Quotes About Circumstance

Only in thought is man a God; in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance.

But what is opportunity to the man who can't use it?

Henry Kissinger once wrote that "the public life of every political figure is a continual struggle to rescue an element of choice from the pressure of circumstance,

No oak trees without acorns' may be a formally true proposition, but that this acorn did in fact produce this oak tree, there and then, is not a teleological necessity; it is a circumstantial occurrence" (OH 104-5). Because history is what happened, not what must have happened, there is no room in an authentic historical explanation for teleological causes.

the substantial outward things that happened to people were more mysterious really than all the invisible turmoil of the inner life, which we set such store by. The highest test was not in what you chose, but in how you lived out what befell you

we're wedged tight into the accident of our moment in history.

I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth.

In the psychotherapeutic worldview to which all good liberals subscribe, there is no evil, only victimhood. The robber and the robbed, the murderer and the murdered, are alike the victims of circumstance, united by the events that overtook them. Future generations (I hope) will find it curious how, in the century of Stalin and Hitler, we have been so eager to deny man's capacity for evil.

Religion is a bandage that man has invented to protect a soul made bloody by circumstance.

What's madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?

Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance.

To know how a character will behave in any given situation is a necessity and a gift.

I've had mentors who were kind of the troubadour singer-songwriters, like Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Neil Young, and that's just what I've always liked - people who would talk real honestly about their lives and their circumstance.

we don't always get to choose our paths in life; sometimes, they choose us.

Moments of circumstance, when later combined with conscious decisions and actions and a boatload of hope, can eventually forge a future that seems predestined.

I took her outside on to a little roof terrace that looked like it never got the sun at nay time of the day r year, but there was a picnic table and a grill out there anyway. Those little grills are everywhere in England, right? To me they've come to represent the trumph of hope over circumstance, seeing as all you can do is peer at them out the window through the pissing rain.

Language has a creative character: it is typically innovative without bounds, appropriate to circumstance but not caused by them – a crucial distinction – and can engender thoughts in others that they recognise they could have expressed themselves.

Niall: We're tossed by the winds of fate. Once we end where they blow us, we make of ourselves that we will.

There's no such thing as predestination or fate or destiny. Life is a series of choices and circumstance, action and the reaction, and results of other people's choices. Your father's illness influenced you to choose this position at this time. I think it was a loving and loyal choice, but it wasn't meant.

What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character? HENRY JAMES

We can't escape fate, but we can do a great deal to carve our own mark in it – to turn it to our advantage or disadvantage.

The circumstance is fundamental to defining the job (and finding a solution for it), because the nature of the progress desired will always be strongly influenced by the circumstance.

To succeed predictably, disruptors must be good theorists. As they shape their growth business to be disruptive, they must align every critical process and decision to fit the disruptive circumstance.

She had long ago accepted that life was unfair. But why , when she'd accepted the bitter truth , did circumstance insist on rubbing her face in it?