To him, a stilted geometric love of arrangement was “system,” and indefatigable and feverish interest in the pettiest facets of day-to-day bureaucracy was “industry”, indecision when right was “caution”, and blind stubbornness when wrong, “determination.

To him, a stilted geometric love of arrangement was “system,” an indefatigable and feverish interest in the pettiest facets of day-to-day bureaucracy was “industry,” indecision when right was “caution,” and blind stubbornness when wrong, “determination.”

To him, a stilted geometric love of arrangement was "system," an indefatigable and feverish interest in the pettiest facets of day-to-day bureaucracy was "industry," indecision when right was "caution," and blind stubbornness when wrong, "determination." And withal he wasted no money, killed no man needlessly, and meant extremely well.

THE CHARACTERISTIC passion of Burke’s life was his love of order.

The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed
beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to
establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which
may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the
hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other
principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every
single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress
upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and
harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably,
and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.

He seemed to thrive on creating a sense of order, on understanding the tasks to be taken care of.

The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.

Insofar as we appreciate order, it is when we perceive it as being accompanied by complexity, when we feel that a variety of elements has been brought to order — that windows, doors and other details have been knitted into a scheme that manages to be at once regular and intricate. (p184)

i discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind, but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature.

Order is the pleasure of the reason; but disorder is the delight of the imagination.

As any poet knows, a system is a way of looking at the world.

Obsession is just what those too timorous to follow an idea through to its logical conclusion call determination.

Design is the conscious imposition of meaningful order.

SYSTEM (σύστημα, σύν ἵστημι, to place together) — is a full and connected view of all the truths of some department of knowledge. An organized body of truth, or truths arranged under one and the same idea, which idea is as the life or soul which assimilates all those truths. No truth is altogether isolated. Every truth has relation to some other. And we should try to unite the facts of our knowledge so as to see them in their several bearings. This we do when we frame them into a system. To do so legitimately we must begin by analysis and end with synthesis. But system applies not only to our knowledge, but to the objects of our knowledge. Thus we speak of the planetary system, the muscular system, the nervous system. We believe that the order to which we would reduce our ideas has a foundation in the nature of things. And it is this belief that encourages us to reduce our knowledge of things into systematic order. The doing so is attended with many advantages. At the same time a spirit of systematizing may be carried too far. It is only in so far as it is in accordance with the order of nature that it can be useful or sound. Condillac has a Traite des Systemes, in which he traces their causes and their dangerous consequences.