This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There are perhaps some circumstances of life in which Providence has no intention that people should be content.
Circumstances | Intention | Life | Life | People | Providence |
The real advantage which truth has consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it, until some one of its reappearances falls on a time when from favorable circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made such a head as to withstand all subsequent attempts to suppress it.
Circumstances | Opinion | Time | Truth | Will |
Our true reality is in our identity and unity with all life. This is a metaphysical truth which may become spontaneously realized under circumstances of crisis.
Customs are made for customary circumstances and customary characters... The mind itself is bowed to the yoke; even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they live in crowds: they exercise choice only among things commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until by dint of not following their own nature they have not nature to follow: their human capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own.
Choice | Circumstances | Conduct | Conformity | Eccentricity | Feelings | Growth | Mind | Nature | Peculiarity | People | Pleasure | Taste | Thought | Wishes | Following | Thought |
Men make their own history… but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past. The traditions of all dead generations weigh like a nightmare on the minds of the living.
Circumstances | History | Men | Past |
Natural law is a practical first principle in the sphere of morality; it forbids evil and commands good. Positive law is a decision that takes circumstances into account and conforms with natural law on credible grounds. The basis of natural law is God, who has created this light, but the basis of positive law is civil authority.
Authority | Circumstances | Decision | Evil | God | Good | Law | Light | Morality |
For truth and duty it is ever the fitting time; who waits until circumstances completely favor his undertaking, will never accomplish anything.
Circumstances | Duty | Time | Truth | Will |
Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.
God... created man; He has also created the circumstances under which he lives and acts; but still He has endowed man with discretion to choose how to act... And as he can exercise his discretion or his will in doing a thing or not doing it, he is responsible for his own deeds, and made to suffer the consequences.
Circumstances | Consequences | Deeds | Discretion | God | Man | Will |
There is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps, through the whole of life; but circumstances may rouse it to activity.
Circumstances | Evil | Heart | Life | Life |
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
The ordinary person is influenced by his worldly environment. The man of concentration shapes his own life. He plans his day and finds at the end of the day that his plans are carried out; he finds himself nearer to God and his goal. A weak man plans many wonderful things, but finds at the end of the day that he has been a victim of circumstances and bad habits. Such a person usually blames everyone but himself.
Circumstances | Day | God | Life | Life | Man | God | Victim |
The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done.
The fortunate circumstances of our lives are generally found, at last, to be of our own producing.
The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater, and causing a panic… The question in every case is whether the words used are 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.
Circumstances | Danger | Free speech | Man | Nature | Panic | Present | Question | Right | Speech | Will | Words | Danger |
Power to preserve under all circumstances the right, lawful opinion of what is and is not to be feared.
Circumstances | Opinion | Wise |
Let me consider this as a resolution by which I pledge myself to act in all variety of circumstances and to which I must recur often in times of carelessness and temptation – to measure my conduct by the rule of conscience.
Circumstances | Conduct | Conscience | Resolution | Rule | Temptation | Temptation |