Quotes About Contrivances

Death is an opportunity to shed all guilt; to step away from the dogma and contrivances of mankind; and to finally be unbound from all hindrances to knowledge.

Reviewers, critics, guest editors... Such people may have an eye for literary conventions and contrivances, allusions and innovations on the art. But what are their tastes based on? Do they tend to choose work that most resembles theirs?

Sin does not only still abide in us, but is still acting, still laboring to bring forth the deeds of the flesh. When sin lets us alone we may let sin alone; but as sin is never less quiet than when it seems to be the most quiet, and its waters are for the most part deep when they are still, so ought our contrivances against it be vigorous at all times and in all conditions, even where there is least suspicion.

If it be said, that an Omnipotent Creator, though under no necessity of employing contrivances such as roan must use, thought fit to do so in order to leave traces by which man might recognize his creative hand, the answer is that this equally supposes a limit to his omnipotence. For if it was his will that men should know that they themselves and the world are his work, he, being omnipotent, had only to will that they should be aware of it.

The love of Louis XVI for mechanical works is well known. He had a little workshop at Versailles where he amused himself making locks, assisted by Francois Gamain, to whom he was much attached and with whom he spent many hours in projecting and executing mechanical contrivances.

I often wondered a great deal about the inner life and thought of these self-contained old fishermen; their minds seemed to be fixed upon nature and the elements rather than upon any contrivances of man, like politics or theology.

The way we experience history and time in all its forms shifted quite massively between 1989 and 2001 - to the point where contrivances like decades are now kind of silly.

There is nothing sacred about the existing system. All economic and political institutions are contrivances that should serve the interests of the people.

That is not all, however: this relationship between writing and death is also manifested in the effacement of the writing subject's individual characteristics. Using all the contrivances that he steps up between himself and what he writes, the writing subject cancels out the signs of his particular individuality. As a result, the mark of the writer is reduced to nothing more that the singularity of his absence; he must assume the role of the dead man in the game of writing.

Smee made the leap between mind and mechanism, concluding that "it is apparent that thought is amenable to fixed principles. By taking advantage of a knowledge of these principles it occurred to me that mechanical contrivances might be formed which should obey similar laws, and give those results which some may have considered only obtainable by the operation of the mind itself.

When sin lets us alone we may let sin alone; but as sin is never less quiet than when it seems to be most quiet, and its waters are for the most part deep when they are still, so ought our contrivances against it to be vigorous at all times and in all conditions, even where there is least suspicion.

Speech blossoms from anxiety… words were fermented from the uncertainty of existence, like poisonous red mushrooms sprout from the rotting earth. It's true we have words of joy and pleasure, but aren't those the most unnatural and contrived of them all? Apparently, human beings experience anxiety even in the midst of joy. But in a place without anxiety, there's no need for such ignoble contrivances.