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"Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances but cannot bring into being the substance itself."
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"And the invention of transformations of certain figures has become the most important in musical composition."
"Melodic invention is one of the surest signs of a divine gift."
"Necessity used to be the mother of invention, but then we ran out of things that were necessary."
"Television has some lovely aspects to it - and some ghastly aspects - but the theater itself was a wonderful invention."
"It is obvious that anything a scientist discovers or invents is based on previous discoveries and inventions. The same applies to the arts."
"We fixed on No. 4, Queen Street Place, for our City offices, and it was from there that so many of my patented inventions were dated."
"I did not grasp all these details - and many more - right away. They came to my notice with time and as a result of necessity. I would be in the direst of dire straits, facing a bleak future, when some small thing, some detail, would transform itself and appear in my mind in a new light. It would no longer be the small thing it was before, but the most important thing in the world, the thing that would save my life. This happened time and again. How true it is that necessity is the mother of invention, how very true."
"Most of them are doomed to rapid extinction, but a few may make evolutionary inventions, such as physiological, ecological, or behavioral innovations that give these species improved competitive potential."
Explore more quotes by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
"Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of voice, but out of chaos."
"But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit what I shall soon cease to be - a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others and intolerable to myself."
"No, no, I will not live among the wild scenes of nature, the enemy of all that lives. I will seek the towns-Rome, the capital of the world, the crown of man's achievements. Among its storied streets, hallowed ruins, and stupendous remains of human exertion, I shall not, as here, find every thing forgetful of man; trampling on his memory, defacing his works, proclaiming from hill to hill, and vale to vale,-by the torrents freed from the boundaries which he imposed-by the vegetation liberated from the laws which he enforced-by his habitation abandoned to mildew and weeds, that his power is lost, his race annihilated for ever."
"I need not describe the feelings of those whose dearest ties are rent by that most irreparable evil, the void that presents itself to the soul, and the despair that is exhibited on the countenance. It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she whom we saw everyday and whose very existence appeared a part of our own can have departed forever - that the brightness of a beloved eye can have been extinguished and the sound of a voice so familiar and dear to the ear can be hushed, never more to be heard. (...) The time at length arrives when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity; and the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished."
"I spoke of my desire of finding a friend, of my thirst for a more intimate sympathy with a fellow mind than had ever fallen to my lot, and expressed my conviction that a man could boast of little happiness who did not enjoy this blessing."
"Now I am twenty-eight, and am in reality more illiterate than many schoolboys of fifteen. It is true that I have thought more, and that my day dreams are more extended and magnificent; but they want (as the painters call it) keeping; and I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind."
"Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye."
"A mind of moderate capacity which closely pursues one study must infallibly arrive at great proficiency in that study."
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