"Contriver" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... read this narrative, with the recollection, at the same time, in our minds of the boyish propensity of Sheridan to what are called practical jokes, without strongly suspecting that he was himself the contriver of the whole adventure. The ready attendance of the Justice,—the "unknown gentleman" deposed to by the post-boys,—the disappearance of the laquais, and the advice given by Sheridan that the affair should be pursued no ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... I believe I know some that have been familiarly acquainted with it. This is a little trick wrought by some pitiful contriver, envious of my ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... Dexterous contriver, he undoubtedly is. Lady Cowry has it from Sir Meeson Corby, who had it from the poor dowager, that Lord Fleetwood has installed the man in his house and sits at the opposite end of his table; fished him up from Whitechapel, where the countess is left serving oranges at a small ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... directing that the prisoner should be prosecuted at "His Majesty's Expence," stating that no endeavour would be wanting on their part to render that prosecution successful, and praying that, in order to bring to justice "the Wicked Contriver and Instigator of this Villainous Scheme," His Majesty might be pleased to offer by proclamation a reward for Cranstoun's apprehension. The signatories included the Mayor and Rector of Henley, divers county magnates, and ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... intelligence should be attributed to Nature, it would then be nothing more than the faculty of conserving herself in active existence by necessary means. In refusing to Nature the intelligence he himself enjoys—in rejecting the intelligent cause which is supposed to be the contriver of this Nature, or the principle of that order he discovers in her course, nothing is given to chance, nothing to a blind cause, nothing to a power which is indistinguishable; but every thing he beholds is attributed to real, to known causes; ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... inquiry through a long course of years he holds to be a better affirmative evidence than their failure to find a confirmation was negative. He argues from our delight in permanence, from the delicate contrivances and adjustments of created things, that the contriver cannot be forever hidden, and says ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... the assembly were twisted, and the eyes of all turned upon me with a frightful squint; not an individual present but squinted, - the genteel Pepa, the good-humoured Chicharona, the Casdami, etc. etc. The Gypsy fellow, the contriver of the jest, squinted worst ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... was a person of most excellent abilities; and, indeed, the Queen began to need and seek out men of both guards, and so I conclude to rank this {54} great instrument amongst the TOGATI, for he had not to do with the sword, more than as the great paymaster and contriver of the war which shortly followed, wherein he accomplished much, through his theoretical knowledge at home and his intelligence abroad, by unlocking of the ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... of having under false pretences deceived a young woman and her family, and of having by these means treacherously robbed her of her innocence? Can you, with honour, be the knowing, the wilful occasion, nay, the artful contriver of the ruin of a human being? Can you, with honour, destroy the fame, the peace, nay, probably, both the life and soul too, of this creature? Can honour bear the thought, that this creature is a tender, helpless, defenceless, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... in so familiar a manner, as to appear wholly unmoved at all the scenes of blood and desolation which I had painted as the common effects of those destructive machines; whereof," he said, "some evil genius, enemy to mankind, must have been the first contriver. As for himself, he protested, that although few things delighted him so much as new discoveries in art or in nature, yet he would rather lose half his kingdom, than be privy to such a secret; which he commanded me, as I valued any life, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... centuries to bear me witness stand by an opinion, not mine, nor yours, but that of all these ages. I will stand by the sentence of the word of God: the Spirit breatheth where it will (John iii. 8). There he is at it again; what circumvolutions, what wheels he is making! This trifler, this arch-contriver of words and sophisms, I know not to whom he can be formidable: tiresome he possibly will be. His tiresomeness will find its corrective in your sagacity: all that was formidable about him facts ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... it is the old drawing-desk that no one used. And you have put legs to it—how famous! You are the best contriver, Richard!" ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... state of mind. On reaching the studio, and just as he entered the door, he was inundated by the contents of a bucket of water, which one of his companions had suspended over the door, and managed to overturn on the head of Nicholas. Furious at this unexpected douche, he flew at its unlucky contriver, and gave him a hearty beating. There were three other lads in the studio; they all attacked Nicholas, who, however, proved more than their match, overthrowing two of his assailants, and obliging the third ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... Baggage, thou wicked Contriver of Mischief, what excuse had'st thou for running away? Thou ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... an artist; a shaper with the pencil or the chisel, a planner, a contriver capable of turning his hand to almost any work of eye and hand. It would not have been strange if he thought he could do everything, having gifts which were capable of various application,—and being an American citizen. But though he was a good draughtsman, and had made some reliefs ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the Lady Elizabeth, daughter of King James I., with Prince Frederick, the unfortunate Elector-Palatine, the Temple and Gray's Inn men gave a masque, of which Sir Francis Bacon was the chief contriver. The masque came to Whitehall by water from Winchester Place, in Southwark; three peals of ordnance greeting them as they embarked with torches and lamps, as they passed the Temple Garden, and as they landed. This short trip cost L300. The king, after ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the navvy was now dead. If that were the case it would be time for me to go; but I knew that so long as a man trusts himself to the current of Circumstance, reaching out for and rejecting nothing that comes his way, no harm can overtake him. It is the contriver, the schemer, who is caught by the Law, and never the philosopher. I knew that when the play was played, Destiny herself would move me on from the corpse; and I felt ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... expression. While objects and events were capriciously moralised, the mind's own plasticity has been developed by its great exercise in self-projection. To imagine himself a thunder-cloud or a river, the dispenser of silent benefits and the contriver of deep-seated universal harmonies, has actually stimulated man's moral nature: he has grown larger ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... on Cyrus, or Agesilaus, or Aristides, or Themistocles, or Philip, or Alexander; but read the praises of our own fellow-countrymen, of the heroes of your own family. You will not find any one praised on the ground of having been a cunning contriver, or procurer, of pleasure. The eulogies on their monuments signify no such thing; like this one which is at one of our gates, "In whose favour many nations unanimously agree that he was the noblest man of the nation." Do we think that many nations judged ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... susceptible to pain; but this may have been a necessary condition of its susceptibility to pleasure; a supposition which avails nothing on the theory of an omnipotent Creator, but is an extremely probable one in the case of a Contriver working under the limitation of inexorable laws and indestructible properties ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... adapter adviser affirmer aider almoner annoyer arbiter assenter asserter bailer caster censer (vessel) concocter condenser conferrer conjurer consulter continuer contradicter contriver convener conveyer corrupter covenanter debater defender deliberater deserter desolater deviser discontinuer disturber entreater exalter exasperater exciter executer (except in law) expecter frequenter granter idolater ...
— Division of Words • Frederick W. Hamilton
... rarifies and drives out the bullet which kills the Animal; in all which actions, there is nothing of intention or ratiocination to be ascrib'd either to the Animal or Engine, but all to the ingeniousness of the contriver. ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... the first piece, saw in Mr. Selby a respectable representative of an old dandy in "Barnaby Rudge." Moreover, the same gentleman is, we understand, the adapter of the drama from Boz's tale. That too proves him to be a clever contriver of situations, and an ingenious adept ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... competence, and it may then be regarded as not unlikely to have done some of them on purpose. Whereupon, the genesis of the eye ceases to be a mystery. All the appearances of contrivance that have resulted from the operation find their obvious and complete explanation in the assumption of a contriver, and all such hazy films as that of variability producing variation cease to be capable of serving as excuses for wilful blindness. And why should not the power in question be so credited? Here is Mr. Darwin's solitary reason why. He doubts whether the inference implied may not ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... different type. He was a fanatical and devoted believer in the Mahdi and a loyal follower of the Khalifa. For many years he had served on the northern frontier of the Dervish Empire, and his name was well known to the Egyptian Government as the contriver of the most daring and the most brutal raids. His cruelty to the wretched inhabitants of the border villages had excluded him from all hope of mercy should he ever fall into the hands of the enemy. His crafty skill, however, protected him, ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... criticism, declining peremptorily to accept of the ancient rules in matters of taste;—a rule in art which requires, of course, a corresponding rule of interpretation. In fact, it is no bad exercise for an ordinary mind, to