"Systems in many respects resemble machines. A machine is a little system, created to perform, as well as to connect together, in reality, those different movements and effects which the artist has occasion for. A system is an imaginary machine invented to connect together in the fancy those different movements and effects which are already in reality performed... The machines that are first invented to perform any particular movement are always the most complex, and succeeding artists generally discover that, with fewer wheels, with fewer principles of motion, than had originally been employed, the fame effects may be more easily produced. The first systems, in the fame manner, are always the most complex, and a particular connecting chain, or principle, is generally thought necessary to unite every two seemingly disjointed appearances : but it often happens, that one great connecting principle is afterwards found to be sufficient to bind together all the discordant phænomena that occur in a whole species of things."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/System
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
System
108 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by System →
Related Quotes
"Some writers have exclaimed bitterly against systems of divinity, others have exaggerated the utility of them. Perhap…"
"By the term architectonic I mean the art of constructing a system. Without systematic unity, our knowledge cannot bec…"
"The different progress of opulence in different ages and nations, has given occasion to two different systems of poli…"
"When a system is brought before the public, professing to be new, and claiming to be considered as peculiarly useful,…"
"M. Fries, who is the founder of the system of quaternary arrangement, and the authority to which the most philosophic…"
"In proportion, therefore, as a system is of vast extent and made for duration, the more it requires to be governed by…"
"The sun, as we have already said, is placed in the middle of our system, as a source of light and heat, to illuminate…"
"According to the common system, before the creation of Matter, there was nothing but God, whose essence is immutable,…"
"Systems... resemble the similar parts or muscles of a body natural. By systemes; I understand any numbers of men joyn…"
"Systems seem, like certain worms, to be formed by a kind of generatio aequivoca--by the mere confluence of conception…"