This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of man. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter.
Circumstances | Man |
The mind of the greatest man on earth is not so independent of circumstances as not to feel inconvenienced by the merest buzzing noise about him; it does not need the report of a cannon to disturb his thoughts. The creaking of a vane or a pulley is quite enough. Do not wonder that he reasons ill just now; a fly is buzzing by his ear; it is quite enough to unfit him for giving good counsel.
Circumstances | Counsel | Earth | Enough | Giving | Good | Man | Mind | Need | Noise | Wonder |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.
Circumstances | Life | Life | Happiness |
There are circumstances of peculiar difficulty and danger, where a mediocrity of talent is the most fatal quality that a man can possibly possess. Had Charles the first, and Louis the Sixteenth, been more wise or more weak, more firm or more yielding, in either case they had both of them saved their heads.
Circumstances | Danger | Difficulty | Man | Mediocrity | Wise | Yielding | Talent |
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
To be able under all circumstances to practice five things constitutes perfect virtue; these five are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness.
Circumstances | Earnestness | Generosity | Kindness | Practice | Sincerity | Soul | Virtue | Virtue |
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
To be able under all circumstances to practice five things constitutes perfect virtue; these five things are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness and kindness.
Circumstances | Earnestness | Generosity | Kindness | Practice | Sincerity | Soul | Virtue | Virtue |
Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
It is the way we react to circumstances that determines our feelings.
The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice.
Avarice | Benevolence | Circumstances | Power | Property | Society | Virtue | Virtue | Weakness | Society |
The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possession of family wealth and of the distinction which attends hereditary possessions (as most concerned into it), are the natural securities for this transmission.
Avarice | Benevolence | Circumstances | Distinction | Family | Possessions | Power | Property | Society | Virtue | Virtue | Weakness | Wealth | Society |
Are we only able to see who we actually are at life’s beginnings and endings? Do only extreme circumstances reveal ordinary truths? Are we otherwise blind to our genuine selves? This is the key lesson of life: to find our authentic selves, and to see the authenticity in others.
Authenticity | Circumstances | Extreme | Lesson | Life | Life |
The mind wants to believe that changing our circumstances will bring us peace. The mind thinks we’ve got to do something. But the reality is that we can relax in the circumstances as they are now, knowing that deep patience will bring deep peace and healing.
Circumstances | Knowing | Mind | Patience | Peace | Reality | Wants | Will |
I have no sympathy with the old idea that children owe such immense gratitude to their parents that they can never fulfill their obligations to them. I think the obligation is all on the other side. Parents can never do too much for their children to repay them for the injustice of having brought them into the world, unless they have insured them high moral and intellectual gifts, fine physical health, and enough money and education to render life something more than one careless struggle for necessaries.
Children | Education | Enough | Gratitude | Health | Injustice | Injustice | Life | Life | Money | Obligation | Parents | Struggle | Sympathy | World | Old | Think |
The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.
Circumstances | People | World |
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.
Circumstances | People | World |
A body seriously out of equilibrium, either with itself or with its environment, perishes outright. Not so a mind. Madness and suffering can set themselves no limit; they lapse only when the corporeal frame that sustains them yields to circumstances and changes its habit.
Even under the most favourable circumstances no mortal can be asked to seize the truth in its wholeness or at its centre.
Circumstances | Mortal | Truth | Wholeness |
Men are dependent on circumstances, not circumstances on men.
Circumstances | Men |