If this was adulthood, the only improvement she could detect inher situationwasthat nowshecould eat dessert without eating her vegetables.

-Alther, Lisa ne¤  e Reed
  Kinflicks, ch.2.

What are men to rocks and mountains? Oh! what hours of transport we shall spend! And when we do return, it shall not be like other travellers, without being able to give one accurate idea of anything.We will know where we have goneöwe will recollect what we have seen. Lakes, mountains, and rivers, shall not be jumbled together in our imaginations; nor, when we attempt to describe any particular scene, will we begin quarrelling about its relative situation.

-Austen,Jane
  Pride and Prejudice, ch.27.

Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot's character; vanity of person and of situation.

-Austen,Jane
  Persuasion, ch.1.

Great is the L, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness. Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King.

-Bible (Old Testament)
ORDPsalms 48:1^2.

Subconsciously every one was, of course, fearful that he himself would go nutsöeveryone with the exception of those who had already gone nuts, who were in the wholly pleasant situation of having no fear.

-cummings, e e pen name of  Edward Estlin Cummings
  The Enormous Room, ch.5.

I mean, after all; you have to consider that we're only made out of dust. That's admittedly not much to go on and we shouldn't forget that. But even considering, I mean, it's sort of a bad beginning, we're not doing too bad. So I personally have faith that even in this lousy situation we're faced with we can make it.You get me?

-Dick, Philip K(indred)
  The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, closing words.

Anythin'for a quiet life, as the man said wen he took the sitivation at the lighthouse.

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
^7  Sam Weller. Pickwick Papers, ch.43.

The wind's in the east† I am always conscious of an uncomfortablesensationnowand thenwhenthewind is blowing in the east.

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
^3  Mr  Jarndyce. Bleak House, ch.6.

Mon centre ce'  de, ma droite recule, situation excellente, j'attaque. My centre isgiving way, my right is retreating, situation excellent, I am attacking.

-Foch, Ferdinand
  Message sent during the first Battle of the Marne, Sep. Quoted in R Recouly Foch (1919), ch.6.

Just occasionally you find yourself in an odd situation. You get into it bydegrees and inthemost natural way, but when you are right in the midst of it you are suddenly astonished and ask yourself how in the world it all came about. If, for example, you put to sea on a wooden raft with a parrot and five companions, it is inevitable that sooner or later you will wake up one morning out at sea, perhaps a little better rested than ordinarily, and begin to think about it.

-Heyerdahl,Thor
  The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft  across the South Seas (translated by F H Lyon).

S'apercevoir que sa me'  re est vierge.öLes 36 situations dramatiques; trente-septie'  me situation. The thirty-seventh dramatic situation out of 36:To become aware that one's mother is a virgin.

-Jarry, Alfred
  L'Amour absolu, pt.3, e¤  pigraphe.

The healthiest situation in England, on Easthampstead Plain. Free run of Windsor Forest. TheTimes every morning. A double-barrelled gun and pointers, and leave to shoot three Wellington College boys a week (not more) in case black game was scarce.

-Kingsley, Charles
   The reward for criminal lunacy. The Water Babies, ch.4.

The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of thesituation evoking a new behavior which makes the originally false conception come true. The specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error.

-Merton, Robert King
  'The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy', in Social Theory and Social Structure (rev. edn,1968), p.477. This is the first use of the phrase 'self-fulfilling prophecy'.