Contrives Quotes & Sayings

Holloway Prison is a very old place, and it has the disadvantages of old places which have never known enough air and sunshine. It reeks with the odours of generations of bad ventilation, and it contrives to be at once the stuffiest and the draughtiest building I have ever been in. — Emmeline Pankhurst

On my first visit to the public library, I was like a kid at a candy store where all the candy was free.
I gorged myself until my tummy ached. — Craig Thompson

The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of graceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying. — Mark Twain

I would sooner become a spinster than spend a lifetime with a boring, unimaginative man. — Lynn Austin

Often a whole community together suffers in consequence of a bad man who does wrong and contrives evil — Hesiod

The occupation of the stock-jobber yields no new or useful product; consequently having no product of his own to give in exchange, he has no revenue to subsist upon, but what he contrives to make out of the unskilfulness or ill-fortune of gamesters like himself. — Jean-Baptiste Say

The Way of Tao is this: It strives not, but conquers; It speaks not, but all is made clear; It summons not, but its house is crowded; It contrives not, but the design is perfect. — Laozi

Nothing retains its form; new shapes from old
Nature, the great inventor, ceaselessly
Contrives. In all creation, be assured,
There is no death - no death, but only change
And innovation; what we men call birth
Is but a different new beginning; death
Is but to cease to be the same. Perhaps
This may have moved to that and that to this,
Yet still the sum of things remains the same.
Nothing can last, I do believe, for long
In the same image. — Ovid

The greatest mystery about a human being is not his reaction to sex or praise, but the manner in which he contrives to put in twenty-four hours a day. — Sinclair Lewis

I really wasn't on the Dallas set much. I did three or four episodes so I didn't see too much. — Ted Shackelford

One notorious apikoros named Hiwa al-Balkhi, writing in ninth-century Persia, offered two hundred awkward questions to the faithful. He drew upon himself the usual thunderous curses - 'may his name be forgotten, may his bones be worn to nothing' - along with detailed refutations and denunciations by Abraham ibn Ezra and others. These exciting anathemas, of course, ensured that his worrying 'questions' would remain current for as long as the Orthodox commentaries would be read. In this way, rather as when Maimonides says that the Messiah will come but that 'he may tarry,' Jewishness contrives irony at its own expense. If there is one characteristic of Jews that I admire, it is that irony is seldom if ever wasted on them. — Christopher Hitchens

Nature sometimes contrives to disconcert by reflecting the image of our creation. — Sergio Pinto

Other nations merely change governments as a lady changes dancing partners: Canada contrives to fall in a dead faint every time the music stops. — Gordon Donaldson

Then you compared a woman's love to Hell,
To barren land where water will not dwell,
And you compared it to a quenchless fire,
The more it burns the more is its desire
To burn up everything that burnt can be.
You say that just as worms destroy a tree
A wife destroys her husband and contrives,
As husbands know, the ruin of their lives. — Geoffrey Chaucer

The darling schemes and fondest hopes of man are frequently frustrated by time. While sagacity contrives, patience matures, and labor industriously executes, disappointment laughs at the curious fabric, formed by so many efforts, and gay with so many brilliant colors, and, while the artists imagine the work arrived at the moment of completion, brushes away the beautiful web, and leaves nothing behind. — Timothy Dwight V

Four-fifths of all our troubles would disappear, if we would only sit down and keep still. — Calvin Coolidge

Often even a whole city suffers for a bad man who sins and contrives presumptuous deeds. — Hesiod

Who is he, the ill-disposed gentleman in pink?" inquire the Comte, when they were out of earshot.
"A creature of no importance," shrugged Philip.
"So I see. Yet he contrives to arouse your anger.?"
"Yes," admitted Philip. "I do not like the color of his coat. — Georgette Heyer

To force a lawyer on a defendant can only lead him to believe that the law contrives against him. — Potter Stewart

The second cause whence these rebellions sometimes proceed is the devil, who, in order to disquiet and disturb the soul, at times when it is at prayer or is striving to pray, contrives to stir up these motions of impurity in its nature; and if the soul gives heed to any of these, they cause it great harm. For through fear of these not only do persons become lax in prayer - which is the aim of the devil when he begins to strive with them - but some give up prayer altogether, because they think that these things attack them more during that exercise than apart from it, which is true, since the devil attacks them then more than at other times, so that they may give up spiritual exercises. — San Juan De La Cruz

America still is an exceptional country. We love to lead and we love to win. And we do it, when we take on any challenge and when we take - we support our friends. — Jeb Bush

A man to whom a woman cannot look up, she cannot love. Yet, it is marvelous how a woman contrives to find something to look up to in a man. — Arnold Haultain

It was in their friendship they just wanted to run forever, shadow and shadow. — Ray Bradbury

Whenever the deity contrives misfortunes for a man, he first harms their understanding. — Sophocles