Artifice Quotes - Page 5

• Modesty is the artifice of actors, similar to passion in call girls.

  Jackie Gleason

  Girl, Sarcastic, Passion

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• The world is very complicated and it is clearly impossible for the human mind to understand it completely. Man has therefore devised an artifice which permits the complicated nature of the world to be blamed on something which is called accidental and thus permits him to abstract a domain in which simple laws can be found.

  Eugene Wigner

  Nature, Science, Simple

  Eugene Paul Wigner (2012). “Philosophical Reflections and Syntheses”, p.283, Springer Science & Business Media

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• An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Heart, Rights, People

  James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay (2016). “The Federalist Papers: The Making of the US Constitution”, p.19, Arcturus Publishing

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• The girl in the mirror caught my eye briefly...It is an uncanny feeling, that rare occasion when one catches a glimpse of oneself in repose. An unguarded moment, stripped of artifice, when one forgets to fool even oneself.

  Kate Morton

  Girl, Eye, Mirrors

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• All is artifice in my world, Constantine. Even me. Especially me. He taught me to be a duchess, to be an impregnable fortress, to be the guardian of my own heart, But he admitted that he could not teach me how or when to allow the fortress to be breached or my heart to be unlocked. It would simply happen, he said. he promised it would, in fact. But how is love to find me, even assuming it is looking?

  Mary Balogh

  Heart, Taught, Facts

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• All art is a form of artifice.For in art there can be no prejudices.

  Arthur Symons

  Art, Prejudice, Form

  "Silhouettes". Book by Arthur Symons, Preface to kindle ebook, 2012.

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• Thou knowest not the endless artifices of a court. Invented crimes are often there alleged; but real ones, and those especially, which may offend his pride, are oftentimes not to a king divulged.

  Vittorio Alfieri

  Kings, Real, Pride

  Vittorio Alfieri (1876). “The Tragedies of Vittorio Alfieri: Complete, Including His Posthumous Works”

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• For it is not the bare Words, but the Scope of the writer that giveth true light, by which any writing is to bee interpreted; and they that insist upon single Texts, without considering the main Designe, can derive no thing from them clearly; but rather by casting atomes of Scripture, as dust before mens eyes, make everything more obscure than it is; an ordinary artifice of those who seek not the truth, but their own advantage.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Eye, Writing, Light

  "Leviathan". Book by Thomas Hobbes. The Third Part, Chapter 43, 1651.

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• The most offensive egotist is he that fears to say "I" and "me." "It will probably rain" - that is dogmatic. "I think it will rain" - that is natural and modest. Montaigne is the most delightful of essayists because so great is his humility that he does not think it important that we see not Montaigne. He so forgets himself that he employs no artifice to make us forget him.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Rain, Humility, Thinking

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2696, Delphi Classics

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• Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality. It speaks of what seems fantastic and unreal to those who have lost the simple intuitions which are the test of reality; and, as it is often found at war with its age, so it makes no account of history, which is fabled by the daughters of memory.

  James Joyce

  Daughter, Memories, War

  James Joyce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of James Joyce (Illustrated)”, p.2218, Delphi Classics

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• So long as we see the stones and joints, and are not deceived as to the points of support in any piece of architecture, we may rather praise than regret the dexterous artifices which compel us to feel as if there were fibre in its shafts and life in its branches.

  John Ruskin

  Regret, Long, Support

  John Ruskin (1849). “The Seven Lamps of Architecture”, p.34

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• Everything you do is so personal. In the end, it doesn't matter so much if you write about your own life or not. It's going to be as much artifice when it comes out as a piece of music. Everything is in character in a way. But that's a great thing.

  Jenny Hval

  Writing, Character, Pieces

  "Jenny Hval's Soft Dick Rock". Interview with Jenn Pelly, pitchfork.com. June 15, 2015.

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• The very object of an art, the principle of its artifice, is precisely to impart the impression of an ideal state in which the man who reaches it will be capable of spontaneously producing, with no effort of hesitation, a magnificent and wonderfully ordered expression of his nature and our destinies.

  Paul Valery

  Art, Destiny, Men

  "The Art of Poetry". Book by Paul Valery, 1958.

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• Not to discover weakness is The Artifice of strength.

  Emily Dickinson

  Strength, Weakness

  Emily Dickinson, Cristanne Miller (2016). “Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them”, p.461, Harvard University Press

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• One wants to see the artifice of the thing as well as the subject.

  Richard Diebenkorn

  Want, Wells, Subjects

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• The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men.

  Samuel Adams

  Country, Struggle, Patriotic

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• Each day is a miracle that intoxicates me. I want more. I greet every morning like a new pleasure. And yet I am keenly aware of all life's artifices. Getting dressed, wearing make-up, laughing, having fun-isn't all that just playing a role? Am I not more profound, carrying the burden of those twenty years when I 'wasn't alive', than all those who rushed around in vain during that time?

  Malika Oufkir

  Morning, Fun, Years

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• By close inspection... you will discover the manner of handling the artifices of contrast, glazing, and other expedients, by which good colorists have raised the value of their tints, and by which nature has been so happily imitated.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Imitation, Inspection, Raised

  Sir Joshua Reynolds (1860). “The Life and Writings of Sir Joshua Reynolds: First President of the Royal Academy”

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• We are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude, but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favor

  Samuel Johnson

  Self, Giving, Growth

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy, Francis Pearson Walesby (1825). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D..: The Rambler”, p.37

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• He was bookish, she was not; he was theoretical, she political. She called a rose a rose. He called it an accumulation of cultural and biological constructions circulating around the mutually attracting binary poles of nature/artifice.

  Zadie Smith

  Rose, Political, Construction

  "On Beauty". Book by Zadie Smith, 2005.

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• The theatre, for all its artifices, depicts life in a sense more truly than history, because the medium has a kindred movement to that of real life, though an artificial setting and form.

  George Santayana

  Real, History, Theatre

  George Santayana, Martin A. Coleman (2009). “The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings”, p.84, Indiana University Press

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• Customary use of artifice is the sign of a small mind, and it almost always happens that he who uses it to cover one spot uncovers himself in another.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Mind, Use, Spots

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• Being blonde is definitely a different state of mind. I can't really put my finger on it, but the artifice of being blonde has some incredible sort of sexual connotation. Men really respond to it. I love blonde hair but it really does something different to you. I feel more grounded when I have dark hair, and I feel more ethereal when I have light hair. It's unexplainable. I also feel more Italian when my hair is dark.

  Madonna Ciccone

  Dark, Italian, Men

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself that I portray... I am myself the matter of my book.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Fashion, Book, Simple

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.2, Stanford University Press

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• O cruel cloudless space,
  And pale bare ground where the poor infant lies!
  Why do we feel restored
  As in a sacramental place?
  Here Mystery is artifice,
  And here a vision of such peace is stored,
  Healing flows from it through our eyes.

  May Sarton

  Lying, Healing, Eye

  May Sarton (2014). “In Time Like Air: Poems”, p.55, Open Road Media

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