Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance. It is character which builds an existence out of circumstance. From the same materials one man builds palaces, another hovels; one warehouses, another villas; bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks until the architect can make them something else.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Nathan Haskell Dole, George Henry Lewes, Thomas Carlyle, John Storer Cobb (1902*). “The Works of Goethe”
