what alternative remains but ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... Tom—the infernal chaise, that I cursed a hundred times, would have been an "exchange," better than into the Life Guards—ay, even the outside of the coach, if I could only reach it, would, under present circumstances, be a glorious alternative to my existing misfortune. What were rain and storm, thunder and lightning, compared with the chances that awaited me here? —wet through I should inevitably be, but then I had not yet contracted the horror of ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... humble companion of Lady Vivian!" exclaimed the countess, in wrathful astonishment. "Can you even contemplate such an alternative?" ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... Law of 1887 stimulated combination among the railroads, since it made pools and rate agreements illegal. The alternative to such agreements was destructive competition, since no two lines were of exactly equal strength. To avoid this, the stronger lines bought or leased the weaker, with which they might not cooperate, but which they might buy outright. ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... was torn from my mother, sold as a slave, and subjected to cruel indignities, from which I was rescued and a place given to me in this hospital. Doctor, I did not choose my lot in life, but I have no other alternative than to accept it. The intense horror and agony I felt when I was first told the story are over. Thoughts and purposes have come to me in the shadow I should never have learned in the sunshine. I am constantly rousing myself up to suffer and be strong. I intend, when this ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... to the same side to confront his adversary, thinning the lines around Petersburg to reinforce those opposing us on the Central and New Market roads. This was what Grant hoped Lee would do in case the operations of Hancock and myself became impracticable, for Grant had an alternative plan for carrying Petersburg by assault in conjunction with the explosion of a mine that had been driven under the enemy's works from the front ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... thought of the only other pair of boots she had,—her best ones, which were to have lasted a year. But there was no alternative. The boot must be cut off, and Jack continued to hold her hands while, piece by piece, the wet leather ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... to mar my plans for your establishment in life, and the preservation of that gentility and becoming pride, which our family have so long sustained—if, in short, you are resolved to take your own course, you must take it, and my curse with it. I am very sorry, but there's really no alternative.' ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... circumstances to attempt the journey with any safety whatever. In the soft snow they could only make, at the most, ten miles a day; the sled was hard to drag; and the bitter cold of the nights would claim them quickly. It was not merely an alternative or a convenience with them to wait for the crust. It was simply unavoidable. Worst of all, the early winter storms were not done; and a severe blizzard on the trail would put a swift end ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... The next alternative was to throw ourselves upon the mercy of the negroes, which I stated was very hopeless and discouraging, as I did not see what favour could be expected from a beastly savage people, whose condition was worse than that of slaves, and who possibly might be cannibals. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... work adopted, every principle or ideal accepted, limits the recognition of any other possible line of action in that situation. Habit binds to one particular response and at the same time blinds the individual to any other alternative. The danger of this is obvious. If the habits formed are bad or wasteful ones, the individual is handicapped in his growth until new ones can be formed. On the other ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... assent to no more. The king would have to choose between them and their temporary confederates, the Cordeliers. If he gave way, he would be spared; if he resisted, he would be slain. It was not to be apprehended that he would resist and would yet come out alive. The king understood the alternative before him, made his choice, and prepared to die. After putting his house in order, he wrote, on the 19th, that he ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... did so. They had no alternative. Rick's mind raced. Somehow they had to warn the scientists, and they had to get out from under the muzzles of the guns! What could these ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... her; would he be ashamed of her, here amid these surroundings? In fancy he saw Mitchell staring contemptuously at the little interloper. After all, had any man the right to inflict an ordeal of that sort upon an unsuspecting child? Plainly, no; and there would be no alternative but for him to renounce city life and live with her in the mountains. But could he possibly do such a thing? Had he the requisite moral strength for a procedure so foreign from his nature? Was his desire for reformation as strong ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... children who are themselves young enough to need very nearly the same attention that is bestowed on the infants; or where the mothers are such in name, but in reality are failing in every quality which we attach to that sacred office; or where the foundling hospital is the only alternative to which the real mother, confronted by the necessity of earning bread for herself and child, can turn—in such cases the creche is a real benefaction whose existence has enabled families to keep together, and children to ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... impossible for him to remain in his rooms. And it seemed to him that the only way of averting that hideous peril was by establishing, in some sane impartial mind, the proof of his guilt. Even if he had not been so incurably sick of life, the electric chair seemed now the only alternative to the strait-jacket. ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... being told face to face. You have borne so many years with my unresponsive and incomprehensible ways that shame at last constrains me to this poor defence; for I must either justify myself in your sight, or go far away where even your kindness cannot reach me. The first alternative is hard, but the second too grievous for impaired powers of endurance; I must therefore find what expression I may, and tell you how my life has been beshrewed ever since, a boy of twelve, I first incurred the obloquy of being shy. The word slips easily from the pen though ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... and protection of their masters. Even though at heart sympathizing with the oppressed and task-worn negro, and yearning towards him with all the love of the professed philanthropist, he would still be permitted to toil and bleed; for now that the route to Canada has been closed, there is no alternative but to take them to ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... But neither alternative contented Herbert Onslow, and at the time he did not resolve on either. He had some little present income from home, some fifty pounds a year or so, and he would be satisfied to marry on that and on his salary as a clerk; but to ...
— The House of Heine Brothers, in Munich • Anthony Trollope
... remembered the glee maiden, and ventured to suggest her as one not unlikely to exchange an old cloak for a new one. The warder, strictly questioned, averred he saw the dey woman depart immediately after vespers; and on this being contradicted by the party herself, he could suggest, as the only alternative, that it must needs have been ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... am sorry to intrude on you, Mr. Rankin; but in the absence of a hotel there seems to be no alternative. ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... contingencies, I added Unk Wunk to my bill of fare—a vile, malodorous suffix that might delight a lover of strong cheese. It is undoubtedly a good law; but I cannot now imagine any one being grateful for it, unless the stern alternative were death ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... can you expect me to be happy in this city? Do you think it is pleasant to have no alternative to the society of American men except that of ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... peculiar discouragement in the prospect of this meeting was the want of an interpreter. Any one who knows the difficulty of public speaking or continuous discourse in a foreign language, will comprehend the anxiety which he felt when he saw no alternative but that of committing himself to preach in German. Though very familiar with the language, he never completely overcame the want of early and of thoroughly grammatical instruction in that difficult and intricate tongue. It was with ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... arrest of John Mitton, the valet, it was a counsel of despair as an alternative to absolute inaction. But no case could be sustained against him. He had visited friends in Hammersmith that night. The ALIBI was complete. It is true that he started home at an hour which should have brought him to Westminster ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... may have some difficulty in breaking out of this, and more in making our escape, there's no doubt that the alternative, as Rawson describes it, will be a very unpleasant one," exclaimed Mr Calder. "We must all go, or none; and yet I would force none to go, for the attempt ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... course of post, so fearful was Mrs. Bertram, that some frivolous delicacy, or nonsense, as she termed it, might induce her cousin to reject such a promising offer, and thereby at the same time to leave herself still a burden upon her relations. Lucy, therefore, had no alternative, unless she preferred continuing a burden upon the worthy Mac-Morlans, who were too liberal to be rich. Those kinsfolk who formerly requested the favour of her company, had of late either silently, or with expressions of resentment that she should have preferred Mac-Morlan's invitation to theirs, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... constant but capable of change. Should this surmise prove to be correct then we arrive at the momentous conclusion that sensation itself is modifiable, whatever the external stimulus. For the modification of nervous impulse there remains only one alternative; namely, some power to render the vehicle a very much better conductor or a non-conductor according to particular requirements. We require the nervous path to the supra-conducting to have the impulse due to feeble stimulus brought to sensory prominence. ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... man to work for him. Civilisation to-day does not forbid a man—a conqueror—to force another man to work against himself. The old slave only lost his liberty. The new slave must lose his honour, his dignity, his self-respect. He has only one other alternative: death. And this, not the glorious death of a martyr which makes thousands of converts and shines all over the world, not the death of Nurse Cavell, but the anonymous death of X.Y.Z., the death of hundreds and hundreds ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts
... objectionable inspiration that she hardly dared snap at it as she wished, for Aline was not malicious, and disliked malice and all uncharitableness as she disliked smearing her pink and white fingers with ink. Still, no alternative idea occurred to her, and Somerled was waiting. In desperation she had to take what offered, excusing herself to herself with every word she spoke. Yet through all she could not help thinking that she was clever, that she had marvellous presence of mind, and that she was displaying an inventive ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... put her to the most menial offices; the dragons open a well for the young maidservant, and the wild beasts bring her wood. The king sends his troops to burn the nunnery, Kwan-in prays, rain falls, and extinguishes the conflagration. She is brought to the palace in chains, and the alternative of marriage or death is placed before her. In the room above where the court of the inquisition is held there is music, dancing, and feasting, sounds and sights to allure a young girl; the queen also urges her to leave the convent, and accede ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... Another enjoined that a man should not be fined or otherwise despoiled of his property except in virtue of judicial sentence. These and other principles John habitually disregarded, with the consequence that in time he found himself without a party and driven to the alternative of deposition or acceptance of the guarantee of liberties which the barons, the Church, and the people were united in demanding of him. The upshot was the promulgation, June 15, 1215, ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... state of things must of necessity exist wherever the slave-owner flies from the approach of our armies; and we have now presented to us the alternative of either allowing their state to be worse by reason of their emancipation, or better, according as the wise and the humane among us ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... small item of common-place in it, and that is making the would-be seducer a married man. Of course, to prove him so was the easiest and shortest way of saving his vain and feather-headed little victim. Perhaps an alternative would have involved complication, and might have marred the natural simplicity of the story. So critically the Baron states his one very small objection, and reverts with the utmost pleasure to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 24, 1892 • Various
... view, the persons who may suffer from this cause are those affected with hyperaesthesia of the sexual impulse, and in whom the impulse is dominant to such a degree that it interferes with all their alternative activities. But it is certainly only an extremely small percentage of persons about whom, among medical men able to speak authoritatively, that there is any difference ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... Sultan Mahmud has nothing to think about but his fair women. Who can tell whether any one of us would not have done likewise? Suppose a man to have been kept in rigorous, joyless servitude for twenty years, and then suddenly to be confronted with the alternative—"reign over hearts or over an empire"—would he not perhaps have chosen the hearts instead of the empire ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... have been known where fraudulent per- sons have borrowed money on mortgages of property conveyed to themselves, but as to which they were trustees only for others. The lenders or mortgagees have, in such cases, no alternative but to give up the deeds and submit to the loss of ...
— Everybody's Guide to Money Matters • William Cotton, F.S.A.
... wonder at me, knowing how infatuated I am by this rare and admirable creature. I was unwilling to assert my rights till all other means of obtaining her hand had failed. But now I have no alternative." ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... Yorker; "but in accordance with the conditions of our contract, either party can terminate it at any time, and I consider it best to take this action for my company. I regret that it is necessary, but there is no alternative. If it's a mistake, we all have to make mistakes now and then, and I guess I'll ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... practical statesman who combines with all his serious force a famous sense of humor," expressed the opinion that his "candor is a tonic, which not only makes plain our immediate duty but helps us to do it. In Egypt, as in India, there is no doubt as to the alternative he has stated so vigorously: we must govern or go; and we have no intention of going." The Pall Mall Gazette's opinion was that Mr. Roosevelt "delivered a great and memorable speech—a speech that will be read and pondered ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... Knollsea for the sake of the children, and we must do it economically in case we accept Aunt Charlotte's invitation to Rouen; hence, if he or his friends find us out there it will be awkward for me. So the alternative is Knollsea or some ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy |
