Quotes About Circumstance

Of the Yamacraw children I can say little. I don't think I changed the quality of their lives significantly or altered the inexorable fact that they were imprisoned by the very circumstance of their birth.

when you leave it to chance, then all of a sudden you don't have any more luck.

Something always turned up. That was Tom's philosophy.

Magic and witchcraft, by contrast, are forms of superstition. They work from belief that some action, substance or circumstance not logically or naturally (or even supernaturally) related to a certain course of events does nonetheless influence the outcome of those events if "correctly" approached.

The point of the preceding list of factors that generate emotions is that you cannot, and need not, analyze or understand all the factors that produce your emotional peaks or valleys. It's enough to know that the interaction of mind and circumstance contributes to your emotional lows and highs.

The secret of success in life: Prepare for opportunity when it comes. —Benjamin Disraeli

Could Have" by the Polish Nobel Laureate Wis?awa Szymborska: "It could have happened. / It had to happen. / It happened earlier. Later. / Nearer. Farther off. / It happened, but not to you." The poet goes on to contemplate the nature of luck. "You were in luck—there was a forest. / You were in luck—there were no trees. / You were in luck—a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake, / a jamb, a turn, a quarter-inch, an instant.

This was, for me, the crucial lesson of middle school and one for the rest of life: that one can protest, fight, and win against injustice, but that those in power will just change the circumstance rather than concede the argument.

The most important lesson that I have learned is to trust God in every circumstance. Lots of times we go through different trials and following God's plan seems like it doesn't make any sense at all. God is always in control and he will never leave us.

"Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice."

To bear all naked truths, And to envisage circumstance, all calm: That is the top of sovereignty.

When we behave badly, it is usually because we were put in an unhappy situation. Circumstance has conspired against us. Really, I had no choice. When others do wrong, it is because of their character flaws.

That's all your life amounts to in the end: the aggregate of all the good luck and the bad luck you experience. Everything is explained by that simple formula. Tot it up – look at the respective piles. There's nothing you can do about it: nobody shares it out, allocates it to this one or that, it just happens. We must quietly suffer the laws of man's condition, as Montaigne says.

that alertness for measuring and weighing event against eventuality, circumstance against human nature, his own fallible judgement and mortal clay against not only human but natural forces, choosing and discarding, compromising with his dream and his ambition like you must with the horse which you take across country, over timber, which you control only through your ability to keep the animal from realizing that actually you cannot, that actually it is the stronger.

Poetry is] a kind of childlike faith in the efficacy of words, you see, a kind of belief that circumstance somehow will invest the veriest platitude with magic.

So long as it fated, fate didn't care what it fated.

What looks like a person problem is often a situation problem.

What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem. And no matter what your role is, you've got some control over the situation.

To change someone's behavior, you've got to change that person's situation.

What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.

Fundamental Attribution Error." The error lies in our inclination to attribute people's behavior to the way they are rather than to the situation they are in.

It's hard to tell them apart, what we bring upon ourselves and what destiny determines. They're as difficult to disentangle as love and sorrow.

It's hard to tell them apart, what we bring upon ourselves and what destiny determines.

Fortune has hair in front but is bald behind.