undertake to track the contriver of these plays, through all the latitudes which his art, as he understands it, gives him. It is as good for that purpose, as a problem in mathematics. But, 'to whom you will not give an hour, you give nothing,' he says, and 'he had as lief ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... heavier than fire, in the same degree that the weight of water is lighter than the weight of the earth. Here he ordered vapors, here too, the clouds to take their station; the thunder, too, to terrify the minds of mortals, and with the lightnings, the winds that bring on cold. The Contriver of the World did not allow these indiscriminately to take possession of the sky. Even now, (although they each of them govern their own blasts in a distinct tract) they are with great difficulty prevented from rending ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... the man who was threatening by his reforming actions to deprive him of his pension? It was not an impossible theory. And others branched out of it. It was already evident to Brent that Simon Crood, big man though he was in the affairs of the borough, was a schemer and a contriver of mole's work: supposing that he and his gang had employed Krevin Crood as their emissary? That, too, was possible. Underground work! There was ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... horror of Mayor Bailly and his Municipals, word comes that Berthier has also been arrested; that he is on his way hither from Compiegne. Berthier, Intendant (say, Tax-levier) of Paris; sycophant and tyrant; forestaller of Corn; contriver of Camps against the people;—accused of many things: is he not Foulon's son-in-law; and, in that one point, guilty of all? In these hours too, when Sansculottism has its blood up! The shuddering Municipals send one of their number to escort ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... result, which it both causes or produces and is; the perfection of the plan being its success. It is the prevailing of Wisdom over Accident; and it, in turn, both produces and is the Glory and Laudation of the Great Infinite Contriver, whose plan is thus ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Sri Sury Wongse when I was first presented to him: a natural king among the dusky forms that surrounded him, the actual ruler of that semi-barbarous realm, and the prime contriver of its arbitrary policy. Black, but comely, robust, and vigorous, neck short and thick, nose large and nostrils wide, eyes inquisitive and penetrating, his was the massive brain proper to an intellect deliberate and systematic. Well found in the best idioms ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... from time to time the springs of the arm of this Automaton, in order to renew its MOVING FORCE, but this, you will observe, has no relation to its guiding FORCE or power of direction, which makes the great merit of this machine. In general I am of opinion, that the contriver influences the direction of almost every stroke played by the Automaton, although, as I have said, I have sometimes seen him leave it to itself for many moves together; which, in my opinion, is the most-difficult circumstance of all to comprehend in what regards this machine. M. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... captive count, not basely lamenting his fate nor abandoning himself to despair, but, with due resignation, employing himself in preparing several packs of cards for future exploits. The count, little suspecting that Wild had been the sole contriver of the misfortune which had befallen him, rose up and eagerly embraced him, and Wild returned his embrace with equal warmth. They were no sooner seated than Wild took an occasion, from seeing the cards lying on the table, ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... men. The theological machinery that spoke so livingly to our ancestors, with its finite age of the world, its creation out of nothing, its juridical morality and eschatology, its relish for rewards and punishments, its treatment of God as an external contriver, an 'intelligent and moral governor,' sounds as odd to most of us as if it were some outlandish savage religion. The vaster vistas which scientific evolutionism has opened, and the rising tide of social democratic ideals, have changed the type of our imagination, and the older monarchical ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... system of the organic world, they were held to furnish irrefragable as well as independent proof of a personal designer, a divine originator of Nature. By a confusion of thought, now obvious, but at the time not unnatural, they were also regarded as proof of a direct execution of the contriver's purpose in the creation of each organ and organism, as it were, in the manner man contrives and puts together a machine—an idea which has been set up as the orthodox doctrine, but which to St. Augustine and other learned Christian fathers would have ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... had ready access to him, and finding that he was willing to make a full and free confession of the origin, progress and consummation of the insurrectory movements of the slaves of which he was the contriver and head; I determined for the gratification of public curiosity to commit his statements to writing, and publish them, with little or no variation, from his own words. That this is a faithful record of his confessions, the annexed certificate of the County Court ...
