Top 195 Contrived Quotes & Sayings

It destroys the soul to hear that you're all hype, that you have no talent, and that your whole career has been contrived.

I sing in five or six different voices that are all part of me. Its not contrived.

The contrived language and the flattering attitude rarely come with the virtue.

If the mind is not contrived, it is spontaneously blissful, just as water, when not agitated, is by nature transparent and clear.

Pleasure and pain, though directly opposite are contrived to be constant companions.

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.'

I feel that if you made your writing too contrived to meet the market, it wouldn't be any good.

Leadership can't be forced or contrived. It has to be your personality.

There are a lot of challenges I undeniably have faced as a black person both in the U.K. and in the U.S. that contrived to make me feel lesser than what I am.

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.

The great enemy of the truth is not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest but the myth persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

Sitcom storylines are usually incredibly contrived.

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

I have never, ever, as God is my witness, contrived a single debate in a single show.

If anyone can crack the publicity nut and figure out how to not come across hammy and contrived, I'd love to talk to them.

The armored cars of dreams, contrived to let us do so many a dangerous thing.

ALGEBRA is a general Method of Computation by certain Signs and Symbols which have been contrived for this Purpose, and found convenient.

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.

I think the stuff that's very spontaneous, not contrived at all, is the stuff that works.

Cupid is naked and does not like artifices contrived by beauty.

The wisdom of man never yet contrived a system of taxation that would operate with perfect equality.

Great men are the modelers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do and attain.

Creativity is never too contrived.

How came the bodies of animals to be contrived with so much art, and for what ends were their several parts? Was the eye contrived without skill in Opticks, and the ear without knowledge of sounds?...and these things being rightly dispatch’d, does it not appear from phænomena that there is a Being incorporeal, living, intelligent...?

Your look shouldn't be contrived.

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.

Nothing is contrived. At night, the clothes should pour like liquid over the body.

A character to me can't be contrived. I don't like to contrive characters. They have to have an element of truth.

History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors and issues.

Marketing is more important than it has ever been. But I'm trying to tear the layers back and make it not so contrived. I think people just want entertainment.

I sing in five or six different voices that are all part of me. It's not contrived.

Greek is doubtless the most perfect [language] that has been contrived by the art of man.

Life is made up of constant calls to action, and we seldom have time for more than hastily contrived answers.

I don't know if it's because my sensitivity is through the roof, but I can't stand contrived dialogue anymore.

It's part of my job to maintain the emotional reality and the naturalism even when the atmosphere is contrived.

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.

Corporately contrived art product replaces inspired intellectual property with ineffectual poperty.

After a while, a joke, if you say it too much, just becomes contrived, or fake-sounding.

Great as the planning were for the dinner, the lot was so contrived that not a soul in the house be supposed to be kept from the break of day ceremony of Blessing in the church.

If a character's suddenly spouting information that's supposed to bring you up to date, it can seem artificial or contrived.

Personality is everything that's false in a human: everything that's been added on to him and contrived.

We only do what feels right. If something feels forced or contrived, then we pull back. We remain the Foo Fighters.

All great song, from the first day when human lips contrived syllables, has been sincere song.

You can tell if there's magic in something. When you start it, you want to finish it and you want it to be perfect. 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.

Of course it's contrived, but once you know how its contrived, you can understand the editorial viewpoint. CNN, for example, when you see where they're really coming from, you can subtract their bias, and get some sort of facts. Sometimes the amount of bias that is imposed in these things is so laughable that it gives you an extra layer of entertainment.

It seemed to me singularly ill-contrived for the British government to be going to war with Hitler when Hitler might have been about to attack the Russians, and even more ill-contrived that, when Hitler did attack the Russians, he had already defeated the French army. What I'm saying is that the war shouldn't have been started in September 1939...from the point of view of Britain, the war was really not a good thing and I would regard it as, in effect, a defeat.

The truth is funny. Honest discovery, observation, and reaction is better than contrived invention.

The (Academy Award) ceremonies are a two-hour meat parade, a public display with contrived suspense for economic reasons.

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.

Scientific theory is a contrived foothold in the chaos of living phenomena.

I love diamond jewellery on men, and pocket scarves, cravats, cufflinks. The trick is to throw it together so it's natural and not contrived. That's real style.

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.

Only equals make friends, every other relationship is contrived and off balance.

Gentlemen can now only behave as such, or be tolerated as such, in circumstances that are manifestly contrived or unreal.

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.

My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.

A growing nation is the greatest ponzi game ever contrived.

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!

My records do not require a lot of thought of 'What is this?' and 'What is that?' That would be too contrived for me.

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.