Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Circumstances

"Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment… I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors." - Thomas Jefferson

"It seems to me… that external circumstances often serve as occasions for a new attitude to life and the world, long prepared in the unconscious, to become manifest." - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

"We feel God present in nature, whether in its awe or its beauty; and in human history, whether in its justice or its weird mysteriousness; and in the life of a good man, or the circumstances of a generous or noble act. Most of all we feel Him near when conscience, His inward messenger, speaks plainly and decisively to us." -

"The stock of ideas which mankind has to work with is very limited, like the alphabet, can at best have an air of freshness given it by new arrangements and combinations, or by application to new times and circumstances." - James Russell Lowell

"A truly great man is ever the same under all circumstances; and if his fortune varies, exalting him at one moment and oppressing him at another, he himself never varies, but always preserves a firm courage, which is so closely interwoven with his character that everyone can readily see that the fickleness of fortune has no power over him." - Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli

"Man is the creature of circumstances." - Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus

"Meaning is at the core of the creative process and of storytelling… When it is our own life story we are telling or a story from our lives, we become aware that we are not the victims of random and chaotic circumstances, that we, too, despite our grief or feelings of insignificance, are living meaningfully in a meaningful universe." - Deena Metzger

"Why should we be willing to go by faith? We do all things in this world by faith in the word of others. by faith only we know our position in the word of others. by faith only we know our position in the world, our circumstances, our rights and privileges, our fortunes, our parents, our brothers and sisters, our age, our mortality. Why should Religion be an exception?" - John Henry Newman, aka Cardinal Newman and Blessed John Henry Newman

"Man cannot… make circumstances for his purpose, but he always has it in his power to improve them when they occur." - Thomas Paine

"Right and wrong are the same for all in the same circumstances." - Richard Price

"Circumstances reveal us to others and still more to ourselves." -

"The only difference between men of great achievement and those who remain in mediocrity is that the great pay little attention to what has been done and what obstacles or apparent reasons may stand in the way of achievement but devote themselves to contemplating what can or ought to be done. Those who allow their mental and emotional natures to recoil, refusing to let this sense reach out into the undiscovered, destroy their own capabilities and this keeps them always in the prison house of limitation. But it should be noted that prison is only the recoil or reflex of their own nature. Genius is that which goes on through conditions and circumstances and keeps eternally in the process of expansion and extension of achieving power." - Baird T. Spalding

"There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances." -

"I have learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances." -

"The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not on our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us in our minds wherever we go." -

"Circumstances! I make circumstances." -

"You have a choice in how you respond to life. You can learn to relate to your thinking as well as your circumstances in new ways. With practice, making these choices will translate into a more relaxed self." - Richard Carlson

"Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it, and find out the truth about who you are." -

"Today I will make a difference. I will begin by controlling my thoughts. A person is the product of his thoughts. I want to be happy and hopeful. Therefore, I will have thoughts that are happy and hopeful. I refuse to be victimized by my circumstances. I will not let petty inconveniences such as stoplights, long lines, and traffic jams be my masters. I will avoid negativism and gossip. Optimism will be my companion, and victory will be my hallmark. Today I will make a difference." - Max Lucado

"Gratitude is the intention to count-your-blessings every day, every minute, while avoiding, whenever possible, the belief that you need or deserve different circumstances." - Timothy Miller, fully Timothy S. Miller

"Life is not linear; it's organic. We create our lives symbiotically as we explore our talents in relation to circumstances they help create for us." - Ken Robinson, fully Sir Kenneth Robinson

"Circumstances should never alter principles." -

"Servants, laborers, and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. IT is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged." - Adam Smith

"I am not a victim of circumstances. I do not choose to abdicate my responsibility for my own pleasure. It is my responsibility, and my happiness resides in that awareness and in the actions that result from that awareness... You maximize your potential for happiness if you decide right now to accept responsibility for your life." -

"I am not a victim of circumstances. I do not choose to abdicate my responsibility for my own pleasure. It is my responsibility, and my happiness resides in that awareness and in the actions that result from that awareness... You maximize your potential for happiness if you decide right now to accept responsibility for your life." - Alan Epstein

"The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily. No great work has ever been based on hatred and contempt. On the contrary, there is not a single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom of each person who has known and loved it." - Albert Camus

