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In general those who nothing have to say Contrive to spend the longest time in doing it. -- James Russell Lowell
I don't think you can contrive any sound. -- George Shearing
Yeah, I don't necessarily like endings that contrive an artificial moment of completion. -- Daniel Clowes
The actual writing of a song usually comes in the form of a realisation. I can't contrive a song. -- Gene Clark
I have a severe Google Reader habit. I think people will use blog forms and Twitter to contrive fiction. -- Patrick Nielsen Hayden
In every deed of mischief he had a heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute. -- Edward Gibbon
We have seen Indians in immense numbers, and all those on this coast of the Pacific contrive to make a good subsistence on various seeds, and by fishing. -- Junipero Serra
I hate how things must be classified. How this is applied to musicians implies that they somehow contrive their products and have studied the demographics of the audience. -- Trevor Rabin
War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans. -- Niccolo Machiavelli
The Chinese, by their favourite system of dwarfing, contrive to make it, when only a foot and a half or two feet high, have all the characters of an aged cedar of Lebanon. -- Robert Fortune
When we arrived in London, my sadness at leaving Paris was turned into despair. After my long stay in the French capital, huge, ponderous, massive London seemed to me as ugly a thing as man could contrive to make. -- James Weldon Johnson
How can you contrive to write so even? -- Jane Austen
None are as offended as those who contrive offense. -- Kurt Hanks
... that order generated without design can far outstrip plans men consciously contrive -- Friedrich August von Hayek
A heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute. -- Edward Gibbon
The greatest problem with women is how to contrive that they should seem our equals -- Cyril Connolly
Intelligence is not measured by the mind's ability to compute, but by the heart's will to contrive. -- Kimberly Adams Stedronsky
Why not? Why not?Why not not, then, if the best reasoning you can contrive is why not? -- David Foster Wallace
Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new compositions, any bungler can add to the old. -- Edmund Burke
Neither I nor any other man should, on trial or in way, contrive to avoid death at any cost. -- Socrates
Electric light is just another instrument. I have no desire to contrive fantasies mediumistically or sociologically over it or beyond it. -- Dan Flavin
Plot idea: 97% of the world's scientists contrive an environmental crisis, but are exposed by a plucky band of billionaires & oil companies. -- Scott Westerfeld
I know not any crime so great that a man could contrive to commit as poisoning the sources of eternal truth. -- Samuel Johnson
A character to me can't be contrived. I don't like to contrive characters. They have to have an element of truth. -- Jack Kirby
There's nothing people can't contrive to praise or condemn and find justification for doing so, according to their age and their inclinations. -- Moliere
Ill-health, of body or of mind, is defeat. Health alone is victory. Let all men, if they can manage it, contrive to be healthy! -- Thomas Carlyle
Man cannot make, or invent, or contrive principles; he can only discover them; and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author. -- Thomas Paine
If a book comes from the heart, it will contrive to reach other hearts; all art and author-craft are of small amount to that. -- Thomas Carlyle
Buddhists and Christians contrive to agree about death Making death their ideal basis for different ideals. The Communists however disapprove of death Except when practical. -- William Empson
Where necessity ends, desire and curiosity begin; and no sooner are we supplied with everything nature can demand than we sit down to contrive artificial appetites. -- Samuel Johnson
If this were fiction, could even the most brilliant novelist contrive to make credible so short a period in which pride had been subdued and prejudice overcome? -- P. D. James
When fate has allowed to any man more than one great gift, accident or necessity seems usually to contrive that one shall encumber and impede the other. -- Algernon Charles Swinburne
If you must commit suicide ... always contrive to do it as decorously as possible; the decencies, whether of life or of death, should never be lost sight of. -- George Henry Borrow
He said that few people had intellectual resources sufficient to forgo the pleasures of wine. They could not otherwise contrive how to fill the interval between dinner and supper. -- Samuel Johnson
Where two factions see vividly each its own aspect, and contrive their own explanations of what they see, it is almost impossible for them to credit each other with honesty. -- Walter Lippmann
But as some muskets so contrive it As oft to miss the mark they drive at, And though well aimed at dock or plover Bear wide, and kick their owners over. -- John Trumbull
I often think it's comical How Nature always does contrive That every boy and every gal That's born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative! -- W.S. Gilbert
Above all, it behooves us to repress, and if possible to extinguish once and for all, our inveterate tendency to judge others by the extent to which they contrive to be like ourselves. -- George F. Kennan
Whatever you lend let it be your money, and not your name. Money you may get again, and, if not, you may contrive to do without it; name once lost you cannot get again. -- Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
[Malipiero's advice to Casanova.] If you wish your audience to cry, you must shed tears yourself, but if you wish to make them laugh you must contrive to look as serious as a judge. -- Giacomo Casanova

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