Re: Time and circumstance

Posted by Victoria S Dennis on December 01, 2010 at 18:52

In Reply to: Time and circumstance posted by ESC on November 30, 2010 at 19:42:

: “I’m what time and circumstance made me.” A line from Boardwalk Empire, an HBO series set in Atlantic City in the Prohibition era. (Great show!) No offense to the excellent Boardwalk writers, but it sounds like a line from poetry or literature. I've looked in a few quote books and can't find it. Any ideas?

To me it sounds like a conflation of "time and chance" and "pomp and circumstance".

The first is Biblical, from the King James Version of Ecclesiastes 9.11: "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."
The second is from Shakespeare's Othello, Act 3 Scene 3:
"O farewell,
Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, th' ear-piercing fife;
The royal banner, and all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!"
(VSD)

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