What is "contrivances"

Usage examples of "contrivances".

She was more formed than Cecilia, although one year younger, and seemed anxious to convince me of her superiority, but, thinking that the fatigue of the preceding night might have exhausted my strength, she unfolded all the armorous ideas of her mind, explained at length all she knew of the great mystery she was going to enact with me, and of all the contrivances she had had recourse to in order to acquire her imperfect knowledge, the whole interlarded with the foolish talk natural to her age.

What overwhelmed me was the distressing idea that all my pains and contrivances were of no use, nevertheless I felt neither sorry nor repentant for what I had done, and I made myself abstain from thinking of what was going to happen, and thus kept myself calm.

And it is much to be deplored that the place to which you devote so considerable a portion of the whole term of your natural life, should be so sadly destitute of anything approaching to a cosy inhabitiveness, or adapted to breed a comfortable localness of feeling, such as pertains to a bed, a hammock, a hearse, a sentry box, a pulpit, a coach, or any other of those small and snug contrivances in which men temporarily isolate themselves.

He was like one of those unreasoning but still highly useful, multum in parvo, Sheffield contrivances, assuming the exterior-- though a little swelled--of a common pocket knife.

He was like one of those unreasoning but still highly useful, multum in parvo, Sheffield contrivances, assuming the exterior — though a little swelled — of a common pocket knife.

The evils latent in the most promising contrivances are provided for as they arise.

All contrivances by ballot we know experimentally to be vain and childish to prevent a discovery of inclinations.

But when men think that these beggarly contrivances may supply a resource for the evils which result from breaking up the foundations of public order, and from causing or suffering the principles of property to be subverted, they will, in the ruin of their country, leave a melancholy and lasting monument of the effect of preposterous politics and presumptuous, short-sighted, narrow-minded wisdom.

I do not wish to pry into your secrets: but I must confess that this Nautilus, with the motive power which is confined in it, the contrivances which enable it to be worked, the powerful agent which propels it, all excite my curiosity to the highest pitch.

I seated myself, and he began thus: Chapter XI All By Electricity “Sir,” said Captain Nemo, showing me the instruments hanging on the walls of his room, “here are the contrivances required for the navigation of the Nautilus.

There was a vast difference noticeable between these consummate apparatuses and the old cork breastplates, jackets, and other contrivances in vogue during the eighteenth century.

At half-past eight we were equipped for this new excursion, and provided with two contrivances for light and breathing.

In many other cases, far from there being any aids for self-fertilisation, there are special contrivances, as I could show from the writings of C.

If our reason leads us to admire with enthusiasm a multitude of inimitable contrivances in nature, this same reason tells us, though we may easily err on both sides, that some other contrivances are less perfect.

If we admire the several ingenious contrivances, by which the flowers of the orchis and of many other plants are fertilised through insect agency, can we consider as equally perfect the elaboration by our fir-trees of dense clouds of pollen, in order that a few granules may be wafted by a chance breeze on to the ovules?