"Circumstance" Quotes from Famous Books
... literature the principle of Burns that "a man's a man for a' that"; and though this fact has now become a truism, it was a discovery, and an important discovery, when Balzac wrote. He showed that, because we are ourselves ordinary men and women, it is really human interest, and not sensational circumstance which appeals to us, and that material for enthralling drama can be found in the life of the most commonplace person—of a middle-aged shopkeeper threatened with bankruptcy, or of an elderly musician with a weakness for good ... — Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... circumstance will tempt you or not depends on what you are. If there is nothing adhesive on ... — Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... experience appear to have proved, that, with that organisation which constitutes the German, goes an unique aptitude for music. There is always the possibility of mistaking the result of training and external circumstance for inherent tendency, but when we consider the passion for music which the German has shown, and when we consider that the greatest musicians the world has seen, from Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart to Wagner, have been of ... — Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... before the kirk-session on 30th December 1634, for causing a bairn of his to be taken to the mill of Balhousie and put into the flappers thereof, when the mill was going, to be charmed, which, it was alleged, was a lesson of Satan. He answered that he knew not of the circumstance until the child was brought home." [The offence being considered an odious one, the session resolved to take the advice of the presbytery how to proceed, but we are not informed how the ... — The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... This circumstance, which is historical, as well as the description that precedes it, will remind the reader of the war of La Vendee, in which the royalists, consisting chiefly of insurgent peasantry, attached a prodigious and even superstitious interest to the possession of a piece of brass ordnance, ... — Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
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