Choice

The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice. ~ George Eliot

Be they wynners or loosers,…beggers should be no choosers. ~ John Heywood's Proverbs and Epigrams

He is no wise man that will quit a certainty for an uncertainty. ~ Samuel Johnson

Preferment goes by letter and affection. ~ William Shakespeare

Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay. ~ Alfred Tennyson

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.

Quotes

• 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.

• The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.
  • George Eliot, Daniel Deronda (1876), Book VI, Chapter XLII.

• 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).

• Be they wynners or loosers,…beggers should be no choosers.
  • John Heywood's Proverbs and Epigrams (1562 ed.)

• He is no wise man that will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.
  • Samuel Johnson, The Idler, No. 57. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96.

• 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.
  • Søren 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.
  • Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or II, Hong p. 262.

• So much to win, so much to lose,
  No marvel that I fear to choose.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon The Golden Violet (1827) Title poem, closing passages.

• 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.

• When presented with options it's interesting to see what choices the people make.
  • Roger Willis Mitchell, Sr., Trooper Tales: Plus Other Bizarre, Odd and Funny Stories (2003), p. 30

• We must now take precautions to prevent you from being embarrassed by something in which the ignorant majority is at fault for lack of proper consideration, and so from supposing with them, that man has not been created truly good simply because he is able to do evil. ... If you reconsider this matter carefully and force your mind to apply a more acute understanding to it, it will be revealed to you that man's status is better and higher for the very reason for which it is thought to be inferior: it is on this choice between two ways, on this freedom to choose either alternative, that the glory of the rational mind is based, it is in this that the whole honor of our nature consists, it is from this that its dignity is derived.
  • Letter to Demetrias by Pelagius as translated by B. Rees, in Readings in World Christian History (2013), pp. 206-210

• 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.

• [W]e now face a demand to make choices that is unparalleled in human history.
  • Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (2004)

• When conflicted between two choices, take neither.
  • Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010) Robustness and Fragility, p. 71.

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

• It is misleading to say that somebody "chose" a dysfunctional relationship or any other negative situation in his or her life. Choice implies consciousness - a high degree of consciousness. Without it, you have no choice. Choice begins the moment you disidentify from the mind and its conditioned patterns, the moment you become present. Until you reach that point, you are unconscious, spiritually speaking. This means that you are compelled to think, feel, and act in certain ways according to the conditioning of your mind. That is why Jesus said: "Forgive them, for they know not what they do." This is not related to intelligence in the conventional sense of the word. I have met many highly intelligent and educated people who were also completely unconscious, which is to say completely identified with their mind. In fact, if mental development and increased knowledge are not counterbalanced by a corresponding growth in consciousness, the potential for unhappiness and disaster is very great. p. 142
  • Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (1997)

• 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

God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.

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

• 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.

See also

• Free will
• opportunity