Snark And Circumstance Quotes

Suddenly a force greater than my common sense - which, I'll admit, has been pretty faulty lately, propels me - and I find myself creeping up the long staircase to the forbidden second floor.
I need to see Michael's room.
I need to find out if he is a secret slob, or if there's even more interesting evidence of whom he is up there. I'm not expecting to find anything big, like a literal skeleton in his closet. But I am going to find it, whatever it is. And I will know once and for all who he is.
I make it to the landing when I hear a burst of barking below me and I freeze.
Someone has let a dog in.
Which means that some member of the Endicott family is actually in the house.
Which means that one of Michael's parents is about to catch me snooping. ~ Stephanie Wardrop

Endurance involves much more than putting up with a situation; Patient Endurance is more than pacing up and down within the cell of circumstance. True Enduring represents not merely the passage of time, ... but the Passage of Soul. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

What a feeble thing intelligence is, with its short steps, its waverings, its pacings back and forth, its disastrous retreats! Intelligence is a mere instrument of circumstances. There are people who say that intelligence must have built the universe - why, intelligence never built a steam-engine! Circumstances built a steam-engine. Intelligence is little more than a short foot-rule by which we measure the infinite achievements of Circumstances. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

I'm not as good as a man as you are, Sundown. I find it hard to give an enemy my back under any circumstance." – Ren
"Oh, I didn't say I was giving her my back. I'm not lacking all my noodle sense. But I'm not holding a grudge neither. Sometimes you just got to let the rattlesnake lay in the sun." – Sundown
"Men? You do know I'm standing in this little box with you and can hear every word?" – Abigail
"We know. I merely don't care." – Ren ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

I was hoping to do an impressionist painting, but I wanted a good likeness and I wanted to create a feeling of the lady as a person, as a human being rather than as a figurehead for the monarchy and a pomp-and-circumstance sort of formal portrait. I wanted more of a relaxed portrait. ~ Rolf Harris

A Man's suicide is the ultimate violence he can fling against the granite circumstance he could not vanquish. Its a lonely and desperate act of supreme courage, not weakness. But it is also an admission of total failure, and the destruction of the self is the end of one person's struggle, an end where from there would be no rebirth or resurrection-nothing but the blackness, the impenetrable muck the hides everything, sometimes even the reason for death itself. ~ F. Sionil Jose

Liberals are more likely to see people as victims of circumstance and oppression, and doubt whether individuals can climb without governmental help. My own analysis using 2005 survey data from Syracuse University shows that about 90 percent of conservatives agree that "While people may begin with different opportunities, hard work and perseverance can usually overcome those disadvantages." Liberals - even upper-income liberals - are a third less likely to say this. ~ Arthur C. Brooks

Whether in business or in life, you can be civil and get ahead. Whatever your age or circumstance, you can master civility. So what are you doing today to connect with others? What kind of legacy are you leaving? Are you lifting people up or holding them down?
In each moment we get to choose who we want to be.
Who do you want to be? ~ Christine Porath

The political topicality of my October paintings means almost nothing to me, but in many reviews it is the first or only thing that arouses interest, and the response to the pictures varies according to current political circumstance. I find this rather a distraction. ~ Gerhard Richter

In Lewis Carroll's poem, when the hunters finally capture the deceptive Snark, it reveals itself not to be a foreign beast, but one of the human hunters sent to trap it. And so it had turned out with cancer. Cancer genes came from within the human genome. Indeed the Greeks had been peculiarly prescient yet again in their use of the term oncos. Cancer was intrinsically "loaded" in our genome. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

Boys", Buffy hissed through clenched teeth, "being quiet is an important part of sneaking."
"Oh, sorry", Xander said, reducing his voice to a whisper.
"Besides, ritual sacrifice is a religious rite", Giles went on quietly. "They wouldn't sacrifice just anyone at random. It's far more likely they'd suspect you of being a Roman spy scouting for the invasion and just outright kill you".
"Oh great! Great! Way to be encouraging Giles. And I suppose you'll just watch that happen, in your Watchery way. ~ Alice Henderson

She fascinated me, her contradictions, her secrets, and the girl that sometimes surfaced from beneath her tough soldier exterior, like when she spotted the wish stalks on the bank. The girl who forgot who I was and pressed a wish stalk to my ankle. In another world, another circumstance, I think we might have been friends. Or more. ~ Mary E. Pearson

Look, this is helping me out quite a bit, but could you just get to the punishment part? We're at the end of World War Two in history, and I can't wait to find out who wins. ~ Rob Thomas

Dear Mr. Weston,
Hello again. We were beginning to wonder what had happened to you. I guess things have been pretty quiet since the Salvation Army tried to take over the world.
We are sorry, but after much deliberation we have elected not to assign any men to Protect Trillium Air Base. We feel that the Forces can protect themselves, and if they can't, who is going to protect the country?
Also, thank you for sending us that shard of broken glass with the fingerprint on it. It was yours. Our mail clerk required four stitches and a tetanus shot.
Relay our condolences to your Mr. Waghorn. We have no idea what unfortunate circumstance (for him) drew him to your ever-watchful attention, but he has no criminal record and his face is not known to us. Yours Sincerely,
Bruce Hmmm, thought Sidney, Waghorn has no criminal record.
"Let me see one of those," said Tom.
"I'm sorry, Tom, but I can't show you the letters."
Tom muttered something about a lack of trust. He was extremely alarmed at the intensity of Sidney's expression. As Sidney himself would have put it, the investigation was progressing. That meant trouble. There was always trouble when his brother got to the letter-writing stage. Tom would have to stay on his toes.
Sidney opened the last letter. Dear Mr. Weston,
Please stop bothering us. Cordially yours,
The Ontario Provincial Police. ~ Gordon Korman

