Circumstances Quotes - Page 17

• Being great involves luck, and unique circumstances, and a lot of other forces beyond your control. You can’t just make it happen by working more or trying harder.
  There is an irony here, of course. The less you think about being great, the more likely it is to happen. And if it doesn’t, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being solid.

  Charles Wheelan

  Unique, Thinking, Luck

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• Whatever the time or circumstances, the feeling that I am a peasant gives me a rare self-sufficiency. Indeed, the land is always there. I can go back to it at any time.

  Anwar Sadat

  Self, Land, Giving

  Anwar Sadat (1978). “In Search of Identity: An Autobiography”, New York : Harper & Row

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• The individual in the ordinary circumstances of living may feel more unreal than real; in a literal sense, more dead than alive; precariously differentiated from the rest of the world, so that his identity and autonomy are always in question.... He may not possess an over-riding sense of personal consistency or cohesiveness. He may feel more insubstantial than substantial, and unable to assume that the stuff he is made of is genuine, good, valuable. And he may feel his self as partially divorced from his body.

  R. D. Laing

  Real, Self, Consistency

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• Money, big money (which is actually a relative concept) is always, under any circumstances, a seduction, a test of morals, a temptation to sin.

  Boris Yeltsin

  Money, Temptation, Tests

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• Joy is not the same as pleasure or happiness. A wicked and evil man may have pleasure, while any ordinary mortal is capable of being happy. Pleasure generally comes from things, and always through the senses; happiness comes from humans through fellowship. Joy comes from loving God and neighbor. Pleasure is quick and violent, like a flash of lightning. Joy is steady and abiding, like a fixed star. Pleasure depends on external circumstances, such as money, food, travel, etc. Joy is independent of them, for it comes from a good conscience and love of God.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Stars, Independent, Men

  "Fulton J. Sheen's Guide to Contentment". Book by Fulton J. Sheen, p. 120, 1967.

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• I have lived large parts of my life in wonderful circumstances that I utterly failed to appreciate. Reasons to be happy were everywhere, but somehow I didn't connect with them. It was as though I was eating but couldn't taste the food. Finally, I've learned to celebrate the good while it's happening. I feel gratitude and praise today for what are sometimes such simple pleasures. I have learned that happiness is not determined by circumstances. Happiness is not what happens when everything goes the way you think it should go; happiness is what happens when you decide to be happy.

  Marianne Williamson

  Happiness, Gratitude, Simple

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• People who have never had an ideal may hope to find one; they are in a better state than the people who allow the circumstances of life to break their ideal. To fall beneath one's ideal is to lose one's track in life; then confusion rises in the mind, and that light which one should hold high becomes covered and obscured, so that it cannot shine out to light one's path.

  Hazrat Inayat Khan

  Fall, Light, People

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• Be aware of the words that go into your mind, both conscious and unconscious, because words and ideas can be great tools for your mind to use in coming to appropriate decisions. Remember that a statement spoken in spiritual consciousness can contain great spiritual power. Speaking powerful words of love changes things and outer circumstances as well as consciousness itself.

  John Templeton

  Spiritual, Powerful, Ideas

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• There is no climate, no place, and scarcely an hour, in which nature does not exhibit color which no mortal effort can imitate or approach. For all our artificial pigments are, even when seen under the same circumstances, dead and lightless beside her living color; nature exhibits her hues under an intensity of sunlight which trebles their brilliancy.

  John Ruskin

  Nature, Color, Effort

  John Ruskin (1848). “Modern Painters ...: pt. 1-2. Of general principles, and Of truth. 5th ed”, p.154

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• A buoyant and full-blooded soul has quick senses and miscellaneous sympathies: it changes with the changing world; and when not too much starved or thwarted by circumstances, it finds all things vivid and comic. Life is free play fundamentally and would like to be free play altogether.

  George Santayana

  Play, Soul, World

  George Santayana (1937). “The Works of George Santayana: Soliloquies in England and Later soliloquies”

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• The political topicality of my October paintings means almost nothing to me, but in many reviews it is the first or only thing that arouses interest, and the response to the pictures varies according to current political circumstance. I find this rather a distraction.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Mean, Political

  Gerhard Richter, Dietmar Elger, Hans-Ulrich Obrist (2009). “Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007”, Distributed Art Pub Inc

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• I wanted to say something different: the pictures are also a leave-taking, in several respects. Factually: these specific persons are dead; as a general statement, death is leave-taking. And then ideologically: a leave-taking from a specific doctrine of salvation and, beyond that, from the illusion that unacceptable circumstances of life can be changed by this conventional expedient of violent struggle.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Struggle, Different

  Gerhard Richter, Dietmar Elger, Hans-Ulrich Obrist (2009). “Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007”, Distributed Art Pub Inc

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• No matter our age, our circumstances, or abilities... Each one of us can create something remarkable with our lives.

