Quotes About Circumstances

Inspiration descends only in flashes, to clothe circumstances; it is not stored up in a barrel, like salt herrings, to be doled out.

But it would be wrong to say you were unhappy there, for you had no trouble adjusting to your reduced circumstances, you found it invigorating to learn that you could get by on almost nothing, and as long as you were able to write, it made no difference where or how you lived.

Our lives are no more than the sum of manifold contingencies, and no matter how diverse they might be in their details, they all share an essential randomness in their design: this then that, and because of that, this.

Our lives are no more than the sum of manifold contingencies,

I would not go so far as to say that he was a good person … but Boris had his own set of rules and he stuck to them. Unlike everyone else I had met here, he managed to flat above his circumstances … It was as if he had imagined every possibility in advance, and therefore he was never surprised by what happened. Inherent in his attitude was a pessimism so deep, so devastating, so fully in tune with the facts, that it actually made him cheerful.

The circumstances in which you get pleasure from pain are going to be rare. And this makes sense. As both Bentham and Darwin knew well, the hurt of pain is there to get us to stop doing certain things.

Poverty is not intrinsically a trap, otherwise we would all still be poor.

Real, sturdy, lasting peace, peace that doesn't rise and fall with circumstances, isn't to be found in picking apart your life until you have understood all of the components. You will never understand it all because God, for your good and his glory, keeps some of it shrouded in mystery.

when you blame other people for your circumstances or for the wrongs that you do, you are, in fact, blaming God. You are saying that God didn't give you what you needed to be what he has called you to be and to do what he has called you to do.

Hope isn't a thing. Hope isn't a set of circumstances. Hope isn't first a set of ideas. Hope is a person, and his name is Jesus.

So much of what we are then has been completely outside of our control and is not our fault. •

As victims, we aren't responsible for our lives. We blame someone else. However, this statement is true for me, and it's true for every one else: My life is my responsibility. The circumstances of my life don't determine the quality of my life; the quality of my life is determined by my reaction to circumstances.

An attitude of total acceptance and peace of mind doesn't come naturally to me. I must remain diligently on guard to prevent my feelings, thoughts and actions from being controlled by people and circumstances. My serenity, like finely spun glass, is extremely fragile. My natural tendency is to find fault, see the defect, disapprove, then not accept what I see. I completely forget that acceptance does not imply approval.

It is only by chance that we are reminded of the permanent circumstances of our life.

We are aware that a civilization has the same fragility as a life. The circumstances that could send the works of Keats and Baudelaire to join the works of Menander are no longer inconceivable; they are in the newspapers.

Crimes determined to take place engender all they need: victims, circumstances, pretexts, opportunities.

A politics that is not sensitive to the concerns and circumstances of people's lives, a politics that does not speak to and include people, is an intellectually arrogant politics that deserves to fail.

It's amazing that no matter how much money you have, you can make some bad decisions, and in five months you're on the street, begging.

Each of us exists as a castaway in his circumstances, and it is there, whether he wishes or not, that man must struggle to remain afloat.

Things would have turned out differently if he'd been wearing shoes. A shoeless man is a defenseless man. A shoeless man can't be held responsible for his actions.

The gratitude feeling is deep and profound when it occurs. It feels like a moment of connection to life itself on the deepest level and all life circumstances and what I deem as problems pale to insignificance in those moments and there is only love in its purest form. It truly feels like a blessing albeit fleeting but gives enough sustenance and hope to continue the journey.

Because if one starts from the premise that a stage is a stage -not a convenient place for the unfolding of a staged novel or a staged poem or a staged lecture or a staged story- then the word that is spoken on this stage exists, or fails to exist, only in relation to the tensions it creates on that stage within the given stage circumstances.

For success everything must go right, but by contrast, failure can be attributed to any number of external causes

The diversity we see in the Bible reflects the inevitably changing circumstances of the biblical writers across the centuries as they grappled with their sacred yet ancient and ambiguous tradition.