Contrivance

Famous quotes containing the word contrivance:

    By this contrivance the machinery of my work is of a species by itself; two contrary motions are introduced into it, and reconciled, which were thought to be at variance with each other. In a word, my work is digressive, and it is progressive too,—and at the same time.
    Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)

    No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.... A man in a jail has more room, better food and commonly better company.
    Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)

    When I was very young and first worked in Hollywood, the films had bred in me one sole ambition: to get away from them; to live in the great world outside movies; to meet people who created their own situations through living them; who ad-libbed their own dialogue; whose jokes were not the contrivance of some gag writer.
    Anita Loos (1888–1981)