  Joseph B. Wirthlin

  Attitude, Age, Matter

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• Let man only approach his own self with a deep respect, even reverence for all that the creative soul, the God-mystery within us, puts forth. Then we shall all be sound and free. Lewdness is hateful because it impairs our integrity and our proud being. The creative, spontaneous soul sends forth its promptings of desire and aspiration in us. These promptings are our true fate, which is our business to fulfill. A fate dictated from outside, from theory or from circumstance, is a false fate.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Fate, Self, Creative

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• There is a condition or circumstance that has a greater bearing upon the happiness of life than any other. What is it? Something to do; some congenial work. Take away the occupation of all people and what a wretched world it would be.

  John Burroughs

  Work, People, Would Be

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• In this book I do not intend to give a blow-by-blow description of a sex bout: I find them inartistic, clinical and unpoetic. The circumstances that lead up to sex I find more interesting.

  Charlie Chaplin

  Funny, Sex, Humorous

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• We should forgive and forget the faults of others. Anger is the enemy of every spiritual aspirant. Anger causes loss of power through every pore of our body. In circumstances when the mind is tempted to get angry, we should control ourselves and resolve firmly, 'No.' We can go to a secluded spot and chant our mantra. The mind will become quiet by itself.

  Mata Amritanandamayi

  Spiritual, Loss, Forgive And Forget

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• Pray for a peaceful and contented mind in all circumstances.

  Mata Amritanandamayi

  Meditation, Peaceful, Mind

  Amma, Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi (2014). “Awaken Children Vol. 6”, p.151, M A Center

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• If two or more instances of the phenomenon under investigation have only one circumstance in common, the circumstance in which alone all the instances agree is the cause (or effect) of the given phenomenon.

  John Stuart Mill

  Science, Two, Causes

  John Stuart Mill (1858). “A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive: Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation”, p.224

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• The poetic beauty of Davy's mind never seems to have left him. To that circumstance I would ascribe the distinguishing feature in his character, and in his discoveries,-a vivid imagination sketching out new tracts in regions unexplored, for the judgement to select those leading to the recesses of abstract truth.

  Davies Gilbert

  Character, Science, Discovery

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• The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life and has determined my whole career; yet it depended on so small a circumstance as my uncle offering to drive me 30 miles to Shrewsbury, which few uncles would have done, and on such a trifle as the shape of my nose.

  Charles Darwin

  Uncles, Science, Offering

  Charles Darwin (2010). “The Works of Charles Darwin, Volume 29: “Erasmus Darwin” by Ernest Krause, with a Preliminary Notice by Charles Darwin; “The Autobiography of Charles Darwin” Edited by Nora Barlow; and Consolidated Index”, p.113, NYU Press

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• Claims of right and insistence upon obligations may depend upon treaty stipulations, or upon the rules of international law, or upon the sense of natural justice applied to the circumstances of a particular case, or upon disputed facts.

  Elihu Root

  Law, Natural Justice, May

  Elihu Root (1916). “Addresses on International Subjects”

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• I am ... a realist. The magnitude of what one terms license or civil liberties or personal freedom has got to be adjusted to the circumstances.

  Lee Kuan Yew

  Freedom, Liberty, Realist

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• In a liquid modern life there are no permanent bonds, and any that we take up for a time must be tied loosely so that they can be untied again, as quickly and as effortlessly as possible, when circumstances change - as they surely will in our liquid modern society, over and over again.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Modern Life, Liquid, Permanent

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• Grief is depression in proportion to circumstance; depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance. It is tumbleweed distress that thrives on thin air, growing despite its detachment from the nourishing earth. It can be described only in metaphor and allegory

  Andrew Solomon

  Depression, Grief, Air

  Andrew Solomon (2014). “The Noonday Demon: An Atlas Of Depression”, p.16, Simon and Schuster

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