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Scientific theory is a contrived foothold in the chaos of living phenomena. -- Wilhelm Reich
Pleasure and pain, though directly opposite are contrived to be constant companions. -- Pierre Charron
The armored cars of dreams, contrived to let us do so many a dangerous thing. -- Elizabeth Bishop
After a while, a joke, if you say it too much, just becomes contrived, or fake-sounding. -- Dave Chappelle
I sing in five or six different voices that are all part of me. It's not contrived. -- Axl Rose
The wisdom of man never yet contrived a system of taxation that would operate with perfect equality. -- Andrew Jackson
Personality is everything that's false in a human: everything that's been added on to him and contrived. -- Sam Shepard
Life is made up of constant calls to action, and we seldom have time for more than hastily contrived answers. -- Learned Hand
Gentlemen can now only behave as such, or be tolerated as such, in circumstances that are manifestly contrived or unreal. -- Simon Raven
My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived. -- John Adams
There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern. -- Samuel Johnson
It destroys the soul to hear that you're all hype, that you have no talent, and that your whole career has been contrived. -- Freddie Mercury
A character who is thought-out is not born, he or she is contrived. A born character is round, a thought-out character is flat. -- Rex Stout
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. -- John F. Kennedy
Usually, when Nirvana made music, there wasn't a lot of conversation. We wanted everything to be surreal. We didn't want to have some contrived composition. -- Dave Grohl
Beauty and femininity are ageless and can't be contrived, and glamour, although the manufacturers won't like this, cannot be manufactured. Not real glamour; it's based on femininity. -- Marilyn Monroe
I think there's a lot to be said about just enjoying your work. It can be very contrived when people say their work is for the good of mankind. -- Ben Horowitz
When playing a role, I would feel more comfortable, as you're given a prescribed way of behaving. So, both Facebook and theatre provide contrived settings that provide the illusion of social interaction. -- Jesse Eisenberg
But from the time I was very little, it was something I would do all the time, just sing, dance and act. So it wasn't something that was fake or contrived as I got older. -- Jennifer Lopez
I just wanted to keep consistent and keep true to America and not seem contrived. I didn't want to seem contrived at all with any song choice that might be a detriment to my journey on 'The Voice.' -- Will Champlin
I am not suggesting that all those missionary organizations working in Haiti should pack up and go home, but I am urging them to understand that Haiti does not need clever Americans with newly contrived schemes for saving their country. -- Tony Campolo
It's not about how much movement you do, how much interaction there is, it just reeks of credibility if it's real. If it's contrived, it seems to work for a while for the people who can't filter out the real and unreal. -- Fred Durst
Capra is an old-time movie craftsman, the master of every trick in the bag, and in many ways he is more at home with the medium than any other Hollywood director. But all of his details give the impression of contrived effect. -- Manny Farber
I don't go off and sit down and try to write material, because then it's contrived and forced. I just live my life, and I see things in a word or a situation or a concept, and it will create a joke for me. -- Steven Wright
There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern... No, Sir; there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn. -- Samuel Johnson
I'm a socially concerned citizen of India. I have strong views on issues of social and political relevance. But it's very difficult to voice it in an intelligent manner without it sounding contrived. Because people think you're saying or doing all this as a PR exercise, not from your heart. -- Sonam Kapoor
Creativity is never too contrived. -- Albert Watson
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors and issues. -- T. S. Eliot
A growing nation is the greatest ponzi game ever contrived. -- Paul Samuelson
Cupid is naked and does not like artifices contrived by beauty. -- Propertius
If coincidences are just coincidences, why do they feel so contrived? -- Clyde Bruckman
Corporately contrived art product replaces inspired intellectual property with ineffectual poperty. -- Vanna Bonta
Leadership can't be forced or contrived. It has to be your personality. -- Aaron Rodgers
The contrived language and the flattering attitude rarely come with the virtue. -- Confucius
Only equals make friends, every other relationship is contrived and off balance. -- Maya Angelou
The truth is funny. Honest discovery, observation, and reaction is better than contrived invention. -- Del Close
There is change by necessity or adaptation, and there is contrived change or novelty. -- Wendell Berry
Nothing is contrived. At night, the clothes should pour like liquid over the body. -- Oscar de la Renta
All great song, from the first day when human lips contrived syllables, has been sincere song. -- John Ruskin
Greek is doubtless the most perfect [language] that has been contrived by the art of man. -- Edward Gibbon
I sing in five or six different voices that are all part of me. Its not contrived. -- Axl Rose
I never liked dance photography; it's very flat, and dance photography in the studio looks very contrived. -- Mikhail Baryshnikov
The (Academy Award) ceremonies are a two-hour meat parade, a public display with contrived suspense for economic reasons. -- George C. Scott
I feel that if you made your writing too contrived to meet the market, it wouldn't be any good. -- Cathy Marie Buchanan
It's part of my job to maintain the emotional reality and the naturalism even when the atmosphere is contrived. -- Michel Gondry
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
We only do what feels right. If something feels forced or contrived, then we pull back. We remain the Foo Fighters. -- Dave Grohl
