A Quote by Samuel Butler

Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.

Samuel Butler

Quote Topics

Adapting Circumstances Dying Either Faculty Marvelous People Themselves Young Young People

Quote Author

Samuel Butler
British - Poet
December 4, 1835 - June 18, 1902

It seems to us that in intelligence there is a fundamental faculty, the alteration or the lack of which, is of the utmost importance for practical life. This faculty is judgment, otherwise called good sense, practical sense, initiative, the faculty of adapting one's self to circumstances. A person may be a moron or an imbecile if he is lacking in judgment; but with good judgment he can never be either. Indeed the rest of the intellectual faculties seem of little importance in comparison with judgment.

Alfred Binet

In the course of evolution, it constantly happens that, independently of each other, two different forms of life take similar, parallel paths in adapting themselves to the same external circumstances.

Konrad Lorenz

Teenage girls are extremists who see the world in black-and- white terms, missing shades of gray. Life is either marvelous or notworth living. School is either pure torment or is going fantastically. Other people are either great or horrible, and they themselves are wonderful or pathetic failures. One day a girl will refer to herself as "the goddess of social life" and the next day she'll regret that she's the "ultimate in nerdosity.

Mary Pipher

Too often, young people who are just bursting with idealism either find themselves playing a game for which they have little heart or are hurling themselves into wasteful protests against the so-called Establishment.

George W. Romney

The key thing is knowing how to adapt. Adapting to the group that you have at your disposal; adapting to the place where you're working; adapting to the local environment. This is crucial: adaptability.

Didier Deschamps

When I was a kid, there was no distinction between a movie about old people or young people. It was either funny or not. It was either entertaining or not. It was either exciting or not. It was either thrilling or not.

Joseph Bologna

I think acting is really fully adapting - to your surroundings, to your emotions, to the people that you're working with, to being tired, to want to go home, to being lonely, to being happy. It's adapting for me, and trusting. Adapting and trusting, that's my format right there.

Charlize Theron

Most people would rather change their circumstances to improve their lives when instead they need to change themselves to improve their circumstances. They put in just enough effort to distance themselves from their problems without ever trying to go after the root, which can often be found in themselves. Because they don't try to change the source of their problems, their problems keep coming back at them.

John C. Maxwell

The policy of adapting one's self to circumstances makes all ways smooth.

Johann Kaspar Lavater

Today, a young person that doesn't know themselves will totally be sold some other situation. Let's do your avatar. You know? And young people are going out, spending what little they have to try to buy themselves when they don't have themselves, or they feel like they don't have themselves. To me, that's like a damn pimp tragedy.

Chuck D

Meanwhile, our young men and women whose economic circumstances make military service a viable career choice are dying bravely in a war with no end in sight.

Charles B. Rangel

Some are bound to die young. By dying young a person stays young in people's memory. If he burns brightly before he dies, his brightness shines for all time.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I'm concerned that young people, far too often, abdicate their responsibilities of learning and adapting and give that over to people who may not always have their best interests at heart.

Len Elmore

When people, particularly young people and especially young men, can't imagine themselves as heroes in narratives that they construct for themselves, they look to be heroes in some other way. So young men in America of, let's say, Muslim background, only a tiny, tiny minority - so small as to be almost zero - are likely to ever commit terrorist acts.

Mohsin Hamid

With villains you always have to understand what motivates them. Most people don't just think they're evil. They believe or know they are doing the right thing because of the circumstances they find themselves in. Or they are overwhelmed by circumstances and can't stop what they'll do next.