“Fearful concatenation of circumstances.”
Argument on the murder of Captain White (1830)
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Daniel Webster62
Leading American senator and statesman. January 18, 1782 – … 1782–1852Related quotes
Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …
Attributed in Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart (1993) and popularized in Richard Carlson's bestselling Don't sweat the Small Stuff (1997). The phrasing is anachronistic and no earlier connection to Franklin is known.
Misattributed
Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born
The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born
“The laws of circumstance are abolished by new circumstances.”
Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French
Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)
“Circumstances rule men and not men circumstances.”
Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright
Herodotus, Book 7, Ch. 49; Misattributed to Euripedes in "The Imperial Four" by Professor Creasy in Bentley's Miscellany Vol. 33 (January 1853), p. 22
Variant translation: Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances.
Misattributed
Andrew Solomon book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
Source: The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) British philosopher
The Life and Works of Goethe (1855; repr. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1856) vol. 1, p. 30, often misattributed to Thomas Carlyle.
Context: Instead, therefore, of saying that Man is the creature of Circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that Man is the architect of Circumstance. It is Character which builds an existence out of Circumstance. Our strength is measured by our plastic power. From the same materials one man builds palaces, another hovels, one warehouses, another villas.
Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian
Ill Fares the Land (2010), Ch. 6 : The Shape of Things to Come