My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived -- John Adams
ALGEBRA is a general Method of Computation by certain Signs and Symbols which have been contrived for this Purpose, and found convenient. -- Colin Maclaurin
If the mind is not contrived, it is spontaneously blissful, just as water, when not agitated, is by nature transparent and clear. -- Sogyal Rinpoche
Great men are the modelers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do and attain. --
After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions Guides us by vanities. -- T. S. Eliot
I think people dismiss celebrity memoirs as unreal, contrived and maybe partially made up. But that's definitely not true for anything that I write. -- Hilary Liftin
The bad stuff that is part and parcel of contrived social existence takes a back seat when you concentrate on the heart of Life itself. -- Valley Brown
All in Dali is indeed contrived, a brilliant illustration of his own psyche as he understands it, as opposed to how it truly may have been. -- Wendy Beckett
I had great difficulty in school interacting with others, and I took refuge in the contrived setting of play acting, which is what I still do. -- Jesse Eisenberg
You see reality TV and it's not reality TV. It's contrived and everything is plotted and scripted nearly. Documentaries are the same and just as bad. -- Ricky Gervais
The fathers who contrived and passed the Consititution were wise in their generation; as time passes, we come more and more to realize their powers of divination. -- Learned Hand
What a blessed thing it is, that Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left! -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
What a blessed thing it is, that Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left! -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
I think theres a lot to be said about just enjoying your work. It can be very contrived when people say their work is for the good of mankind. -- Ben Horowitz
Ivan had contrived somehow in the dark of night to replace every watermelon in the watermelon patch with a gravestone, and every gravestone in the engraver's lot with a watermelon -- Kristin Cashore
A studio session ... provides the greatest chance for control. Even though there is total freedom, I still dislike studio photography and the contrived images that usually stem from this genre. -- Eve Arnold
A celebrated north country apostle, who, after Calvin had damned ninety-nine in a hundred of mankind, had contrived a scheme for damning ninety-nine in a hundred of the followers of Calvin. -- William Godwin
There is nothing more dread and more shameless than a woman who plans such deeds in her heart as the foul deed which she plotted when she contrived her husband's murder. -- Homer
You know as a scientist that both were developed completely independently of each other in the laboratories. And only afterward were the political situations contrived out of which they could be justified. -- E. P. Thompson
We pretend to be a free society, and we pretend to be an adult society, but if you look at the facts, our news is just as contrived, and controlled as Pravda! -- Frank Zappa
When I consider how, after sunset, the stars come out gradually in troops from behind the hills and woods, I confess that I could not have contrived a more curious and inspiring sight. -- Henry David Thoreau
People who are genuinely involved in life, not just living a routine they've contrived to protect them from disaster, always seem to have more demanded of them than they can easily take on. -- Carolyn Heilbrun
If you're not inspired and you're working hard to pull inspiration from somewhere and make a song something it's not, then it's very contrived and I don't like to write music that's contrived. -- Halsey
O fools, awake! The rites ye sacred hold Are but a cheat contrived by men of old Who lusted after wealth and gained their lust And died in baseness-and their law is dust. -- Al-MaÊ¿arri
I've kept journals at many times in my life starting from when I was about 13 or 14. But it's boring and contrived to keep a journal every day. Better to write as the mood strikes. -- Erica Jong
The animal frame, though destined to fulfill so many other ends, is as a machine more perfect than the best contrived steam-engine-that is, is capable of more work with the same expenditure of fuel. -- James Prescott Joule
It's a no win situation. It's a mug's game. The religions have contrived to make it impossible to disagree with them critically without being rude. They play the hurt feelings card at every opportunity. -- Daniel Dennett
Behavior of such cunning cruelty that only a human being could have thought of or contrived it we call 'inhuman,' revealing thus some pathetic ideal standard for our species that survives all betrayals. -- Rose Macaulay
When you're writing a song with someone, it's a very personal process. The music has to be an organic experience, it can't be contrived, sometimes it is and I think people pick up on that. -- Jarryd James
The anchors now made are contrived so as to sink into the ground as soon as they reach it, and to hold a great strain before they can be loosened or dislodged from their station. -- William Falconer
We live in a polarized world of contrived dualisms, dichotomies and paradoxes: light vs. dark and good vs. evil. We as Mexic Amerindians/mestizas are the dark. We are the evilor at least, the questionable. -- Ana Castillo
When I do music I don't do it with a purpose in mind. I just feel like it's a little bit contrived if you try to do something like that. It's got to come organically. -- Jay Sean
We are accused here of polygamy, and actions the most indelicate, obscene, and disgusting, such that none but a corrupt and depraved heart could have contrived. These things are too outrageous to admit to belief... -- John Taylor
From the church I received a spiritual foundation that has kept me balanced. From the gospel music I learned the importance of singing with emotion- authentic emotion- not contrived- which has made my music endearing. -- Oleta Adams

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