I believe in the immeasurable power of love; that true love can endure any circumstance and reach across any distance. ~ Steve Maraboli

Nostalgia. It haunts us, it destroys us, and sometimes, its sentimentality consumes us piece by piece so that we may realize our once-familiar circumstance may never again return. It is a state of mind best indulged infrequently. ~ Bryant A. Loney

I had at least thought there would be nobility in war. I know it exists. There are so many stories, and some of them have to be true. But I see mostly normal men, trying to do good, beaten down by horror, by their inability to quell their own rages, by their masculine posturing and their so-called hardness, their desire to be tougher, and therefore crueler, than their circumstance. And yet, I have this sense that this place is holier than back home. Gluttonous, fat, oversexed, overconsuming, materialist home, where we're too lazy to see our own faults. At least here, Rodriguez has the decency to worry about hell. The moon is unspeakably beautiful tonight. Ramadi is not. Strange that people live in such a place. • • • ~ Phil Klay

We normally think of history as one catastrophe after another, war followed by war, outrage by outrage - almost as if history were nothing more than all the narratives of human pain, assembled in sequence. And surely this is, often enough, an adequate description. But history is also the narratives of grace, the recountings of those blessed and inexplicable moments when someone did something for someone else, saved a life, bestowed a gift, gave something beyond what was required by circumstance. ~ Thomas Cahill

Every work [of literature] has both a situation and a story. The situation is the context or circumstance, sometimes the plot; the story is the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer: the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say ~ Vivian Gornick

I was the little guy who knew how to tie a necktie. It came from having absentee parents. They were tremendously loving and caring people who, by circumstance, had to go to work. ~ Harold Ramis

This is the history of governments, - one man does something which is to bind another. A man who cannot be acquainted with me, taxes me; looking from afar at me, ordains that a part of my labour shall go to this or that whimsical end, not as I, but as he happens to fancy. Behold the consequence. Of all debts, men are least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Everywhere they think they get their money's worth, except for these. Hence, the less government we have, the better, - the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual; the appearance of the principal to supersede the proxy; the appearance of the wise man, of whom the existing government, is, it must be owned, but a shabby imitation. That which all things tend to educe, which freedom, cultivation, intercourse, revolutions, go to form and deliver, is character; that is the end of nature, to reach unto this coronation of her king. To educate the wise man, the State exists; and with the appearance of the wise man, the State expires. The appearance of character makes the State unnecessary. The wise man is the State. He needs no army, fort, or navy, - he loves men too well; no bribe, or feast, or palace, to draw friends to him; no vantage ground, no favourable circumstance. He needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is a prophet; no statute book, for he has the ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Small wins do not combine in a neat, linear, serial form, with each step being a demonstrable step closer to some predetermined goal," wrote Karl Weick, a prominent organizational psychologist. "More common is the circumstance where small wins are scattered ... like miniature experiments that test implicit theories about resistance and opportunity and uncover both resources and barriers that were invisible before the situation was stirred up. ~ Charles Duhigg

Genuine surrender says, "Father, if this problem, pain, sickness, or circumstance is needed to fulfill your purpose and glory in my life or in another's, please don't take it away." This level of maturity does not come easy. ~ Rick Warren

We commit to the daily disciplined practices of meditation, yoga, exercise, wise actions, kindness, forgiveness, generosity, compassion, appreciation, and moment-to-moment mindfulness of feelings, emotions, thoughts, and sensations. We are developing the skillful means of knowing how to apply the appropriate meditation or action to the given circumstance. ~ Noah Levine

Most people go through life by the line of least resistance in every circumstance where they can make a choice. They do not recognize that following the lines of least resistance makes all rivers, and some men, crooked! ~ Napoleon Hill

Well, it is generally considered - though not always true - that the wife of a man so honoured is likely also to be worthy of the honour, and so it is accorded her. In the event it is false, and I have known that to be so in more than one circumstance , it is still accorded her in deference to her husband."
~Sherlock Holmes, with respect to aristocratic titles ~ Stephanie Osborn

A thrumming of piano-strings beyond the gardens and through the elms. At length the melody steals into my being. I know not when it began to occupy me. By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe, I am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody, my fancy and imagination are excited to an inconceivable degree. This is no longer the dull earth on which I stood. ~ Henry David Thoreau

He shakes his head and his mouth is quirked at one corner. I can't tell if he thinks I am sort of amusing or truly pathetic. It's especially hard to tell because we are both looking resolutely at the teacher so she can't accuse us of not paying attention. We talk out of the sides of our mouths, like gangsters in those old movies my dad likes to watch. ~ Stephanie Wardrop

The city of Washington is in some respects self-contained, and it is easy there to forget what the rest of the United States is thinking about. I count it a fortunate circumstance that almost all the windows of the White House and its offices open upon unoccupied spaces that stretch to the banks of the Potomacand that as I sit there I can constantly forget Washington and remember the United States. ~ Woodrow Wilson

We are all lumps, and of so various and inform a contexture, that every piece plays, every moment, its own game, and there is as much difference betwixt us and ourselves as betwixt us and others. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Hitler appeared, a man with limited intellectual abilities and unfit for any useful work, bursting with envy and bitterness against all whom circumstance and nature had favored over him ... In his desperate ambition for power he discovered that his speeches, confused and pervaded with hate as they were, received wild acclaim by those whose situation and orientation resembled his own. He picked up this human flotsam on the streets and in the taverns and organized them around himself. This is the way he launched his political career. ~ Albert Einstein

He looked a bit more confused by Stevie and David, but nodded politely. "I'm a watch ad," David said. "She's a hipster grandpa. Together, we solve crime. ~ Maureen Johnson