— The Confessions Of Nat Turner • Nat Turner
... plaguy women are so impertinent, so full of reproaches, that I know not how to do any thing but curse them. And then, truly, they are for helping me out with some of their trite and vulgar artifices. Sally, particularly, who pretends to be a mighty contriver, has just now, in an insolent manner, told me, on my rejecting her proffered aids, that I had no mind to conquer; and that I was so wicked as to intend to marry, though I would not ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... asked the proxies of the absent. Are we then to believe that this bold spirit, this far-seeing mind, this astute, inventive, and politic Ignatius, born to rule other minds, and able always to subjugate his own will; that this contriver of a despotism, after having carried the principle of unconditional obedience, after having won the consent of his companions to the proposal that their master should be their master for life—are we to believe that he had never imagined it ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... any love towards him. The less you make him, the less he shall be able to harm you and yours; and if her Majesty's favour fail him, he will again decline to a common person. For after-revenges, fear them not, for your own father was esteemed to be the contriver of Norfolk's ruin, yet his son followeth your ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... pre-determine his infallible damnation, through the pre-consideration of him in sin, and may also forbear to work that effectual work in his soul that would infallibly bring him out of this condition, and yet neither be the author, contriver, nor means of man's ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... started. Metaphorically, he was no longer in the dark. She fancied that Sir George, Sir George whom she loved, was the contriver of this villainy. She thought that Sir George—Sir George, her cousin—was the abductor; that she was being carried off, not for her own sake, but as an obstacle to be removed from his path. The conception took ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... fan them, and they blaze. Cain had already shed a brother's blood: The Deluge washed it out; but left unquenched The seeds of murder in the breast of man. Soon, by a righteous judgment, in the line Of his descending progeny was found The first artificer of death; the shrewd Contriver who first sweated at the forge, And forced the blunt and yet unblooded steel To a keen edge, and made it bright for war. Him Tubal named, the Vulcan of old times, The sword and falchion their inventor claim, And the first smith was the first murderer's son. His ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... not quite according to the facts of the case; his wife having been the contriver of the stratagem, and remained in the prison herself to give him time ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... dining-room was through a suite of sleeping apartments; and the staircase, apparently cut out of the wall, had a beautiful little break-neck corner, which seemed made to prevent any one who once ascended from ever descending alive. Certainly the contriver of Woodford Cottage must have had some slight twist of the brain, which caused the building to partake ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... the reflection of the Chevalier d'Arcon, the contriver of the floating batteries. He remained on board the Talla Piedra till past midnight, and wrote to the French Ambassador in the first hours of his anguish: "I have burnt the Temple of Ephesus; everything is gone, and through my fault! What comforts ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... dead nor wounded, nor trace of blood, could be discovered; and at length men broke out in laughter, and stated their belief that the "hul thing was a hoax." So declared the dealer in hog-meat, who seemed rather gratified that he no longer stood alone as a contriver of false alarms. ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... the public mind had been adroitly fanned into flame by the evil genius of Lord Shaftesbury. Eachard states that if he was not the original contriver of this disturbance, "he was at least the grand refiner and improver of all the materials. And so much he seemed to acknowledge to a nobleman of his acquaintance, when he said, 'I will not say who started the game, but I am sure I had the full hunting of it.'" In the ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... to save his life, for she heard he was in a consumption. So these two mad wits were reconciled, and made a match of it, after Claudio and Hero were married; and to complete the history, Don John, the contriver of the villany, was taken in his flight, and brought back to Messina; and a brave punishment it was to this gloomy, discontented man, to see the joy and feastings which, by the disappointment of his plots, took place ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... freeman, he is to be delivered up by his master to the injured person. If the master suspect collusion between the slave and the injured person, he may bring the matter to trial: and if he fail he shall pay three times the injury; or if he obtain a conviction, the contriver of the conspiracy shall be liable to an action for kidnapping. He who wounds another unintentionally shall only pay ...
— Laws • Plato
... Now the first problem in house-building is to combine the advantage of shelter with the fresh elasticity of out-door air. I am not going to give here a treatise on ventilation, but merely to say, in general terms, that the first object of a house-builder or contriver should be to make a healthy house, and the first requisite of a healthy house is a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... well urg'd: I think it is not meet, 155 Mark Antony, so well belov'd of Caesar, Should outlive Caesar: we shall find of him A shrewd contriver; and, you know, his means, If he improve them, may well stretch so far As to annoy us all; which to prevent, 160 Let ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... water clocks, but only sundials; and further, an earlier time still in which sundials were not, nor any measurers of time of any kind. And this is distinct ground from that urged by Paley. For, besides holding that each of these contrivances must have had in turn an originator or contriver, it adds historic fact to philosophic inference. Geology takes up the master volume of the greatest of the natural theologians, and, after scanning its many apt instances of palpable design, drawn from the mechanism of existing plants and animals, authoritatively ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... embodiment of the English official classes, of English diplomacy, of the English Government with its hesitations, its insincerities, its double-faced schemes. Sir Evelyn Baring, he almost came to think at moments, was the prime mover, the sole contriver, of the ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... of this punch," Knower chirps cheerily. "Devilish good punch! Good glass, too. See the crest and the monogram blowed in. Put Kansas Coal Contriver's Company proceeds into that glass. But things are looking blue, sir, devilish blue; and I don't see the way out at all. Fact is, I'm getting pretty down in the mouth!" And the lobbyist put a bumper of punch in the same position. "People may talk, sir, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... first place, their views of the world differ. Some say it had no beginning, and cannot end; others boldly talk of its creator and his procedure; what particularly entertained me was that these latter set up a contriver of the universe, but fail to mention where he came from, or what he stood on while about his elaborate task, though it is by no means obvious how there could be place or time before the universe came ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata |
