Quotes About Circumstances

Sometimes people only do things that they really want to when circumstances force them to.

Of course a man has to take advantage of his opportunities, but the opportunities have to come," he told an audience in Cambridge, England, in the spring of 1910. "If there is not the war, you don't get the great general; if there is not the great occasion, you don't get the great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in times of peace, no one would know his name now.

If we make choices unconsciously, moved by a reaction to outer circumstances or driven by our own random and chaotic thoughts, we have habituated ourselves to being constrained in a mental prison created by our own lack of understanding.

In America I have seen the freest and best educated of men in circumstances the happiest to be found in the world, yet it seemed to me that a cloud habitually hung on their brow, and they seemed serious and almost sad even in their pleasures.

There is no rule that is true under all circumstances, for this is the real and not a statistical world. Because the statistical method shows only the average aspects, it creates an artificial and predominantly conceptual picture of reality.

Everyone thinks it was because of the snow. And in a way, I suppose that's true.

Uneori, in viata, faci alegeri, iar alteori le face viata pentru tine.

Feelings fluctuated, changing because of circumstances and a million other factors. Love was a choice. A commitment to put someone else first, to give rather than take, to protect and never harm. pg 448

See God's hand in the circumstances of your life. Do you want to experience true happiness? Submit yourself peacefully and simply to the will of God, and bear your sufferings without struggle.

We think that we know a man or a woman, when so much of what we know is actually that man's or that woman's situation, his or her place on the board of life. Move the pawn to the last row and see her rise in armor, sword in hand.

She'd dressed politely and soberly in response to her invitation, in a dove-grey jacket and skirt with dark green trimmings. Given the circumstances, she was wishing she'd accessorized the outfit with garlic, silver, and running shoes.

The perfect life, the perfect lie, I realised after Christmas, is one which prevents you from doing that which you would ideally have done (painted, say, or written unpublishable poetry) but which, in fact, you have no wish to do. People need to feel that they have been thwarted by circumstances from pursuing the life which, had they led it, they would not have wanted; whereas the life they really want is precisely a compound of all those thwarting circumstances.

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.

Honest unaffected distrust of human abilities under all circumstances is the surest sign of strength of mind.

Desarrollar la frase: así como aun los actos más ruines y vergonzosos requieren de cierta inteligencia y cierto talento, así también los actos más grandiosos requieren de una cierta insensibilidad que en otras circunstancias se llama estupidez.

The American Constitution, one of the few modern political documents drawn up by men who were forced by the sternest circumstances to think out what they really had to face, instead of chopping logic in a university classroom.

Probability is expectation founded upon partial knowledge. A perfect acquaintance with all the circumstances affecting the occurrence of an event would change expectation into certainty, and leave nether room nor demand for a theory of probabilities.

Strategy is something that emerges from reality, while tactics might be chosen.

The idea that the president has the power to craft a new strategy both overstates his power and understates the power of reality crafted by those who came before him. We are all trapped in circumstances into which we were born and choices that were made for us.

It seems to go beyond our personal junk circumstances; a brilliant metaphor for our times.

Rules, established with reason and justice, can easily outlive their usefulness as circumstances change, yet can remain in force through inertia. It is then not only right, but useful, to break those rules as a way of advertising the fact that they have become useless—or even actually harmful.

You can't maintain discipline that way." Mallow said icily, "I can. There's no merit in discipline under ideal circumstances. I'll have it in the face of death, or it's useless.

Mantener la disciplina en circunstancias ideales no tiene ningún mérito.

The times make the man