Quotes About Contriving

The cunningest dissimulation is when a man pretends to be caught in the traps others set for him; and a man is never so easily over-reached as when he is contriving to over-reach others.

The Americans, the Scottish economist Adam Smith warned, "feel in themselves at this moment a degree of importance which, perhaps, the greatest subjects in Europe scarce feel.… [They] are employed in contriving a new form of government for an extensive empire, which, they flatter themselves will become, and which indeed seems very likely to become, one of the greatest and most formidable that ever was in the world.

Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving.

There are a lot of editorials that have nothing to do with anything like that. But I was just thinking of that sense of prose as being very responsible and perceptive, thoughtful, intimate, and contriving a quote statement.

cities have marvelous innate abilities for understanding, communicating, contriving and inventing what is required to combat their difficulties," she wrote. They get their order from below; they are learning machines, pattern recognizers—even when the patterns they respond to are unhealthy ones.

He who contrives, defeats his purpose; and he who is grasping, loses. The sage does not contrive to win, and therefore is not defeated; he is not grasping, so does not lose.138

If I need something, I'll invent it.

This one thing indeed is a principal foundation of the experiments in natural magic (of which I shall speak presently) wherein a small mass of matter overcomes and regulates a far larger mass — I mean the contriving that of two motions one shall by its superior velocity get the start and take effect before the other has time to act.

Society women have achieved the wondrous art of contriving thirty variations on a phrase that means nothing even the first time

Ye spend all your days contriving forms and rules for the principles of your Faith, while that which profiteth you in all this is to comprehend the good-pleasure of your Lord and unitedly to become well-acquainted with His supreme Purpose.