Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of men. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter.
~By Benjamin Disraeli ~
There are moments when you feel free, moments when you have energy, moments when you have hope, but you can't rely on any of these things to see you through. Circumstances do that.
~By Anita Brookner ~
Do not hover always on the surface of things, nor take up suddenly with mere appearances; but penetrate into the depth of matters, as far as your time and circumstances allow, especially in those things which relate to your profession.
~By Isaac Watts ~
I think that every so-called history book and film biography should be prefaced by the statement that what follows is the author's rendition of events and circumstances.
~By Barbara Kruger ~
Optimism is not inherently a superior way of viewing the world. Certainly doctors will say it might be better for one's physical health to be an optimist. But, morally speaking it may not be appropriate in certain circumstances.
~By Todd Solondz ~
Every church is a stone on the grave of a god-man: it does not want him to rise up again under any circumstances.
~By Friedrich Nietzsche ~
The pressure of adversity does not affect the mind of the brave man... It is more powerful than external circumstances.
~By Lucius Annaeus Seneca ~
Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
~By Viktor E. Frankl ~
The first thing I do when I read a part is see if I can identify emotionally with a character. If I make that connection, everything else is just working on knowing their life circumstances and manifesting those through practice and research.
~By Joshua Leonard ~
A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.
~By Hugh Downs ~
A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.
~By B. F. Skinner ~
When it was my turn, I just skated out and heard this huge cheer. It was very touching considering the bad circumstances under which I had left the team and that I had been away for four years.
~By Ted Lindsay ~
The Italian prose tale had begun to exercise that influence as early as Chaucer's time: but circumstances and atmosphere were as yet unfavourable for its growth.
~By George Saintsbury ~
You don't underestimate either players or audience in any circumstances.
~By Peter Maxwell Davies ~
I engaged upon those activities because I believed that, in the dangerous circumstances which have been created in South Africa, it was my duty to do so.
~By Bram Fischer ~
To know all about anything is to know how to deal with it under all circumstances.
~By William Kingdon Clifford ~
For fossils to thrive, certain favorable circumstances are required. First of all, of course, remnants of life have to be there. These then need to be washed over with water as soon as possible, so that the bones are covered with a layer of sediment.
~By Richard Leakey ~
Every American deserves to live in freedom, to have his or her privacy respected and a chance to go as far as their ability and effort will take them - regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or economic circumstances.
~By Christopher Dodd ~
As a result, the highly civilized man can endure incomparably more than the savage, whether of moral or physical strain. Being better able to control himself under all circumstances, he has a great advantage over the savage.
~By Lafcadio Hearn ~
Despite Japan's desires and efforts, unfortunate differences in the ways that Japan, England, the United States, and China understood circumstances, together with misunderstandings of attitudes, made it impossible for the parties to agree.
~By Hideki Tojo ~
We are constantly being put to the test by trying circumstances and difficult people and problems not necessarily of our own making.
~By Terry Brooks ~
Although I grew up in very modest and challenging circumstances, I consider my life to be immeasurably rich.
~By Sonia Sotomayor ~
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.
~By William Kingdon Clifford ~
Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances. For years we lived anyhow with one another in the naked desert, under the indifferent heaven.
~By T. E. Lawrence ~
To practice five things under all circumstances constitutes perfect virtue; these five are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness.
~By Confucius ~
It is a question of fact, whether the influence of motives be fixed by laws of nature, so that they shall always have the same effect in the same circumstances.
~By Thomas Reid ~
When the satisfaction or the security of another person becomes as significant to one as one's own satisfaction or security, then the state of love exists. Under no other circumstances is a state of love present, regardless of the popular usage of the term.
~By Harry Stack Sullivan ~
You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.
~By Jim Rohn ~
You may not seem able to change some outer circumstances but you can start by changing your inner experience of life and yourself.
~By Joy Page ~
People care and are willing to help me out my desperate circumstances.
~By Sam Worthington ~
When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations.
~By Joseph Addison ~
You need education. You need subsistence protection. We need jobs and social security. These are preconditions under which it will perhaps be possible to deal with these complex circumstances.
~By Ulrich Beck ~
Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.
~By Georg C. Lichtenberg ~
Circumstances are beyond human control, but our conduct is in our own power.
~By Benjamin Disraeli ~
I am a realist as well as an idealist, and I think that it is incumbent upon those of us in opposition to try to work within what are always arduous circumstances to stretch the limits of the possible.
~By Todd Gitlin ~
I think there's great potential for autonomy, but we have to remember that we live in a world where people may have free will but have not invented their circumstances.
~By Thomas Frank ~
The message here is you cannot, under any circumstances, throw an object at an official. You just cannot do it.
~By Stu Jackson ~
The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can't find them, make them.
~By George Bernard Shaw ~
Almost all people have this potential for evil, which would be unleashed only under certain dangerous social circumstances.
~By Iris Chang ~
You learnt that, whatever you are doing in life, obstacles don't matter very much. Pain or other circumstances can be there, but if you want to do a job bad enough, you'll find a way to get it done.
~By Jack Youngblood ~
Circumstances made me the theatrical personality I am, which many people believe is also a part of my personal life.
~By Bela Lugosi ~
Persevere and preserve yourselves for better circumstances.
~By Virgil ~
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.
~By James L. Buckley ~
Instead of focusing on that circumstances that you cannot change - focus strongly and powerfully on the circumstances that you can.
~By Joy Page ~
So interviews are a valuable tool, but under certain circumstances they'd be more valuable than others.
~By Hans Blix ~
Unavoidable circumstances prevent me from giving you ample written instructions. Such however as may be deemed necessary will be prepared and sent to you at the City of Washington in a very few days.
~By Anson Jones ~
If you will call your troubles experiences, and remember that every experience develops some latent force within you, you will grow vigorous and happy, however adverse your circumstances may seem to be.
~By John Heywood ~
Historical methodology, as I see it, is a product of common sense applied to circumstances.
~By Samuel E. Morison ~
The circumstances of human society are too complicated to be submitted to the rigor of mathematical calculation.
~By Marquis De Custine ~
I was born in very sorry circumstances. Both of my parents were very sorry.
~By Norman Wisdom ~
They're not put on earth to be martyrs; they have to want to come out. It depends on your culture, where you work, where you live. Each person's circumstances are unique.
~By Billie Jean King ~
We live in an increasingly sophisticated world that makes it difficult to make simple comments on stuff. There are too many people on both sides of the border who are taking advantage of circumstances and the situation.
~By Arlo Guthrie ~
Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb. An innocent's life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy.
~By Charles Krauthammer ~
I've learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances.
~By Martha Washington ~
Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.
~By Mark Twain ~
This is really high on the priority list of tribal concerns. This is a cash cow in many circumstances, and tribes are concerned about protection of tribal assets.
~By Jack Abramoff ~
Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.
~By Robertson Davies ~
So often we try to alter circumstances to suit ourselves, instead of letting them alter us, which is what they are meant to do.
~By Mother Maribel ~
Probably what my comment meant was that I don't care about the circumstances if I can tell the truth.
~By Sally Kirkland ~
We travellers are in very hard circumstances. If we say nothing but what has been said before us, we are dull and have observed nothing. If we tell anything new, we are laughed at as fabulous and romantic.
~By Mary Wortley Montagu ~
Every man should have laws of his own, I should think; commandments of his own, for every man has a different set of circumstances wherein to work - or worry.
~By Gilbert Parker ~
Any time you put a cast like this in compromising circumstances or shake it up a little bit, I think we're all pretty close so we draw on real emotion.
~By George Eads ~
Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.
~By Horace ~
I have to keep reminding myself: If you give your life to God, he doesn't promise you happiness and that everything will go well. But he does promise you peace. You can have peace and joy, even in bad circumstances.
~By Patricia Heaton ~
It is not impossible to think that the minds of philosophers sometimes act like those of other mortals, and that, having once been determined by diverse circumstances to adopt certain views, they then look for and naturally find reasons to justify these views.
~By Morris Raphael Cohen ~
Many a time a man cannot be such as he would be, if circumstances do not admit of it.
~By Jean Racine ~
It may be an extreme example brought about by abnormal circumstances - but the criteria of human rights kick in, surely, precisely when the conditions are extreme and the situation is abnormal.
~By Breyten Breytenbach ~
When the circumstances are right, everything becomes a dance.
