Choice

Choice consists of the mental process of judging the merits of multiple options and selecting one of them. While a choice can be made between imagined options ("what would I do if ...?"), often a choice is made between real options, and followed by the corresponding action.

Sourced

• He that will not when he may,
  When he will he shall have nay.
  • Robert Burton, Anatomy of a Melancholy (1621), Part III. Sect. 2. Mem. 5. Subs. 5. Quoted.

• Better to sink beneath the shock
  Than moulder piecemeal on the rock!
  • Lord Byron, The Giaour (1813), line 969.

• Imagine a captain of a ship the moment a shift of direction must be made; then he may be able to say: I can do either this or that. But if he is not a mediocre captain he will also be aware that during all this the ship is ploughing ahead with its ordinary velocity, and thus there is but a single moment when it is inconsequential whether he does this or does that. So also with a person-if he forgets to take into account the velocity-there eventually comes a moment where it is no longer a matter of an Either/Or, not because he has chosen, but because he has refrained from it, which also can be expressed by saying: Because others have chosen for him-or because he has lost himself.
  • Soren Kierkegaard Either/Or II, Hong p. 164 (1843).

• Every person, if he so wills, can become a paradigmatic human being, not by brushing of his accidental qualities, but by remaining in them and ennobling them. He ennobles them by choosing them.
  • Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or II, Hong p. 262.

• Rather than be less
  Car'd not to be at all.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book II, line 47.

• Who would not, finding way, break loose from hell,
  * * * * * *
  And boldly venture to whatever place
  Farthest from pain?
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book IV, line 889.

• Set honour in one eye and death i' the other,
  And I will look on both indifferently.
  • William Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar (1599), Act I, scene 2, line 86.

• Which of them shall I take?
  Both? one? or neither? Neither can be enjoy'd,
  If both remain alive.
  • William Shakespeare, King Lear (1608), Act V, scene 1, line 67.

• I will not choose what many men desire,
  Because I will not jump with common spirits,
  And rank me with the barbarous multitudes.
  • William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act II, scene 9, line 31.

• Preferment goes by letter and affection.
  • William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act I, scene 1, line 36.

• There's small choice in rotten apples.
  • William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew (c. 1593-94), Act I, scene 1, line 138.

• Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Locksley Hall (1835, published 1842), Stanza 92.

• A strange alternative * * *
  Must women have a doctor or a dance?
  • Edward Young, Love of Fame (1725-28), Satire V, line 189.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 113-114.

• If I were not Alexander, I should wish to be Diogenes.
  • Alexander to Diogenes when requested to stand a little out of his sunshine, reported in Plutarch, Life of Alexander.

• Of harmes two the less is for to chose.
  • Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, Book II, line 470.

• What voice did on my spirit fall,
  Peschiera, when thy bridge I crost?
  'Tis better to have fought and lost
  Than never to have fought at all!
  • Arthur Hugh Clough, Peschiera.

• Life often presents us with a choice of evils, rather than of goods.
  • Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, p. 362.

• Devine, si tu peux, et choisis, si tu l'oses.
  • Guess, if you can, and choose, if you dare.
  • Pierre Corneille, Héraclius, IV. 4.

• The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.
  • George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, Book VI, Chapter XLII.

• God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essay, Intellect.

• Betwixt the devil and the deep sea.
  • Erasmus, Adagia, Chapter III. Cent, IV. 94. Quoted from the Greek. Proverb in Hazlitt, English Proverbs. Clarke, Parœmiologia (1639). Said by Col. Monroe, Expedition and Observations, Part III, p. 55. (Ed. 1637).

• Inter sacrum et sazim.
  • Between the victim and the stone knife.
  • Erasmus, letter to Pirkheimer. Plautus, Captivi, 3. 4. 84. Also said by Appuleius.

• Se soumettre ou se démettre.
  • Submit or resign.
  • Gambetta.

• Where passion leads or prudence points the way.
  • Robert Lowth, The Choice of Hercules, 1.

• But one thing is needful; and Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from her.
  • Luke. X. 42.

• For many are called, but few are chosen.
  • Matthew, XXII. 14.

• The difficulty in life is the choice.
  • George Moore, Bending of the Bough, Act IV.

• Or fight or fly,
  This choice is left ye, to resist or die.
  • Alexander Pope, Homer's Odyssey, Book XXII, line 79.

• S'asseoir entre deux selles le cul a terre.
  • Between two stools one sits on the ground.
  • François Rabelais, Gargantua, Book I, Chapter II. Entre deux arcouns chet cul a terre. In Les Proverbes del Vilain. Manuscript, Bodleian. (About 1303).

• "Thy royal will be done—'tis just,"
  Replied the wretch, and kissed the dust;
  "Since, my last moments to assuage,
  Your Majesty's humane decree
  Has deigned to leave the choice to me,
  I'll die, so please you, of old age."
  • Horace Smith, The Jester Condemned to Death.

• When to elect there is but one,
  'Tis Hobson's Choice; take that or none.
  • Thomas Ward, England's Reformation, Canto IV, line 896. ("Hobson's Choice" explained in Spectator. No. 509).

• Great God! I'd rather be
  A Pagan, suckled in a creed outworn;
  So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
  Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
  Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,
  Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
  • William Wordsworth, Miscellaneous Sonnets, Part I. Sonnet XXXIII.