"The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily. No great work has ever been based on hatred and contempt. On the contrary, there is not a single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom of each person who has known and loved it." -

"We call "happiness" a certain set of circumstances that makes joy possible. But we call joy that state of mind and emotions that needs nothing to feel happy." - André Gide, fully André Paul Guillaume Gide

"The ultimate foundation of honor is the conviction that moral character is unalterable: a single bad action implies that future actions of the same kind will, under similar circumstances, also be bad." - Arthur Schopenhauer

"Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of man. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield

"Circumstances are beyond the control of man; but his conduct is in his own power." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield

"If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell

"History is invaluable in increasing our knowledge of human nature because it shows how people may be expected to behave in new situations. Many prominent men and women are completely ordinary in character, and only exceptional in their circumstances." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell

"The mind of the greatest man on earth is not so independent of circumstances as not to feel inconvenienced by the merest buzzing noise about him; it does not need the report of a cannon to disturb his thoughts. The creaking of a vane or a pulley is quite enough. Do not wonder that he reasons ill just now; a fly is buzzing by his ear; it is quite enough to unfit him for giving good counsel." - Blaise Pascal

"To defy external forces, to rise above circumstances, is to proclaim the sovereignty of the human spirit." - Chaim Weizmann, fully Chaim Azirel Weizmann

"There are circumstances of peculiar difficulty and danger, where a mediocrity of talent is the most fatal quality that a man can possibly possess. Had Charles the first, and Louis the Sixteenth, been more wise or more weak, more firm or more yielding, in either case they had both of them saved their heads." - Charles Caleb Colton

"A wise man adapts himself to circumstances, as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it." - Chinese Proverbs

"To be elated at success and disappointed at failure is to be the child of circumstances; how can such a one be called master of himself?" - Chinese Proverbs

"To be able under all circumstances to practice five things constitutes perfect virtue; these five are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL

"As the water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it, so a wise man adapts himself to circumstances." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL

"To be able under all circumstances to practice five things constitutes perfect virtue; these five things are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness and kindness." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL

"It is the way we react to circumstances that determines our feelings." - Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey

"The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possession of family wealth and of the distinction which attends hereditary possessions (as most concerned into it), are the natural securities for this transmission." - Edmund Burke

"The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice." - Edmund Burke

"Are we only able to see who we actually are at life’s beginnings and endings? Do only extreme circumstances reveal ordinary truths? Are we otherwise blind to our genuine selves? This is the key lesson of life: to find our authentic selves, and to see the authenticity in others." - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

"The mind wants to believe that changing our circumstances will bring us peace. The mind thinks we’ve got to do something. But the reality is that we can relax in the circumstances as they are now, knowing that deep patience will bring deep peace and healing." - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

"There is no part of you that is indefinable and changeless, that does not get lost or change with age, disease, or circumstances." - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

"If we had no motivation to be preoccupied with our sensations, the impressions that objects made on us would pass like shadows, and leave no trace. After several years, we would be the same as we were at our first moment, without having acquired any knowledge, and without having any other faculties than feeling. But the nature of our sensations does not let us remain enslaved in this lethargy. Since they are necessarily agreeable or disagreeable, we are involved in seeking the former, avoiding the latter; and the greater the intensity of difference between pleasure and pain, the more it occasions action in our souls. Thus the privation of an object that we judge necessary for our well-being, gives us disquiet, that uneasiness we call need, and from which desires are born. These needs recur according to circumstances, often quite new ones present themselves, and it is in this way that our knowledge and faculties develop." - Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

"Youth is a quality, not a matter of circumstances." - Frank Lloyd Wright, born Frank Lincoln Wright

"Patriotism is often understood to mean only a readiness for exceptional sacrifices and actions. Essentially, however, it is the sentiment which, in the relationships of our daily life and under ordinary conditions, habitually recognizes that the community is one’s substantive groundwork and end. It is out of this consciousness, which during life’s daily round stands the test in all circumstances, that there subsequently also arises the readiness for extraordinary exertions. But since men would often rather be magnanimous than law-abiding, they readily persuade themselves that they possess this exceptional patriotism in order to be sparing in the expression of a genuine patriotic sentiment or to excuse their lack of it. If again this genuine patriotism is looked upon as that which may begin of itself and arise from subjective ideas and thoughts, it is being confused with opinion, because so regarded patriotism is deprived of its true ground, objective reality." - Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel