Quotes About Circumstances

Memory is a wily keeper of the past, usually dependable, but at times, deceptive. Childhood memories are especially slippery. Sweet and so full of joy, they can often be a misrendering of the truth. For a child, that sweetness, out of context and intensely subjective, remains forever real. I know that I will always be haunted by the larger, vaguely remembered reality of the circumstances surrounding my childhood.

He's not a bad guy. He just didn't get any luck and by the time he figured out what was happening to him it was too late to do anything about it.

If a man is to lose his fortune, it is a good thing if he were poor before he acquired it, for poverty requires aptitude.

The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic... The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.

To get up each morning with the resolve to be happy ... is to set our own conditions to the events of each day. To do this is to condition circumstances instead of being conditioned by them.

Opportunities are everywhere.

In great affairs we ought to apply ourselves less to creating chances than to profiting from those that are offered.

Events, circumstances, etc., have their origin in ourselves. They spring from seeds which we have sown.

It seems to me probably that any one who has a series of intolerable positions to put up with must have been responsible for them to some extent... they have contributed to it by impatience or intolerance, or brusqueness-or some provocation.

There is no man in any rank who is always at liberty to act as he would incline. In some quarter or other he is limited by circumstances.

Nobody has things just as he would like them. The thing to do is to make a success with what material I have. It is a sheer waste of time and soul-power to imagine what I would do if things were different. They are not different.

Each man's character shapes his fortunes.

Luck is a combination of confidence and getting the breaks.

Circumstances are the rulers of the weak; they are but the instruments of the wise.

Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creature of man. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter.

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.

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. The people who get on in this world are they who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.

The haves and the have-nots can often be traced back to the dids and the did-nots.

When we are told to look on the bright side of things, it is generally not at a happy time.

A belief is the most contagious influence you possess. If you believe in circumstances, they can and will defeat you. If you believe in yourself, you are assured victory.

Not all murder is evil... In the right time, the right place, for the right reason -- it can be a blessing more profound than any you can imagine

The thing was, the places of your life, like the clothes you wore and the car you drove and the friends and associates you had, were a product of the way you lived.

They both stopped at the same time. And she had to smile—although the expression didn't last long. "Under different circumstances," she said, "I really could have fallen for you." She didn't expect a reply from him. But then his voice, so deep and low, weaved its way through the darkness to her. "Under different circumstances, I would have fallen even harder for you. And not regretted my heart's tumble for a moment.

Man, so many times in life you didn't get to pick your path because the way you went was decided for you.