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Circumstance   Listen
noun
circumstance  n.  
1.
That which attends, or relates to, or in some way affects, a fact or event; an attendant thing or state of things. "The circumstances are well known in the country where they happened."
2.
An event; a fact; a particular incident. "The sculptor had in his thoughts the conqueror weeping for new worlds, or the like circumstances in history."
3.
Circumlocution; detail. (Obs.) "So without more circumstance at all I hold it fit that we shake hands and part."
4.
pl. Condition in regard to worldly estate; state of property; situation; surroundings. "When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations."
Not a circumstance, of no account. (Colloq.)
Under the circumstances, taking all things into consideration.
Synonyms: Event; occurrence; incident; situation; condition; position; fact; detail; item. See Event.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Circumstance" Quotes from Famous Books



... interest." In a life of Robert Browning it is especially true that the biography we want is of this nature, for its events are to be classed rather among achievements of the human spirit than as objective incidents, and its interest depends only in a secondary sense on circumstance or movement in the public eye. The special function of the present book in the growing library of Browning literature is to give such a biography of Browning's mind, associating his poems with their date and origin, as may throw some light on his inward ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... according to which it is said that over one hundred years ago, a party of Illinois Indians took refuge here from the Pottawatomies; their besiegers, however, confined them so closely that the whole party perished of starvation, or, as some say, of thirst. From this circumstance ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... very fortunate it was that Bunting had lit the gas! But for that circumstance this gentleman would have passed ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... which might affect her life, and thereby gratify Gardiner's sanguinary disposition. He himself came to examine her, respecting her removal from her house at Ashbridge to Dunnington castle a long while before. The princess had quite forgotten this trivial circumstance, and lord Arundel, after the investigation, kneeling down, apologized for having troubled her in such a frivolous matter. "You sift me narrowly," replied the princess, "but of this I am assured, that God has appointed ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... contains other acids which sharply distinguish it from the vast majority of other fats and, with the exception of cocoa-nut oil, from those substances which are or may be used to mix with butter, by the circumstance that a considerable proportion of its acids, when separated by chemical means from the glycerin, are readily soluble in water, or may be easily volatilized either alone or in a current of steam, whereas the acids separated from ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... landscapes; while his imagination runs riot in rocks and rivers, trees of all variety, and rustic incidents adopted from real life. At the same time he felt an enjoyment like that of Gentile da Fabriano in depicting the pomp and circumstance of pageantry, and no Florentine of the fifteenth century was more fond of assembling the personages of contemporary history in groups.[173] Thus he showed himself sensitive to the chief influences of the earlier Renaissance, and ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... thought over my classmates' fortunes, I was led to make a few reflections. From the fact that Armstrong and Berkeley were leading lives that squarely contradicted their announced ideas and intentions, it was an obvious but not therefore a true inference that circumstance is usually stronger than will. Say, rather, that the species of necessity which consists in character and inborn tendency is stronger than any resolution to run counter ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various

... it. In somebody's drawing-room, ages ago, you were speaking accidentally of M. de Marvy.[8] I expressed my great obligation to him; on which you said that I could prove my gratitude, if I chose, to his widow,—which choice I then not accepting, have ever since remembered the circumstance as one peculiarly likely to add, so far as it went, to the general impression on your mind of the hollowness of people's sayings and hardness of their hearts. The fact is, I give what I give almost in an opposite way to yours. I think there are many people who will relieve hopeless distress ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood

... position of any independent author who has something new and out of the common to say to the world. Angus Reay, working steadily and hopefully on his gradually diminishing little stock of money, with all his energies bent on cutting a diamond of success out of the savagely hard rock of human circumstance, was more filial in his respect and thought for Helmsley than either of Helmsley's own sons had been; while his character was as far above the characters of those two ne'er-do-weel sprouts of their mother's treachery as light is above darkness. And the multi-millionaire was well content ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... I would cheerfully endure far more than that, to watch over your father's child. You will not let this unhappy circumstance turn you against your old friend? I could hardly bear that, little Elsie." And he drew her toward ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley

... Thus the circumstance which every one concerned hoped was to make the most favourable change in the position did only intensify its difficulties. Geoff naturally was more thrown into the society of his stepfather during his mother's seclusion, ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... hands. Taj al-Muluk asked him, 'Why didst thou not show us thy merchandise?" end he answered, O my lord, there is naught among my stock worthy of thine august highness." Quoth the Prince, "Needs must thou show me what thou hast and acquaint me with thy circumstance; for I see thee weeping eyed and heavyhearted. If thou have been oppressed, we will end thine oppression, and if thou be in debt, we will pay thy debt; for of a truth my heart burneth to see thee, since I first set eyes on thee."[FN477] Then Taj al-Muluk bade the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... Mackinac. Here our people first met our British father, who furnished them with goods. Their enemies still wantonly pursued them and drove them to different places along the lake. At last they made a village near Green Bay, on what is now called Sac river, having derived its name from this circumstance. Here they held a council with the Foxes, and a national treaty of friendship and alliance was agreed upon. The Foxes abandoned their village and joined the Sacs. This arrangement, being mutually obligatory upon ...
— Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk • Black Hawk

... cling to, fitter place, And sweeter air to bloom in. It is wrong— Thou striv'st to sow with feelings all thine own, With thoughts and hopes, anxieties and aims, Born of thine own peculiar self, and fed Upon a certain round of circumstance, A soul as different and distinct from thine As love of goodness is from love of glory, Or noble poesy from noble prose. I could forgive thee, if thou wast of them Who do their fated parts in this ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod

... had noticed with some uneasiness, that another coach stopped lower down the Haymarket, at precisely the same time as their own; and though he could not be quite certain of the fact, he fancied he perceived a person greatly resembling Captain Disbrowe alight from it. Mentioning the circumstance to his companion, he pointed out a tall figure following them at some distance; but the other only laughed at him, and said, "It may possibly be Disbrowe—but what if it is? He cannot get into the house without the key; and if ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... surest authority, we endeavour to trace it through ages and scenes unknown; and, instead of supposing that the beginning of our story was nearly of a piece with the sequel, we think ourselves warranted to reject every circumstance of our present condition and frame, as adventitious, and foreign to our nature. The progress of mankind, from a supposed state of animal sensibility, to the attainment of reason, to the use of language, and to the habit of society, has been accordingly painted with a force ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... the point, dear Mary," said Miss Stiles. "The point is, surely, that an elephant straight from the desert ate our best Archdeacon's best hat in the High Street. You must admit that that's a laughable circumstance in this the sixtieth year of our good Queen's reign. I, for ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... owing to an unforeseen circumstance (partly, even largely, connected with Beau) which had caused a great upheaval in her life, she had now not a human being belonging to her, except her maid Simpkins, of whom she would like to get rid if only ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... stern and almost unfeeling in the calmness of the words chosen; but in those words her proposed marriage with Harry Clavering was absolutely abandoned. "I know," she said, "that your son is more warmly attached to another lady than he is to me, and under those circumstance; for his sake as well as for mine, it is necessary that we should part. Dear Mrs. Clavering, may I ask you to make him understand that he and I are never to recur to the past? If he will send me back any letters ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... could restrain myself no longer. "Why can't I marry you?" I asked, speaking very rapidly, and, I am afraid, with imprudent energy. "Is it any sort of condition or circumstance which prevents? Do you think that I am forcing myself upon you at a time when I ought not to do it? If so, you have mistaken me. Ever since I left here I have thought of scarcely anything but you, and I ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton

... moment for action arrives, such men get fresh heart in the first excitement, but they lack stability, and if any sudden check ensues, involving change of ground to the rear, a few minutes are enough to turn a retreat into a rout. You may send forth your volunteer, with all the pomp and circumstance of war, and greet his return with all enthusiasm of welcome; you may make him the hero of paragraph and tale (I believe it is treasonable to choose any other jeune premier for a love story just now); you may put a flag into his hand, more riddled and shot-torn than ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... Austria now, disregarding the family tie with Napoleon, was drawn by the current of German patriotism, as well as by self-interest, into the alliance against him. His imperious and arrogant domination was felt to be insupportable. But the circumstance that determined the course of Austria was the victory gained by Wellington at Vittoria, in Spain, over the French under Jourdan (June 21). The news of it turned the scale in the Austrian councils. The odds against Napoleon were now fearful, especially as his own ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... appropriation to that for building, equipment, and repair. The repeal of that prohibition will enable the Department to give renewed employment to a large class of workmen who have been necessarily discharged in consequence of the want of means to pay them—a circumstance attended, especially at this season of the year, with much ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... me to tell you all that I heard at Athens about the affair of that girl who was so near being put an end to while you were there; you have asked me to mention every circumstance, in the remotest degree relating to it, which I heard. In compliance with your wishes, I write to you all I heard, and I cannot imagine it to be very far from the fact, as the circumstance happened only a day or two before I arrived at Athens, and, consequently, was a matter of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... tends somehow or other to accumulate nitrogen within the soil itself. If this can be shown to be the case, an intelligible explanation of the fact that clover is so useful as a preparatory crop for wheat, will be found in the circumstance, that, during the growth of clover, nitrogenous food, for which wheat is particularly grateful, is either stored up or ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris

... interview, and I left him and started for my home at Harmony. When I reported my interview to Brother Haight, and give him Brig- ham's answer, he was well pleased; he said I had done well. I remember a circumstance that Brother Haight then related about Brother ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee

... to fear that a day of sale was nigh at hand. In fact the seventh of July had been agreed upon when he was to be in Richmond, to take his place with others in the market on sale day; his hasty and resolute move for freedom originated from this circumstance. He was well-known in Norfolk, and had served almost all his days in that city. These passengers averaged about six feet, and were of ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... a circumstance to some of them," remarked Allison, who was virtuously spending her recreation hour in sewing buttons on her gloves and mending a rip in the lining of her coat-sleeve. "Wait till you come to the programme of the recital given by the students of voice, violin, and piano. The pictures she made ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston

... favour for the free granting of which he would gladly have paid with his life. The husband's complicity rendered this theft more odious in a certain sense, and he would have preferred to owe to any other circumstance the happiness of beholding the marvel of Asia in her nocturnal toilet. Perhaps, indeed, the approach of danger, let us acknowledge as veracious historians, had no little to do with his virtuous scruples. Undoubtedly ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier

... class the pastor was different. He was fond of young people. He had been young himself, and had not forgotten the circumstance. ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker

... in public affairs scarcely venture to speak above their breath when they bewail the critical position of their beloved country. One circumstance especially seems to deprive us of all hope for the future, and that is, the apparent gradual extinction of those lofty virtues of the olden time which formerly contributed so much to the glory ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... feet with steady hand, Among the crowding marvels on her face, Bidding me rise, and run a strong man's race; Swathed mo in circumstance's swaddling band; Fed me with her own self; then bade me stand MYself entire,—while she was but a place Hewn for my dwelling from the midst of space, A something better than HER sea or land. Nay, Earth! thou bearest me upon thy back, Like a rough nurse, and I can almost ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... Captain Ralph did not see me, but the negro did, and gave me a cuff on the head in consequence. I had not fancied that the negro understood English, but from this circumstance I have ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... his house immediately after the evening meal. Along the road toward Mansburg he speeded, and, as he came to the foot of a hill, where once Andy Foger had put a big tree, hoping Tom would run into it and be injured, the youth recalled that circumstance. ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton

... reference standing invitingly around, could once figure to themselves the process of composing a sermon in circumstances such as we have painted. Mr. Stanton had written his text, and jotted down something of an introduction, when a circumstance occurred which is almost inevitable in situations where a person has any thing else to attend to—the baby woke. The little interloper was to be tied into a chair, while the flaxen-headed young housekeeper was now installed into the office of waiter in ordinary to her majesty, ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... of friars; for though misplaced in circumstances, there is something in it of devotion. I could never hear the Ave Mary bell without an elevation; or think it a sufficient warrant, because they erred in one circumstance, for me to err in all—that is, in silence and dumb contempt. Whilst, therefore, they directed their devotions to her, I offered mine to God, and rectified the errors of their prayers by rightly ordering my own. At a solemn ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... to extend over years and years. Meanwhile the defendant was confined in prison, as no bail was allowed in any case in which the penalty was that of presidio correccional (from six months and one day to six years' imprisonment) or greater. In addition to this the circumstance that all criminal causes in the islands had to be sent for review to the proper audiencia, caused a large accumulation of old cases in these higher courts, and this alone made their disposition ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... author was not permitted to reach. No further correspondence with the tenor of the unfinished English story is intended than the Adapter will endeavor to justify to his own conscience, and that of his reader, by at least one unmistakable foreshadowing circumstance of the original publication, which, strangely enough, has been wholly overlooked, thus far, by those speculating upon the fate of the ...
— Punchinello Vol. II., No. 30, October 22, 1870 • Various

... his scattered papers, "Here," He said, as died the faint applause, "Is something that I found last year Down on the island known as Orr's. I had it from a fair-haired girl Who, oddly, bore the name of Pearl, (As if by some droll freak of circumstance,) Classic, or wellnigh so, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... and Moholl, or summer-house, very curiously contrived. The 2d I halted at Kanowa, or Kanua, eleven c. At every coss from Agra to Ajmeer, 130 coss, there is erected a stone pillar, owing to the following circumstance. At Ajmeer is the tomb of a celebrated Mahometan saint, called Haji Mondee; and as Akbar had no children, he made a pilgrimage on foot to that famous shrine, ordering a stone pillar to be erected at every coss, and a Moholl, with lodgings for sixteen of his principal women, at the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... Signor Bonghi reckons that at the end of the sixteenth century, more than five hundred girls, who had become superfluous in noble families, crowded the convents in the single little town of Lucca. At a later epoch there would have been no special peril in this circumstance. But at the time with which we are now occupied, an objectionable license still survived from earlier ages. The nunneries obtained evil notoriety as houses of licentious pleasure, to which soldiers and youths of dissolute habits resorted by preference.[186] There appears to have ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... phenomena of the heavenly bodies to uniform motions in circular orbits. "That Hipparchus should have succeeded in the first great steps of the resolution of the heavenly bodies into circular motions is a circumstance," says Whewell, "which gives him one of the most distinguished places in the roll of great astronomers." But he did even more than this: he discovered that apparent motion of the fixed stars round the axis of the ecliptic, which is called the Precession ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord

... on the rock we saw a sail in the distance. She approached—our signal was discovered. A boat came and took us off, when we found ourselves on board an English frigate, the Nymph, which had been driven by a gale out of her course. Had it not been for this circumstance we might have remained on the rock many months longer, or till we ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston

... centuries ago, men began to find fossil remains of animals in the rocks, a severe shock was given to the prevailing doctrine of the recent creation of the earth. The adherents of the old theology made strenuous efforts to explain away this unwelcome circumstance. The shells found had been dropped by pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem; they were mineral simulations of shells; they had been created by the Deity and placed where found; they were anything but what they appeared to be, the existing evidences of a long ancient period of animal ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris

... not believed; and no wonder, for by that time the Russians had been laying down torpedoes in all directions about the Danube, to prevent the enemy from interfering with their labours at the pontoon bridges. The Turkish sailors were thus rendered suspicious of every unusual circumstance that came under their notice. When, therefore, a big, powerful, and rather odd-looking man was found clinging to one of their cables, they at once set him down as an unsuccessful torpedoist, and a careful search was instantly made round ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... shot out of the dark eyes, while Talizac thought to himself that the young girl had every reason to be proud of him. Captain in the Life Guards and Knight of St. Louis. The more he considered it the more he came to the conclusion that he could demand more, and only the circumstance that the young countess possessed several millions caused him to submit to ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere

... following morning Egbert and Edmund started for Croyland. The news of the defeat at Kesteven had already reached the abbey, and terror and consternation reigned there. Edmund went at once to his uncle and informed him of the circumstance of the death of his father and the annihilation ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty

... it is because I have thought the matter over a long time before undertaking it. I have anticipated whatever might happen. It is no spirit which suddenly reveals to me what I ought to do or say in any unlooked-for circumstance, but my own reflection, my own meditation. ... I work all the time, at dinner, in the theatre. I wake up at night in order to resume my work. I got up last night at two o'clock. I stretched myself on my couch before the fire to examine ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... visitor. It was written out fully, with all the narrator's repetitions and prolixities, and afterwards pruned into its present shape; retaining, as far as was practicable, Mary's exact expressions and peculiar phraseology. No fact of importance has been omitted, and not a single circumstance or sentiment has been added. It is essentially her own, without any material alteration farther than was requisite to exclude redundancies and gross grammatical errors, so as ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince

... her long-continued abstinence I do not know. A tendency to deception is a notable phenomenon of hysteria, and if she has led those about her to accept the view that she has existed without food for years, the circumstance would be in no way remarkable. Other hysterical women have deceived in the same or in still more astonishing ways. Or it may be that the amount of food taken being very small, carelessness or want of exactness has led to the expression that ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond

... spirit of her mother, too, employed in knitting woollen hose for her father's spirit. There was not one of my ancestors to whom she had been personally known—and she was very aged at the time of my birth—who had not appeared to her after death, each "with a circumstance" whose simplicity and truth to nature almost impressed you with a belief that such a thing had really been.—I implicitly believed all old Mima's stories, for could I be made to entertain a suspicion that she who watched every night ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... speaking French as set me at my ease with my pupils; and as I had encountered them on a right footing at the very beginning, and continued tenaciously to retain the advantage I had early gained, they never attempted mutiny, which circumstance, all who are in any degree acquainted with the ongoings of Belgian schools, and who know the relation in which professors and pupils too frequently stand towards each other in those establishments, will consider an important and ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... century and a half following the death of the Conqueror the vigor of the monarchy varied enormously, but not until the days of King John can there be said to have been any loss of power or independence which amounted to more than a passing circumstance. In a charter granted at the beginning of his reign, in 1100, Henry I. confirmed the liberties of his subjects and promised to respect the laws of Edward the Confessor; but the new sovereign did not propose, and no one imagined that he intended to propose, ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... that he had been "in constant expectation" of hearing from Bass, "to whom, there is no doubt, some accident has occurred." The Harrington had reported the capture of the Venus before King wrote that. Why did he not mention the circumstance to the British Government? Why did he not allude to the country to which he well knew that Bass intended to sail? It would seem that King carefully avoided referring in his official despatches to an enterprise upon ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... thrifty orchard, and, placing him at the foot of the ruin, she tried to excite a train of recollections that should lead to deeper impressions, and, possibly, by their aid, to a discovery of the important circumstance that all so much ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... constitution, my friend!" he exclaimed, without any trace of disturbance in his voice. "And what a sense of humour! Strange that a trifling circumstance like this should affect it. Meekins, burn some more of the powder. The atmosphere down here may be salubrious, but ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... thankfulness, if the patient bearing of evil, be duties to God, they are the duties of every day, and in every circumstance of our life. If we are to follow Christ, it must be in our common way of spending ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston

... Dr. Nitschke, on the temperature, for during cold weather when the leaves are inactive, they re-expand at an earlier period than when the weather is warm. But the nature of the object is by far the most important circumstance; I have repeatedly found that the tentacles remain clasped for a much longer average time over objects which yield soluble nitrogenous matter than over those, whether organic or inorganic, which yield no such matter. After a period varying from ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin

... of Allie glowed with happiness as she listened to the commendation of her father. Praise from any other lips would be but as "sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal" when compared with his; for her love for him, under every circumstance, through evil as well as good report, was so great that she would have died for him; and his praise of her singing filled her with ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter

... supervision of various bodies of Turkish soldiers on board of different vessels within the Turkish dominions. Recently Napoleon III. sent down by the same train of cars, from Paris to Marseilles, about four hundred of his troops for Algiers. Being detained at Marseilles by some unforeseen circumstance, I had the pleasure of seeing these men shipped off on the first steamer. I took passage in the next. By some extraordinary fatality, for which there is no accounting, there were upward of five hundred additional ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... town to-night for the promised treat? Don't you understand the pain that you're giving them by showing that you prefer a lot of red-nosed loafers in Miller's to your own wife and child? The unhappiness that you're causing them to-night isn't a circumstance to all the misery that you're piling up for them in the years to come. Switch off! Switch off, while you're yet man enough to be able to do it! Won't you do it—-please? You must know just how happy that little kid ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock

... devotion, self-sacrifice, affection, are sometimes manifested in their dramas and stories when dealing with the love between parents and children, brothers and sisters, or pairs of friends like Orestes and Pylades. And strangest of all, they actually had a kind of romantic love, which, except for one circumstance, is much like modern ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... Galloway gave Joe the lie; and he was terribly flogged. Joe told me he had been several times to the smoke-house with Mrs. G, and taken hams and sold them, which her husband told me he supposed were stolen by the negroes on a neighboring plantation. Mr. Swan, hearing of the circumstance, told me he believed Joe's story, but that his statement would not be taken as proof; and if every slave on the plantation told the same story it could not be received as evidence ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... yet you spoke so carelessly, and trifled With this the noblest and the best oblation, A woman—but a poor divinity, I fear at best, my Florence!—may receive, The heart of a true gentleman. I mean No creature of dull circumstance, himself A mean incumbrance on his own great wealth. How oft before their lovers women try To seem what they are not—if true their hearts, As thine is, apes not more fantastic show— If mean and paltry, frankness is the flag 'Neath which they trim ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... maid. The circumstance has only just been reported to me—you have lost your maid. [Seeing FRAYNE.] Is that Sir Chichester? [FRAYNE advances and shakes hands.] I didn't observe you, in the dusk. Have you seen Henry? I wonder if he is waiting for ...
— The Gay Lord Quex - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur W. Pinero

... sympathizing hearts. No one recalled any longer the part that each might be called upon to play; the district-attorney forgot he was there for the purpose of prosecuting, the President that he was there to preside, the counsel for the defence that he was there to defend. It was a striking circumstance that no question was put, that no authority intervened. The peculiarity of sublime spectacles is, that they capture all souls and turn witnesses into spectators. No one, probably, could have explained what he felt; ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... a rule," she said, "the more circumstance and etiquette surround the Court. I do not think that you will be allowed to play racquets in the throne room, or to shake hands very often with a Chicago stock-jobber, even though he is my father. We shall come and gaze upon ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim

... sure to keep your resolution, whether a wise one or an unwise one, after it is once made. Never allow yourself to re-consider the question of getting up, after the morning has come, except it be, for some unforeseen circumstance. Get up for that time, and be more careful how you ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... CAPITAL LETTER TAU} the common abbreviation for Jesus crucified; and partly ascribe to its magical virtue the victory which Abraham gained with his 318 servants over the Canaanitish kings. Similarly Tertullian refers the victory of Gideon, with his 300 men, to the circumstance of that being the precise number of {GREEK CAPITAL LETTER TAU}, the sign of the cross. In the name of Adam, St. Cyprian discerned a mysterious numeral affinity to certain characteristics in the life and history of the second Adam, Jesus Christ. Irenaeus notes the remarkable number 888 of ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... move after Paul and Florence down the staircase, in which the whole Blimber family were included. Such a circumstance, Mr. Feeder said aloud, as has never happened in the case of any former young gentleman within his experience. The servants, with the butler—a stern man—at their head, had all an interest in seeing little Dombey go; while the young gentlemen pressed to shake hands with him, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... to the plea urged by the Purvapakshin that, owing to inferential marks pointing to the individual soul, and the circumstance of mention being made of the chief vital air, we must decide that the section treats of the enjoying individual soul and not of the highest Self, the Sutra remarks that this argumentation has already been disposed of, viz. in connexion with the Pratardana vidya. For ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... cases are filled with clumsy black ware, ornamented in some cases with figures in relief, and extracted from tombs discovered on the site of the oldest Etruscan towns, which circumstance has led antiquaries to allow the Etruscans the honour of having fashioned these rude specimens of pottery; but as the samples display a higher degree of skill they refuse to allow the Etruscans the merit ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold

... certain suspicions which were changed into something like certainty by George's flight. A particular circumstance aided and almost confirmed her doubts. An abbe who was a friend of her husband, and knew all about the disappearance of George, met him some days afterwards in the rue des Masons, near the Sorbonne. They were both ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... was compelled to bend over him, his face towards the back of the seat, and from what I had seen I supposed the navvy was now dead. If that were the case it would be time for me to go; but I knew that so long as a man trusts himself to the current of Circumstance, reaching out for and rejecting nothing that comes his way, no harm can overtake him. It is the contriver, the schemer, who is caught by the Law, and never the philosopher. I knew that when the play was played, Destiny ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... threshold she had caught the drift of their discourse, and she had yearned to draw closer, to sail with them on unknown seas of romance and of reminiscence, to leave behind her for the moment the atmosphere of schoolhouse, of small gossip, of trivial circumstance. ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey

... conduct like resentment at what had happened. I intended to give the young fellow a handsome compensation for his injury, but of course what occurred on Christmas Eve prevented that: I had really forgotten all about the circumstance, or I should have told you ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr

... "On representing the circumstance to the Prince Regent, his Royal Highness perceived at once that a doubtful point in history might be cleared up by opening this vault; and, accordingly, his Royal Highness ordered an examination to be made on the first convenient opportunity. This was done on the 1st of April ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various

... their holes behind the inflammable canvas, and eat the wax until they reach the phosphorus, which is ignited by the friction of their teeth. Many fires are believed to have been produced by this singular circumstance. How much, again, must lucifers have contributed to swell the large class of conflagrations whose causes are unknown! Another cause of fire, which is of recent date, is the use of naphtha in lamps—a most ignitable fluid when mixed in certain ...
— Fires and Firemen • Anon.

... the face of the report of the minister of police who visited the prison a few hours after the commission of the crime at Torre-del-Greco, we could not but recognize the innocence of the Count, and fancy that something had led to a mistake in his person. A strange and providential circumstance makes us doubt the innocence of the Count, and though the means of his escape from the castle be unknown to us, we persist in ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... Mr Swiveller addressed himself to his fate or destiny, whom, as we learn by the precedents, it is the custom of heroes to taunt in a very bitter and ironical manner when they find themselves in situations of an unpleasant nature. This is the more probable from the circumstance of Mr Swiveller directing his observations to the ceiling, which these bodily personages are usually supposed to inhabit—except in theatrical cases, when they live in the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... such difficulties had long been solved by common sense ('solvitur ambulando'); the fact of the co-existence of opposites was a sufficient answer to them. He will leave them to Cynics and Eristics; the youth of Athens may discourse of them to their parents. To no rational man could the circumstance that the body is one, but has many members, be ...
— Philebus • Plato

... our European ancestors, we mold, each one of us, our own destiny; we have a stronger inward sense of power to unfold and elevate ourselves; we are more ready and more capable to withstand the assaults of circumstance. Here is more thoroughly embodied the true Christian principle, that out of himself is to come every man's redemption; that the favor and help of God are only to be obtained through resolute self-help, and honest, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... here was none. I can resolve you of the circumstance: Betwixt the noble Constantine and I,— Noble I call him for his virtuous minde— There was a league of love so strongly made That time wants houres, and occasion cause, To violate the contract of our hearts. Yet on my part the breach did first appeare: He brought me to behold ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... refuge of conscious ugliness. Already, at hungry twenty-six, Gravener looked as blank and parliamentary as if he were fifty and popular. In my scrap of a residence—he had a worldling's eye for its futile conveniences, but never a comrade's joke—I sounded Frank Saltram in his ears; a circumstance I mention in order to note that even then I was surprised at his impatience of my enlivenment. As he had never before heard of the personage it took indeed the form of impatience of the preposterous Mulvilles, his relation to whom, like mine, ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James

... that long, tranquil life, which was just stepping a minuet, vanished in four crashing days at the end of nine years and six weeks. Upon my word, yes, our intimacy was like a minuet, simply because on every possible occasion and in every possible circumstance we knew where to go, where to sit, which table we unanimously should choose; and we could rise and go, all four together, without a signal from any one of us, always to the music of the Kur orchestra, always in the temperate sunshine, or, if it rained, in discreet ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... acknowledge unreservedly that the customs of warfare have improved since the establishment of standing armies, a circumstance which has rendered possible a stricter discipline, and has necessitated a greater care for the provisionment of troops. I also acknowledge unreservedly that the chief credit for this improvement is due to military commanders. Brutal and barbarous pillage ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland

... to have been hardly possible. The accusation was built up on the jealousy of neighbours, on chance circumstances, on testimonies founded on petty spite. But, combined with the medico-legal evidence, the weight of circumstance might easily have hoisted the accused in ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure

... are made solely through the accidental Proximity of the parties. A young lady visits a friend often, and the brother, by being daily seen, engages her affections. Perhaps a gentleman boards in the family of her father. The simple circumstance of her being more in his society, than in that of others of his age, is the foundation of their marriage. There seems almost a fatality in these cases, ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey

... and sent toward Petersburg, to a point on the left wing of the army. It reached position on the night of the 19th and entrenched. The usual occurrences of such marches as attended this change of scene were varied for the men, as the regimental history suggestively relates, by a notable circumstance—a bath in the river. "It was the only luxury we had had for weeks. It was a goodly sight to see half a dozen regiments disporting themselves in the tepid waters of the James. But no reader can possibly understand what enjoyment it afforded, unless he has slept ...
— The County Regiment • Dudley Landon Vaill

... of the expedition. But it seemed, on the contrary, most reasonable to 10 calculate upon a continual decrement in the rate of motion according to the increasing distance from the headquarters of the pursuing enemy. This calculation, however, was defeated by the extraordinary circumstance that the Russian armies did not begin to close in very fiercely upon 15 the Kalmucks until after they had accomplished a distance of full 2000 miles: 1000 miles farther on the assaults became even more tumultuous and murderous: ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey

... blackest wad of hair waving in the air that had ever disgraced a rabbit. The truth flashed upon his mind in an instant. What he had supposed to be the blindness of the bats was nothing more than a most natural circumstance. ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh

... fighting for and against all the princes of Germany had given to the Croatian general a disregard for any of them, except on the single consideration of receiving his pay at the moment; and a single circumstance, unknown to Paulina, in the final determination of the Landgrave, to earn a merit with his Swedish allies by breaking off all terms of reserve and compromise with the imperial court, impressed a savage desperation on the tone ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... Ward, as planned, and Ward and Martin seem to have given up the Amazon idea. Not so with Samuel Clemens. He went on reading Herndon, trying meantime to raise money enough to get him out of Keokuk. Was it fate or Providence that suddenly placed it in his hands? Whatever it was, the circumstance is so curious that it must be classed as one of those strange facts that have no ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine

... somebody will say at its end that I should also have apologized for its subject, since it is as easy for an author to treat his readers to high themes as vulgar ones, and velvet can be thrown into a portrait as cheaply as calico; but of this apology I wash my hands. I believe nothing in place or circumstance makes romance. I have the same quick sympathy for Biddy's sorrows with Patrick that I have for the Empress of France and her august, but rather grim lord and master. I think words are often no harder to bear than "a blue bating," and I have a reverence for poor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... find it in my heart to talk to poor Bridget about it. I could not tell her large-hearted old mother. This reluctance was entirely involuntary, an instinct. I wish I had felt it more clearly and obeyed it altogether! There is some fatal cloud of human circumstance that covers up from our sight our just instinctive perceptions,—makes us drive them out before the mechanical conclusions of mere reason; and when our reason, our special human pride, has failed us, we say in our sorrow, I see now; if I had only trusted my first impulse!—What is this cloud? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... evidence in each case of enquiry should be carefully taken down in writing, and every circumstance, however trifling, which may in the slightest degree bear on the case, noted. It is frequently by a collection of apparently unimportant facts that ...
— General Instructions For The Guidance Of Post Office Inspectors In The Dominion Of Canada • Alexander Campbell

... One circumstance affected me in this part of Pink's story. I was a student in Oxford at that time. By comparing dates, there was no doubt whatever that I, who held my guardians in abhorrence, and, above all things, admired my brother for his conduct, might have ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... for it was universally believed that Colonel Burr could tell a robber by looking in his face, or that he had supernatural means of discovering crime. Indeed, I was myself inclined to these opinions. This belief was confirmed by another circumstance which had previously occurred. On the day of his arrival, after our return from visiting the posts, conversing with several of his attendants, and, among others, Lieutenant Drake, whom Burr had brought with him from his own regiment, he said, "Drake, that post on the North river will ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... Natalya, forgetting that the circumstance was favouring her project. 'A Jewish woman! You don't mean to say ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... is called in Italian Cristo Risorto, that is, Christ Risen or Triumphant, because the reference is to a circumstance not recorded of his earthly career, but belonging to the time following his resurrection. It is connected with a story told by St. Ambrose about the apostle Peter. St. Peter, it is believed, spent the latter part of his life in Rome, where the cruel emperor, ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... tell you when this bear was born, nor am I quite sure where; bears are born in so many parts of the world now, that it becomes very difficult to determine what country heard their first growl, and they never think to preserve a memorandum of the circumstance. Let it suffice that our bear was born, that he had a mamma and papa, and some brothers and sisters; that he lived in a cavern surrounded by trees and bushes; that he was always a big lump of a bear, invariably wore a brown coat, and was often out of temper, or rather, was always in ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes

... position was of course most deadly, and told fearfully upon the rotten hull of the Richard. To add to Jones's embarrassment, he was repeatedly fired upon by Landais, from the Alliance, which always kept her position with the Richard between her and the enemy. This extraordinary circumstance is only to be accounted for by an entire lack of presence of mind in the confusion, or by absolute treachery. The Serapis poured in her fire below from a full battery, while the Richard was confined to three guns on deck. She had ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various

... added.(10) Persons stricken with the plague were forbidden to leave their houses. A master who had been inhuman enough to turn out into the street a domestic servant who had fallen a victim to the prevailing disorder was ordered by the Court of Aldermen to take her back again into his house,(11) a circumstance which seems to point to the pest-house or hospital being already overcrowded. Instructions were given for seeing that the graves of those who died of the plague were sufficiently covered with earth, and that the ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe

... connected with our arrival here another circumstance which more nearly concerns myself; viz, my first act of what the sailors will allow to be seamanship—sending down a royal-yard. I had seen it done once or twice at sea, and an old sailor, whose favor I had taken ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... that has just occurred. A certain magistrate told somebody whom he was examining in court that he or she "should always be polite to the police." I do not know whether the magistrate noticed the circumstance, but the word "polite" and the word "police" have the same origin and meaning. Politeness means the atmosphere and ritual of the city, the symbol of human civilisation. The policeman means the representative and guardian of the city, the symbol ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton

... and his men had prepared to meet the friends of the girl whose property he had taken over, and because of the superiority of his own force he had anticipated no bloody or extended feud. This amazing circumstance put the case in ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... strolled like that in London town, Demanding homage from the very bricks I Pressed with my shoes of scintillating brown; But never till I tried the fair corrective Of seeing khaki from a civvy suit Could I envisage in its true perspective That common circumstance, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various

... acquaintance that she was free in consequence of being brought to Philadelphia. She called to consult with Isaac T. Hopper, and seemed very much disappointed to hear that a residence of six months was necessary to entitle her to freedom; that her master was doubtless aware of that circumstance, and would probably ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... part of the flame—why it happens, what it does in happening, and where, after all, the whole candle goes to: because, as you know very well, a candle being brought before us and burned, disappears, if burned properly, without the least trace of dirt in the candlestick—and this is a very curious circumstance. In order, then, to examine this candle carefully, I have arranged certain apparatus, the use of which you will see as I go on. Here is a candle: I am about to put the end of this glass tube into the middle of the flame—into that part which old Hooker has represented in the diagram as being rather ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday

... affected by the death of Goldsmith, to whom he had been a very sincere friend. He did not touch the pencil for that day, a circumstance most extraordinary for him who passed no day without a line. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... She had had one son, who had died a few days after his birth. Of course, she did not lead a very happy life in England. Her husband the king, like the majority of the English people, was a Protestant, and the difference was a far more important circumstance in those days than it would be now; though even now a difference in religious faith, on points which either party deems essential, is, in married life, an obstacle to domestic happiness, which comes to no termination, and admits of no cure. If ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott

... others and knocked down and scalped the oldest boy, but did not kill him. The pursuers fired at the Indians but missed. The latter became alarmed and confused, and Mrs. Daviess taking advantage of this circumstance jumped into a sink-hole with her infant in her arms. The Indians fled and every child ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... the return of each fifth year, the customary donative of five pieces of gold, reduced his veterans to beg their bread, and suffered unpaid armies to melt away in the wars of Italy and Persia. II. The humanity of his predecessors had always remitted, in some auspicious circumstance of their reign, the arrears of the public tribute, and they dexterously assumed the merit of resigning those claims which it was impracticable to enforce. "Justinian, in the space of thirty-two years, has never granted a similar indulgence; and many of his subjects have ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... me as being a remarkable circumstance that, in nine cases out of ten, a man's success in life is not found in the career he originally chose for himself, but in another and totally different one. That mysterious power, "force of circumstances," is doubtless responsible for this, and no better illustration ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby

... in his tent engaged in the composition of a document which occasioned him concern. That Colonel Battersleigh should be using his tent as office and residence—for that such was the fact even the most casual glance must have determined—was for him a circumstance offering no special or extraordinary features. His life had been spent under canvas. Brought up in the profession of arms, so long as fighting and forage were good it had mattered little to him in what clime ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough

... the papal chair, of the family of the Barberini, nicknamed the Mosche, or Flies, from the circumstance of bees being their armorial bearing. The Emperor having exhausted all his money in endeavouring to defend the church against Gustavus Adolphus, the great King of Sweden, who was bent on its destruction, applied in his ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... prospect of seeing him, and anxious for the answer of this letter." The minister made himself master of the contents. He pondered on the danger, wrote such a brief answer as seemed discreet upon the back of the letter, and returned it. One of the hangers-on at court had notice of this circumstance. He apprised the king, saying, "A certain person whom you have put in confinement is corresponding with a neighboring prince." The king was wroth, and ordered an investigation of this intelligence. The messenger was seized, ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... compare the synopsis of St. Mark and St. Matthew together we should be inclined to set this down as a very decided instance of quotation from the former. The only circumstance that detracts from the certainty of this conclusion is that a quotation had been made just before which is certainly not from our canonical Gospels, [Greek: ta mustaeria emoi kai tois huiois tou oikou mou phulaxate]. This ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday

... spoken before Hugh, almost distracted, rushed into the room. Regardless of appearances or consequences, the tall young fellow seized her and kissed her in a fashion that would have brought terrible rebuke, under any other circumstance, and which certainly caused the clerk to consider this Mr. Ridge the most demonstrative brother that in a long experience in hotel life he had ever encountered. When Hugh held her at arm's length to give his admiring gaze full scope, he saw tears of joy ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon

... answered, 'Yes.' 'And will you be quiet?' They replied in the affirmative. All were then requested to be silent and cover their faces. In this posture they remained until the prayer was closed; and after resuming their seats, for some minutes order was preserved. This was the only encouraging circumstance of the day. ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur

... history, the very Europe of Europe. And they lived at the time of the most moving and gigantic of all dramas—the making of a new nation, one of the things that makes men feel that they are still in the morning of the earth. Before their eyes, with every circumstance of energy and mystery, was passing the panorama of the unification of Italy, with the bold and romantic militarism of Garibaldi, the more bold and more romantic diplomacy of Cavour. They lived in a time when affairs of State had almost the air of ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... and as the men had their last glimpse of England by means of the beam of the search-light, many thought of the happy homes they were leaving behind to which they would perhaps never return. The journey to France was uneventful, which circumstance was due largely to the protection afforded by the torpedo-boat destroyers and other units of ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts

... with insensibility to his domestic circumstance, from the combination of cook and butler which took him into its ideal keeping to the unknown, unheard, and unseen German baron who had the dining-room floor, and was represented through his open door by his breakfast-trays and his perfectly valeted clothes. The valeting in that house was unexceptionable, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... escaped like the Canadian before the fray began. Druillon, an officer with Jumonville, wrote two letters to Dinwiddie after his capture, to claim the privileges of the bearer of a summons; but while bringing forward every other circumstance in favor of the claim, he does not pretend that the summons was read or shown either before or during the action. The French account of the conduct of Washington's Indians is no less erroneous. "This murder," says a chronicler of the time, "produced on the minds ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... One other circumstance we must not forget: that he had no school-learning; of the thing we call school-learning none at all. The art of writing was but just introduced into Arabia; it seems to be the true opinion that Mohammed never could write! Life in the Desert, with its experiences, was all his ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... says: "Call it cub-hunting, or call it what you like, there will be few merrier mornings before Xmas than that of the Quorn on the last days of September." It seems like the breaking up of a family party when the cubbing ceases and all the pomp and circumstance of fox-hunting commences. I often wonder if people who take no interest whatever in cub-hunting, but who regularly appear on the opening day of the season, really ride to hunt, or hunt to ride? Jorrocks ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... given by Tacitus of the miracles of Vespasian is fuller than that of Suetonius, but does not materially vary in the details, except that, in his version of the story, he describes the impotent man to be lame in the hand, instead of the leg or the knee, and adds an important circumstance in the case of the blind man, that he was "notus tabe occulorum," notorious for the disease in his eyes. He also winds up the narrative with the following statement: "They who were present, relate both these cures, even at this time, when there is nothing to be gained by lying." Both ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... explained this circumstance to them, as well as the incident of my smoking, which I promised to repeat at the banquet in the evening. After hearing this ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass

... jealousy of one another that could possibly be imagined. And, what is more, their pride and vainglory, not being based on the foundation of ability, led them astray from the true path, which brings to immortality those who strive more from love of good work than from rivalry. This circumstance, then, was the reason that they did not crown the good beginnings that they had made with that final excellence which they expected; for their presuming to the name of masters turned them too far aside from ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari

... will show thee the party. Take such advantage of time, place, and circumstance as will ensure the result; and mind you come not by the worst, for the man is the ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... One very happy circumstance in a clergyman's lot, is that he is saved from painful perplexity as regards his choice of the scene in which he is to spend his days and years. I am sorry for the man who returns from Australia with a large fortune; and with no further end in life than to settle down somewhere ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... and were found guilty of a design of killing the King, and destroying the Government; and as a means to it, to burn the City; and that the day intended for the plot was the 3rd of last September. And the fire did indeed break out on the 2nd of September: which is very strange, methinks. [This circumstance was so remarkable that it has been thought worth while extracting the whole passage from the Gazette of ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... ingenuity of punning and quibbling." St. Gregory was a man of a fine genius and of true learning: yet in familiar converse might confirm to the taste of the age. Far from censuring his wit, or the judgment of his historian, we ought to admire his piety, which, from every circumstance, even from words, drew allusions to nourish devotion, and turn the heart to God. This we observe in other saints, and if it be a fault, we might more justly censure on this account the elegant epistles of St. Paulinus, or Sulpitius Severus, than this dialogue ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... Master used. He would have us use it, too. But each one must take it himself, out of the threatening hand that would hold us back. As the call to follow comes we must go on, no matter what it involves. No circumstance, no possible loss, no sacrifice, must hold us back, for a moment, or a step, from following where our Friend calls; only so can ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon

... at her early rising, in a manner that marked the pleasure it gave to him; and then, returning to the conversation of the preceding evening, he expatiated with warmth and feeling upon the happiness of his boyish days, remembered every circumstance belonging to the plays in which they had formerly been companions, and dwelt upon every incident with a minuteness of delight that shewed his unwillingness ever to have ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney

... was a lazy giant, walked at a leisurely pace, and occasionally stopped to pick the berries that grew everywhere in the fields. Little Jacket could see his large figure towering up some miles ahead. Another fortunate circumstance, too, was, that the giant was smoking his pipe as he went, and even when Little Jacket almost lost sight of him, he could guess where he was from the clouds of smoke floating in the air, like the vapor from a high-pressure ...
— The Last of the Huggermuggers • Christopher Pierce Cranch

... mysteries by which we live surrounded. Then comes the part of the man of the world, of the detective born and bred. This clue, which the whole town beholds without comprehension, swift as a cat, he leaps upon it, makes it his, follows it with craft and passion, and from one trifling circumstance divines ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson

... young Spaniard, who played croquet with the girls, were unavailing. Nothing was discovered, except that little Mirandola had a title, and might be sent back to Spain any day to lose his life or liberty in some rash plot, which circumstance made the black-eyed boy doubly interesting to the free-born Americans. Lavinia bewailed his hard lot, Amanda taught him whist and told his fortune, and Matilda put him in her sketch-book done in the blackest India-ink. It is also to be ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott

... How far my chief, Sir C. Douglas, concurred in this disposition of our limited available fighting forces, how far he was consulted and what part he performed in giving the orders, I do not know. I have no recollection of ever discussing the matter with him. But there was a circumstance in connection with the transaction which does suggest that the C.I.G.S. did not play a very ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... the uncomplaining forest, which rose up in ever statelier—and grander ranks to greet the travelers as they descended—the silent, vast forest, without note of bird or chip of squirrel, only the wind tossing the great branches high overhead in response to the sonnet. Is there any region or circumstance of life that the poet did not forecast and provide for? But what would have been his feelings if he could have known that almost three centuries after these lines were penned, they would be used to express the emotion of an unsentimental traveler in the primeval forests of the New ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... an incident apparently so trivial, and which must have occurred when I was not more than seven years old; but as I wish to give a faithful history of my experience in slavery, I cannot withhold a circumstance which, at the time, affected me so deeply. Besides, this was, in fact, my first introduction to ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... as a lecturer to various towns, for his political associates were willing to use his political zeal, though they did not go in for his religious views. He insisted on the need of the working classes raising themselves to a higher level in mind and circumstance, and on the right of each man to a fair share of the primary essentials for good living. His discourses roused immense antagonism, and he was sometimes set upon and severely handled by the men to whom ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... of definite chemical combination was firmly established, the circumstance that changes of temperature accompanied most chemical combinations was noticed, and chemists were not long in suspecting that the amount of heat developed or absorbed by chemical reaction should be as much a property ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various

... after a pause, he added, "Well, so it is! see what it has come to at last! and I never imagined that it was so!" Then followed a long silence, after which he exclaimed, "Well, so it is! see what already—nothing unexpected that—it would be nothing—what a strange circumstance!" So saying, instead of going home, he went in exactly the opposite direction without himself suspecting it. On the way, a chimney-sweep bumped up against him, and blackened his shoulder, and a whole hatful of rubbish landed on him from the top of a house which ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... Rank considers that the circumstance that the dismembered person or animal resurrected generally lacks a member, points without exception ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... of a circumstance which was observed on board; several canoes being at the ship, when the great guns were fired in the morning, they all retired, but one man, who was bailing the water out of his canoe, which lay ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook

... funeral ceremonies in Washington should be held on Wednesday, April 19, and all the churches throughout the country were invited to join at the same time in appropriate observances. The ceremonies in the East Room were simple and brief, while all the pomp and circumstance that the government could command were employed to give a fitting escort from the Executive Mansion to the Capitol, where the body of the President lay in state. The procession moved to the booming of ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay

... Mr. Glascock had already heard of the unfortunate affair in Curzon Street. Indeed, every one who knew the Trevelyans had heard of it, and a great many who did not know them. No harm, therefore, could be done by mentioning the circumstance. Lady Milborough did mention it, explaining that the only person really in fault was that odious destroyer of the peace of families, Colonel Osborne, of whom Lady Milborough, on that occasion, said some very severe things indeed. Poor dear Mrs. Trevelyan was foolish, obstinate, and ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... specimens of the best individual trees should be planted in the strong hope of improving the strain. There should be a first rate promise of success in this field, for many of our walnuts are fruiting as individual trees, standing alone and isolated, and therefore, are probably self-fertilized, a circumstance which may assist in shortening the process of ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association

... never was in Scotland." "Who are you, Sir?" Mr. Adam wanted to ask, but kept the question until he could put it to me. I did not feel much hesitation in telling him that the stranger must have been Percival; and Percival it was, as I afterwards learned by questioning him of the circumstance. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... another tower, remarkable for the beauty of its situation, which overlooks the Avon, about two miles west of Clifton, at the extremity of the Downs. It is of an octagonal shape, and its name (Cooke's Folly) is said to be derived from the following circumstance:— Several centuries since, the proprietor of the land, a gentleman named Cooke, dreamed that his only son was destined to be killed by the sting of an adder. This idea took such hold of his mind, that in order to avert the dreaded catastrophe, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various

... didst adown all ages teach That Art of crowning words with deeds, May we, who use the speech, be blest With bravery, that when shall come In thy full time our hour of test - That promised hour of Christendom, We may be found, whate'er our need, How grim soe'er our circumstance, Unwilling to be fed or freed, Or fame or fortune to enhance By flinching from the good begun, By broken word or serpent plan, Or cruelty in malice done To helpless beast or ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... surely (For evil omen seldom speaks in vain) The man-child breaking from that living tomb That makes our birth the antitype of death, Man-grateful, for the life she gave him paid By killing her: and with such circumstance As suited such unnatural tragedy; He coming into light, if light it were That darken'd at his very horoscope, When heaven's two champions—sun and moon I mean— Suffused in blood upon each other fell In such a raging duel of eclipse As hath not terrified the universe Since that ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca



Words linked to "Circumstance" :   observance, justification, information, conditions, mitigating circumstance, status, condition, playing field, environment, ceremony, hinge, context



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