~By Lynette Fromme ~
In politics a capable ruler must be guided by circumstances, conjectures and conjunctions.
~By Catherine II ~
Most of the memorable events I have myself been exercised in; and, for the satisfaction of the public, will briefly relate the circumstances of my adventures, and scenes of life, from my first movement to this country until this day.
~By Daniel Boone ~
Gentlemen can now only behave as such, or be tolerated as such, in circumstances that are manifestly contrived or unreal.
~By Simon Raven ~
When I'm playing a character like Jonathan in Ripley's Game I want to be in the moment when he's feeling pain; this very ordinary person who finds himself in extraordinary circumstances.
~By Dougray Scott ~
Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.
~By Henry James ~
Through the harsh design of fate, Florida was dealt the unfortunate circumstances of bearing the brunt of not one but two hurricanes, and it appears more dark clouds are poised to visit the Sunshine State.
~By Ginny B. Waite ~
It was hard enough to drive those heavy old cars back then under normal circumstances, but with a crazed monkey clawing you at the same time, it becomes nearly impossible!
~By Tim Flock ~
Claims of right and insistence upon obligations may depend upon treaty stipulations, or upon the rules of international law, or upon the sense of natural justice applied to the circumstances of a particular case, or upon disputed facts.
~By Elihu Root ~
You cannot expect to achieve new goals or move beyond your present circumstances unless you change.
~By Les Brown ~
Where one person shapes their life by precept and example, there are a thousand who have shaped it by impulse and circumstances.
~By James Russell Lowell ~
There is little correlation between the circumstances of people's lives and how happy they are.
~By Dennis Prager ~
Character, not circumstances, makes the man.
~By Booker T. Washington ~
Fortuitous circumstances constitute the moulds that shape the majority of human lives, and the hasty impress of an accident is too often regarded as the relentless decree of all ordaining fate.
~By Olympia Brown ~
Circumstances are the rulers of the weak; they are but the instruments of the wise.
~By Samuel Lover ~
No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.
~By Ralph Waldo Emerson ~
They have the ability to take a person's freedom from them. On certain situations, they have the ability to take a person's reputation. And under certain circumstances, they have the authority to take a person's life.
~By Daryl Gates ~
The free trade movement in the middle of the last century represents the first conscious recognition of these new circumstances and of the necessity to adapt to them.
~By Christian Lous Lange ~
I'm a victim of maybe circumstances, but look at how it worked out.
~By Jessica Hahn ~
Men like me, who merely wish to establish political freedom, will in such circumstances lose all their influence, and others will get influence who may become dangerous to all established interests whatsoever.
~By Lajos Kossuth ~
The circumstances, including my body and my parents, whom I may curse, are my soul's own choice and I do not understand this because I have forgotten.
~By James Hillman ~
We have to mainstream everybody. No matter what their circumstances when they were growing up. Part of that is knowing that after they're finished with school, everybody in this country gets up and goes to work.
~By Donna Shalala ~
Because of our social circumstances, male and female are really two cultures and their life experiences are utterly different.
~By Kate Millett ~
In a way, the American side descended to Saddam's level, which happens often in these types of circumstances. That is why the people in Iraq do not accept the current state of affairs.
~By Dario Fo ~
If thou art master to thyself, circumstances shall harm thee little.
~By Martin Farquhar Tupper ~
To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.
~By Bruce Lee ~
You have a right to your opinion about the work that you're doing. An artist is as equally important as the director. If you believe that, you can work in any circumstances.
~By Maggie Gyllenhaal ~
We had such a wonderful set of circumstances in Wilmington. Yes, the four of us became famous literally overnight, but we were in a small town and we always knew when people were coming down. We always knew when to behave.
~By Katie Holmes ~
Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.
~By James Allen ~
These irresponsible acts, which cannot have any justification whatsoever, are to be fully condemned. In these appalling circumstances, I want to offer you the most sincere condolences, both in my name and in that of the French people.
~By Jacques Chirac ~
In the same circumstances, I know that I would do the same thing again.
~By Melita Norwood ~
A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used.
~By Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. ~
We are responsible for actions performed in response to circumstances for which we are not responsible.
~By Allan Massie ~
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