Circumstances Which Quotes

#1. It is but too common, of late, to condemn the acts of our predecessors and to pronounce them unjust, unwise, or unpatriotic from not adverting to the circumstances under which they acted. Thus, to judge is to do great injustice to the wise and patriotic men who preceded us.

John C. Calhoun

#2. The truth of the matter is that the Quran was not revealed in the complete form in which it exists today. It was revealed from time to time, according to the circumstances, over a time span of 23 years.

Anonymous

#3. Therefore, before any action is taken, we must explain the policy, which we have formulated in the light of the given circumstances, to Party members and to the masses. Otherwise, Party members and the masses will depart from the guidance of our policy, act blindly and carry out a wrong policy.

Mao Zedong

#4. In various and different circumstances certain objects and individuals are going to turn out to be vital. The wager of survival cannot, by its nature, reveal which, in advance of events.

Nadine Gordimer

#5. People who live in private spaces contribute actively to the dilution and corrosion of the public space. In other words, they exacerbate the circumstances which drove them to retreat in the first place.

Tony Judt

#6. During long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity's entire mode of existence. The manner in which human sense perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well

Walter Benjamin

#7. The morals of men are more governed by their pursuits than by their opinions. A type of virtue is first formed by circumstances, and men afterwards make it the model upon which their theories are framed.

William Edward Hartpole Lecky

#8. I grew up in financially straitened circumstances and meat, which was expensive, was a rare thing at mealtimes. We ate meat about once a month, if that.

Neel Mukherjee

#9. I've been quite happy. Look, here are my proofs. Remember that I am indifferent to discomforts which would harass other folk. What do the circumstances of life matter if your dreams make you lord paramount of time and space?

W. Somerset Maugham

#10. Our circumstances will continually change. It is out of our control. It is more important to change our attitude, which we have control of.

Mata Amritanandamayi

#11. I'm not against mothers. I am against the ideology which expects every woman to have children, and I'm against the circumstances under which mothers have to have their children.

Simone De Beauvoir

#12. Thus we see, too, in the world that some persons assimilate only what is ugly and evil from the same moral circumstances which supply good and beautiful results
the fragrance of celestial flowers
to the daily life of others.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

#13. I am interested in what I term gestalts; picture circumstances which bring together disparate images or ideas so as to form new meanings and new configurations.

Robert Heinecken

#14. Moral education, which ought never, in any circumstances, to be rational.

Aldous Huxley

#15. If I always appear prepared, it is because before entering an undertaking, I have meditated long and have foreseen what might occur. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly and secretly what I should do in circumstances unexpected by others; it is thought and preparation

Napoleon Bonaparte

#16. In case, I would prefer to say, that some circumstances should strike me in a different light to the one in which it struck you. Human reactions vary and so does human experience.

~Hercule Poirot

Agatha Christie

#17. Now a work of art is a work of nature, but it is a work of human nature. It is a work of the mind: and it's a work of the mind in circumstances for an occasion which, to which, for which, and which it may be supremely natural and simple and effective.
"The Nature of Art" December 19, 1954

Frank Lloyd Wright

#18. A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in colour and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

#19. It can hardly be pressed forcibly enough on the attention of the student of nature, that there is scarcely any natural phenomenon which can be fully and completely explained, in all its circumstances, without a union of several, perhaps of all, the sciences.

John Herschel

#20. There is no beauty like that which was spoiled by an accident; no accomplishments and graces are so to be envied as those that circumstances rudely hindered the development of.

Charles Dudley Warner

#21. He should have told us, too, that our brains become magnetised with the dominating thoughts we hold in our minds. By means with which no one is familiar, these 'magnets' attract to us the forces, the people, the circumstances of life which harmonise with the nature of our dominating thoughts.

Napoleon Hill

#22. We are responsible for actions performed in response to circumstances for which we are not responsible.

Allan Massie

#23. When those closest to us respond to events differently than we do, when they seem to see the same scene as part of a different play, when they say things that we could not imagine saying in the same circumstances, the ground on which we stand seems to tremble and our footing is suddenly unsure.

Deborah Tannen

#24. I like the tradition of ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances and how they react to events which force them to be heroic in a way that is not in their natures.

Rob Lowe

#25. Attempts at description are stupid. Who can all at once describe a human being? Even when he is presented to us we only begin that knowledge of his appearance which must be completed by innumerable impressions under differing circumstances.

George Eliot

#26. Civilized ages inherit the human nature which was victorious in barbarous ages, and that nature is, in many respects, not at all suited to civilized circumstances.

Walter Bagehot

#27. The next day I was put on paid leave from my new job at Louisiana State University. This is very painful to me, though once again I understand the circumstances in which my employers find themselves in light of these actions taken against me.

Steven Hatfill

#28. Man is a creature adapted for life under circumstances which are very narrowly limited. A few degrees of temperature more or less, a slight variation in the composition of air, the precise suitability of food, makes all the difference between health and sickness; between life and death.

Robert Stawell Ball

#29. When you make up your mind to do good things, you will accomplish them if you use dynamic will power to follow through. No matter what the circumstances are, if you go on trying, God will create the means by which your will shall find its proper reward.

Paramahansa Yogananda

#30. There has been a huge advance in technology, which has improved the safety of the cars incredibly, but there are still some heavy crash impacts and in certain circumstances there is still the chance of fire today.

Jackie Stewart

#31. The period-effects model refers to influences specific to particular points in time - effects thought to be unique economic or demographic circumstances to which any observable fluctuations in population growth or decline may be attributed.

Brian A. Hoey

#32. We must recognise that duty and morality vary under different circumstances; not that the man who resists evil is doing what is always and in itself wrong, but that in the different circumstances in which he is placed it may become even his duty to resist evil.

Swami Vivekananda

#33. All the ordinary circumstances of life, without which nothing could be imagined, ceased to exist for Levin.

Leo Tolstoy

#34. To hold power has always meant to manipulate idiots and circumstances; and those circumstances and those idiots, tossed together, bring about those coincidences to which even the greatest men confess they owe most of their fame

Alfred De Vigny

#35. I define sustainable history as a durable progressive trajectory in which the quality of life on this planet or other planets is premised on the guarantee of human dignity for all at all times and under all circumstances.

Nayef Al-Rodhan

#36. Order always weighs on the individual. Disorder makes him wish for the police or for death. These are two extreme circumstances in which human nature is not at ease.

Paul Valery

#37. When you pray, things remain the same, but you begin to be different. The same thing when a man falls in love, his circumstances and conditions remain the same, but he has a sovereign preference in his heart for another person which transfigures everything!

Oswald Chambers

#38. At the beginning of our life is birth, during which we suffer, and at the end of our life is death, during which we also suffer. Between these two come aging and illness. No matter how wealthy you are or how physically fit you are, you have to suffer through these circumstances.

Dalai Lama XIV

#39. She began to feel that she had not yet gone through all the changes of opinion and sentiment, which the progress of time and variation of circumstances occasion in this world of changes.

Jane Austen

#40. The range of circumstances in which it is possible to presuppose the presence of a combination is very limited. The presence of such circumstances is the reason for the genesis of the idea in the master's brain.

Emanuel Lasker

#41. This is the way to get ideas: never to let adverse circumstances discourage you, but to believe there is a way out of every difficulty, which may be found by earnest though.

L. Frank Baum

#42. The sovereignty of God is the one impregnable rock to which the suffering human heart must cling. The circumstances surrounding our lives are no accident: they may be the work of evil, but that evil is held firmly within the mighty hand of our sovereign God. - Margaret Clarkson

Randy Alcorn

#43. There could conceivably be circumstances in which an experiment on an animal stands to reduce suffering so much that it would be permissible to carry it out even if it involved harm to the animal ... [even if] the animal were a human being.

Peter Singer

#44. Sometimes, whether a desire is excessive or negative depends on the circumstances or society in which you live in.

Dalai Lama

#45. Religion supposed Heaven and Hell, the word of God, and sacraments, and twenty other circumstances which, taken seriously, are a wonderful check to wit and humour.

Jonathan Swift

#46. Should slavery be abolished there, (and it is an event, which, from these circumstances, we may reasonably expect to be produced in time) let it be remembered, that the Quakers will have had the merit of its abolition.

Thomas Clarkson

#47. Under such circumstances, I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained. There

Arthur Conan Doyle

#48. Reason is not one tool of thought among many, it is the entire toolbox. To advocate that reason be discarded in some circumstances is to advocate that thinking be discarded - which leaves one in the position of attempting to do a job after throwing away the required instrument.

George H. Smith

#49. Life gives no one immunity against adversity, but life gives to everyone the power of positive thought which is sufficient to master all circumstances of adversity and convert them into benefits.

Napoleon Hill

#50. Human society is the embodiment of changeless laws which the whimsicalities and circumstances of men and women involve and overwrap. The realm of literature is the realm of these accidental manners and humours
a spacious realm; and the true literary artist concerns himself mainly with them.

James Joyce

#51. The Prime Minister in the UK thinks spending and borrowing more is the right thing to do in the circumstances, and is busily trying to bail out chunks of the private sector which would otherwise have to adjust more quickly to the painful reality that we have been living beyond our means.

John Redwood

#52. The necessity of saying something, the perplexity of having nothing to say, and a desire of being witty, are three circumstances which alone are capable of making even the greatest writer ridiculous.

Voltaire

#53. Knowlede is power and Absolute Knowledge is Absolute Power or the Power of Truth, which is constantly shaping events and circumstances to reveal the errors in our beliefs.

Matthew A. Petti

#54. The most profound state of awareness comes from being devoted to your present circumstances, absorbing the sorrows and joys of others, so that you may see yourself within them, which in actuality is you.

Lujan Matus

#55. The circumstances which a man encounters with suffering are the result of his own mental inharmony.

James Allen

#56. Under the circumstances, may I suggest another means of encouraging probity in elective office. I refer to term limitations, which can serve ends beyond that of saving congressional souls.

James L. Buckley

#57. But the challenge is always the same whether each generation facing its own circumstances can summon the practical devotion to attain and retain that greatest good for the greatest number which this government of the people was created to ensure.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#58. Life's values originate in circumstances over which the individual has no control.

Charles Lindbergh

#59. I have less time, less tolerance for bullshit, more interest in good taste, more confidence in my own judgement. The culture with which I surround myself is a reflection of my personality and the circumstances of my life, which is in part how it should be.

Nick Hornby

#60. To fundamentally solve a problem, we must understand it's cause. In that I mean the chain of actions or circumstances that led to the problem
rather than only the immediate cause, which serves only to place blame.

Charlie Herrick

#61. Although the many virtues that courtesans possessed were employed to defy circumstances, the role they played depended on the same circumstances over which they triumphed- conditions which to, fortunately for modern women, no longer exist.

Susan Griffin

#62. Discrepancies between self-efficacy judgment and performance will arise when either the tasks or the circumstances under which they are performed are ambiguous

Albert Bandura

#63. There are many men who would have done better than I did under the circumstances in which I found myself. If I had never held command, if I had fallen, there were 10,000 behind who would have followed the contest to the end and never surrendered the Union.

Ulysses S. Grant

#64. Had we really succeeded therefore in altering the period of vibration, which Maxwell, as I have just noted, held to be impossible? Or was there some disturbing circumstances from one or more factors which distorted the result?

Pieter Zeeman

#65. The most intellectual of men are moved quite as much by the circumstances which they are used to as by their own will. The active voluntary part of a man is very small, and if it were not economized by a sleepy kind of habit, its results would be null.

Walter Bagehot

#66. The charlatan takes very different shapes according to circumstances; but at bottom he is a man who cares nothing about knowledge for its own sake, and only strives to gain the semblance of
it that he may use it for his own personal ends, which are always selfish and material.

Arthur Schopenhauer

#67. It seemed to me that man himself was like a half-emptied bottle of pale ale, which Time had drunk so far, yet stoppled tight for a while, and drifting about in the ocean of circumstances, but destined ere-long to mingle with the surrounding waves, or be spilled amid the sands of a distant shore.

Henry David Thoreau

#68. Collaborating with your wife is amazing because you are doing something together with a person you truly love and know and discover things about her in that process which you have never had discovered on other circumstances.

Etgar Keret

#69. He condemned nothing in haste and without taking circumstances into account. He said, Examine the road over which the fault has passed.

Victor Hugo

#70. To will everything that God wills, and to will it always, in all circumstances and without reservations: that is the kingdom of God which is entirely within.

Francois Fenelon

#71. Go in all simplicity; do not be anxious to win a quiet mind, and it will be all the quieter. Do not examine so closely into the progress of your soul. Do not crave too much to be perfect, but let your spiritual life beformed by your duties, and by the actions which are called forth by circumstances.

Saint Francis De Sales

#72. The vision of the Divine presence ever takes the form which our circumstances most require.

Alexander MacLaren

#73. Imprisonment itself, entailing loss of liberty, loss of citizenship, separation from family and loved ones, is punishment enough for most individuals, no matter how favorable the circumstances under which the time is passed.

Mary B. Harris

#74. He is the wise man who has by perfect living gained the instinct of rightness by which he guides himself, whether in thought or action, who has found that centre of balance which is always over his point of contact with circumstances. He is the man whom Nature pours the riches of all her instincts.

Nilakanta Sri Ram

#75. During bad circumstances, which is the human inheritance, you must decide not to be reduced. You have your humanity, and you must not allow anything to reduce that. We are obliged to know we are global citizens. Disasters remind us we are world citizens, whether we like it or not.

Maya Angelou

#76. I would suggest that barbarism be considered as a permanent and universal human characteristic which becomes more or less pronounced according to the play of circumstances.

Simone Weil

#77. You have a great many things to do when you are under house arrest. On the one hand, it is more comfortable than sitting in prison; on the other hand, you have to look after a household, which is strenuous under such circumstances.

Aung San Suu Kyi

#78. We should lay up in our minds a store of goodly thoughts which will be a living treasure of knowledge always with us, and from which, at various times, and amidst all the shiftings of circumstances, we might be sure of drawing some comfort, guidance and sympathy.

Arthur Helps

#79. The truth is not simply what you think it is; it is also the circumstances in which it is said, and to whom, why, and how it is said.

Vaclav Havel

#80. Happiness is long-lasting, a condition of the soul, the foundation on which the circumstances of life are experienced, endured, or enjoyed.

Auliq Ice

#81. Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to be the creature of outside conditions, but when he realizes that he is a creative power, and that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of his being out of which circumstances grow, he then becomes the rightful master of himself.

James Allen

#82. In proportion as man gets back the spirit of manliness, which is self-sacrifice, affection, loyalty loan idea beyond himself, a God above himself, so far will he rise above circumstances, and wield them at his will.

Charles Kingsley

#83. Physical death is a transitional step in the total life process. The soul, which does not die, having finished with the Earthly body, moves to a higher level of life, where it grows under greatly enhanced circumstances.

Sandra Champlain

#84. Conscious dreaming allows us to fold time and travel into the future or the past, as well as explore other life experiences. Beyond all of this, it may allow us to be present at the place of creation - the plane on which the events and circumstances of physical life are born.

Robert Moss

#85. There are many fine things which you mean to do some day, under what you think will be more favorable circumstances. But the only time that is yours is the present.

Grenville Kleiser

#86. An atmosphere of beliefs and conceptions has been formed by the labours and struggles of our forefathers, which enables us to breathe amid the various and complex circumstances of our life.

William Kingdon Clifford

#87. I just think it's difficult for them to see the forest for the trees right now, which I can't blame them for, given the circumstances they found themselves in.

Denis Leary

#88. His is a joy which consequences cannot quench. His is a peace which circumstances cannot steal.

Max Lucado

#89. I had no idea that I would ever get involved with something like lending money to poor people, given the circumstances in which I was working in Bangladesh.

Muhammad Yunus

#90. [When under stress I thought of] the books I had read [and applied] them to myself. I [imagined I was] one of the characters [and soon found myself] in made-up circumstances which were most agreeable to my inclinations.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#91. The things you refuse to meet today always come back at you later on, usually under circumstances which make the decision twice as difficult as it originally was.

Eleanor Roosevelt

#92. The production of motion in the steam engine always occurs in circumstances which it is necessary to recognize, namely when the equilibrium of caloric is restored, or (to express this differently) when caloric passes from the body at one temperature to another body at a lower temperature.

Nicolas Leonard Sadi Carnot

#93. In dealing with the China problem, the British and American side, which had particularly strong interests in China, should have based its judgments about the origins of the problem on direct observation of the actual circumstances at the time.

Hideki Tojo

#94. The measure of action is the sentiment from which it proceeds. The greatest action may easily be one of the most private circumstance.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#95. Freedom means freedom from forces and circumstances which would turn man into a thing, which would impose on man the passivity and predictability of matter. By this test, absolute power is the manifestation most inimical to human uniqueness. Absolute power wants to turn people into malleable clay.

Eric Hoffer

#96. The wisest course of action is to take your best shot with a prototype, immediately get it to market, and iterate quickly. If you wait for ideal circumstances in which you have all the information you need (which is impossible), the market will pass you by.

Guy Kawasaki

#97. The only circumstances in which I would write a roman a clef would be if I'd lost my fucking car keys.

Will Self

#98. Worrying about life's circumstances of those I love, but over which I have no control is a dangerous, never-ending and pointless game to play.

Iben Dissing Sandahl

#99. Human nature is so constituted that the propensity for evil is always intensified by external circumstances, and the morality of the individual depends much more on the conditions of his existence and the environment in which he lives than on his own will.

Mikhail Bakunin

#100. The Christian who, by God's grace, learns to confess the Lord Jesus in circumstances which might normally be calculated to silence him, is a Christian whose life is a tremendous challenge to other people.

Alan Redpath