Circumstances are those things that attend, relate to, or in some way affect, a fact or event.
And circumstance, that unspiritual god, And miscreator, makes and helps along Our coming evils, with a critch-like rod, Whose touch turns hope to dust—the dust we all have trod.
The massive gates of circumstance Are turned upon the smallest hinge, And thus some seeming pettiest chance Oft gives our life its after-tinge.
The trifles of our daily lives, The common things, scarce worth recall, Whereof no visible trace survives, These are the mainsprings after all.
Anon. in Harper's Weekly (May 30, 1863)
Epicureans, that ascribed the origin and frame of the world not to the power of God, but to the fortuitous concourse of atoms.
Richard Bentley, Sermons, II. Preached in 1692. See also Review of Sir Robert Peel's Address. Attributed later to Sir John Russell. See Croker, Papers, Volume II, p. 56
I am the very slave of circumstance And impulse—borne away with every breath.
Nulla cogente natura, sed concursu quodam fortuito.
Cicero, De Nat. Deorum, Book I. 24. Adapted by him to: "Fortuito quodam concursu atomorum." (By some fortuitous concourse of atoms.) Same in Quintilian. 7. 2. 2.
Thus we see, too, in the world that some persons assimilate only what is ugly and evil from the same moral circumstances which supply good and beautiful results—the fragrance of celestial flowers—to the daily life of others.
The happy combination of fortuitous circumstances.
Walter Scott, Answer of the Author of Waverly to the Letter of Captain Clutterbuck, The Monastery
How comes it to pass, if they be only moved by chance and accident, that such regular mutations and generations should be begotten by a fortuitous concourse of atoms.
John Smith of Cambridge, Select Discourses, III, p. 48. (Ed. 1660). Same phrase found in Marcus, Minucius Felix his Octavius, preface (Pub. 1695)
In all distresses of our friends We first consult our private ends; While Nature, kindly bent to ease us, Points out some circumstance to please us.
Daniel Webster, argument in the Murder of Captain Joseph White (1830), Volume VI, p. 88
F. M. the Duke of Wellington presents his compliments to Mr. —— and declines to interfere in circumstances over which he has no control.
Wellington. See G. A. Sala, Echoes of the Week in London Illustrated News, Aug. 23, 1884. See Capt. Marryatt—Settlers in Canada, p. 177. Grenville—Memoirs, Chapter II. (1823), gives early use of phrase.