"Contingence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... many good moral precepts, honest, upright, and sober in their conversation, yet in effect they are the same (accounting no man a good scholar that is not an atheist), nimis altum sapiunt, too much learning makes them mad. Whilst they attribute all to natural causes, [6646]contingence of all things, as Melancthon calls them, Pertinax hominum genus, a peevish generation of men, that misled by philosophy, and the devil's suggestion, their own innate blindness, deny God as much as the rest, hold all religion a fiction, opposite to reason and philosophy, though ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... so as not to be dependent, in its determinations, on any cause without itself, nor determined by anything prior to its own acts. 2. Indifference belongs to liberty in their notion of it, or that the mind, previous to the act of volition, be in equilibrio. 3. Contingence is another thing that belongs and is essential to it; not in the common acceptation of the word, as that has been already explained, but as opposed to all necessity, or any fixt and certain connection with some previous ground or reason of its existence. They suppose the essence of liberty ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... Did not His eye rule all things, and intend The least of our concerns (since from the least The greatest oft originate), could chance Find place in His dominion, or dispose One lawless particle to thwart His plan, Then God might be surprised, and unforeseen Contingence might alarm Him, and disturb The smooth and equal course of His affairs. This truth, philosophy, though eagle-eyed In nature's tendencies, oft overlooks; And, having found His instrument, forgets Or disregards, or, more presumptuous still, Denies the power ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper |
