This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
What is philosophy? To deliberate well in reference to any question that emerges, never to be carried away by impulses, but to ponder over the injuries that result from the passions, and to act rightly as the circumstances demand, practicing moderation.
Character | Circumstances | Moderation | Philosophy | Question |
It could be written, for most of us: due to circumstances within our control.
Character | Circumstances | Control |
Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL
I endeavor to subdue circumstances to myself, and not myself to circumstances.
Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL
Misfortunes display the skill of a general, prosperous circumstances conceal his weakness.
Character | Circumstances | Display | Skill | Weakness |
He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper; but he is more excellent who can suit his temper to any circumstances.
Character | Circumstances | Happy | Temper |
Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla
If you had been looking for happiness in people and events, you discovered that it is not there. If you look to outer circumstances for your satisfaction cues, you will stay on an emotion seesaw... True joy is actually part of your nature... Events merely give us an excuse to feel it.
Character | Circumstances | Events | Joy | Nature | People | Will | Happiness |
It is our daily duty to consider that in all circumstances of life, pleasurable, painful, or otherwise, the conduct of every human being affects, more or less, the happiness of others, especially of those in the same house; and that, as life is made up, for the most part, not of great occasions, but of small everyday moments, it is the giving to those moments their greatest amount of peace, pleasantness, and security, that contributes most to the sum of human good. Be peaceable. Be cheerful. Be true.
Character | Circumstances | Conduct | Duty | Giving | Good | Life | Life | Peace | Security | Happiness |
The policy of adapting one’s self to circumstances makes all ways smooth.
Character | Circumstances | Policy | Self |
Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele
It is not easy to surround life with any circumstances in which youth will not be delightful; and I am afraid that, whether married or unmarried, we shall find the vesture of terrestrial existence more heavy and cumbrous the longer it is worn.
Character | Circumstances | Existence | Life | Life | Will | Youth | Youth | Afraid |
How people think, relate and react to their circumstances, not what the circumstances are, is what determines their realities.
Character | Circumstances | People |
Save a part of your income and begin now, for the man with a surplus controls circumstances and the man without a surplus is controlled by circumstances.
Circumstances | Man | Surplus | Wisdom |
It is our relation to circumstances that determines their influence over us. The same wind that carries one vessel into port may blow another off shore.
Circumstances | Influence | Wisdom |
To keep from gravitating toward genocidal conflict, we must stop demanding perpetual progress. For quiet nonpolitical reasons, governments and politicians cannot achieve the paradise they habitually promise. Political leaders who continue to dangle before their constituents enticing carrots that are becoming unattainable hasten the erosion of faith in political processes. Circumstances have ceased to be what they were when the once-New World’s myth of limitlessness made sense.
Circumstances | Faith | Myth | Paradise | Progress | Promise | Quiet | Sense | Wisdom | World |
Mankind likes to think in terms of extreme opposites. It is given to formulating its beliefs in terms of Either-Ors, between which it recognizes no intermediate possibilities. When forced to recognize that the extremes cannot be acted upon, it is still inclined to hold that they are all right in theory but that when it comes to practical matters circumstances compel us to compromise.
Circumstances | Extreme | Mankind | Right | Wisdom | Think |
Auguste Comte, formally Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte
The happiness of every man depends on the harmony between the development of his various faculties and the entire system of circumstances which govern his life.
Circumstances | Harmony | Life | Life | Man | System | Wisdom | Govern | Happiness |