This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
In failing circumstances no man can be relied on to keep his integrity.
Circumstances | Integrity | Man |
What is the matter with the world that it is so out of joint? Simply that men do not rule themselves but let circumstances rule them.
Circumstances | Men | Rule | World |
No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.
Change | Character | Circumstances |
We see processes like love and education as established circumstances rather than as complex temporal organisms whose lives depend on regular nourishment and renewal.... Like still cameras, our minds consistently convert motion into stasis.
Circumstances | Education | Love |
Whom do I call educated? First, those who manage well the circumstances they encounter day by day. Next, those who are decent and honorable in their intercourse with all men, bearing easily and good naturedly what is offensive in others and being as agreeable and reasonable to their associates as is humanly possible to be... those who hold their pleasures always under control and are not ultimately overcome by their misfortunes... those who are not spoiled by their successes, who do not desert their true selves but hold their ground steadfastly as wise and sober -- minded men.
Associates | Circumstances | Control | Day | Good | Pleasure | Success | Thinking | Wise |
Of a truth, it is the duty of all men, especially of all philosophers, to note down with accuracy the characteristic circumstances of their education - what furthered, what hindered, what in any way modified it.
Our mind, our choices, make us happy or sad. If we waited for outside circumstances to be perfect, then we would rarely be happy. We must choose happiness no matter what the circumstances. Only we have that power and no one else can decide for us.
Circumstances | Happy | Mind | Power | Happiness |
What we call good sense in the conduct of life consists chiefly in that temper of mind which enables its possessor to view at all times, with perfect coolness and accuracy, all the various circumstances of his situation: so that each of them may produce its due impression on him, without any exaggeration arising from his own peculiar habits. But to a man of an ill-regulated imagination, external circumstances only serve as hints to excite his own thoughts, and the conduct he pursues has in general far less reference to his real situation than to some imaginary one in which he conceives himself to be placed: in consequence of which, while he appears to himself to be acting with the most perfect wisdom and consistency, he may frequently exhibit to others all the appearances of folly.
Accuracy | Circumstances | Conduct | Consistency | Exaggeration | Folly | Good | Imagination | Impression | Life | Life | Man | Mind | Sense | Temper | Wisdom |
Ted Kennedy, fully Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy
The commitment I seek is not to outworn views but to old values that will never wear out. Programs may sometimes become obsolete, but the ideal of fairness always endures. Circumstances may change, but the work of compassion must continue.
Circumstances | Commitment | Compassion | Fairness | Will | Work | Old |
Your destiny depends entirely on your own mental conduct. It is the thoughts that you allow yourself to dwell upon all day long that makes your mentality what it is and circumstances are made by your mentality.
Circumstances | Day | Destiny |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
The most important misunderstanding seems to me to lie in a confusion between the human necessities which I consider part of human nature, and the human necessities as they appear as drives, needs, passions, etc., in any given historical period. This division is not very different from Marx’s concept of "human nature in general", to be distinguished from "human nature as modified in each historical period". The same distinction exists in Marx when he distinguishes between "constant" or "fixed" drives and "relative" drives. The constant drives "exist under all circumstances and ... can be changed by social conditions only as far as form and direction are concerned". The relative drives "owe their origin only to a certain type of social organization".
Circumstances | Distinction | Important | Nature |
The only opportunity you will ever have to live by faith is in the circumstances you are provided this very day: this house you live in, this family you find yourself in, this job you have been given, the weather conditions that prevail at the ...moment.
Circumstances | Faith | Family | Opportunity | Will |
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
It is so much easier to make up your mind that your neighbour is good for nothing, than to enter into all the circumstances that would oblige you to modify that opinion.
Circumstances | Good | Mind |
Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
The significance of that 'absolute commandment', know thyself — whether we look at it in itself or under the historical circumstances of its first utterance — is not to promote mere self-knowledge in respect of the particular capacities, character, propensities, and foibles of the single self. The knowledge it commands means that of man's genuine reality — of what is essentially and ultimately true and real — of spirit as the true and essential being.
Circumstances | Know thyself | Knowledge | Means | Reality | Respect | Self-knowledge | Spirit | Respect |
Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
The great thing however is, in the show of the temporal and the transient to recognize the substance which is immanent and the eternal which is present. For the work of Reason (which is synonymous with the Idea) when considered in its own actuality, is to simultaneously enter external existence and emerge with an infinite wealth of forms, phenomena and phases — a multiplicity that envelops its essential rational kernel with a motley outer rind with which our ordinary consciousness is earliest at home. It is this rind that the Concept must penetrate before Reason can find its own inward pulse and feel it still beating even in the outward phases. But this infinite variety of circumstances which is formed in this element of externality by the light of the rational essence shining in it — all this infinite material, with its regulatory laws — is not the object of philosophy....To comprehend what is, is the task of philosophy: and what is is Reason.
Circumstances | Consciousness | Eternal | Existence | Light | Object | Phenomena | Reason | Wealth | Work |