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trouble quotes

  • It's a man's jobno place for women's plans here!what lies outside. Stay home and cause no trouble.

    -Aeschylus
    Septem contra Thebas, l.200^1 (translated by C M Dawson).

  • Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.

    -Tallulah Bankhead
    Attributed.

  • Mothers of large families (who claim to common sense) Will find aTiger will repay the trouble and expense.

    - (Joseph) Hilaire Pierre Belloc
      The Bad Child's Book of Beasts,'The Tiger'.

  • There may be trouble ahead But while there's moonlight and music and love and romance Let's face the music and dance

    - Irving originally Israel Baline Berlin
      'Let's Face the Music and Dance', in the film Follow the Fleet.

  • Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Job 5:7.

  • Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: Job he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Job14:1^2.

  • God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Psalms 46:1^2.

  • Better is little with the fear of the L than great treasure and trouble therewith. Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORDProverbs15:16^17.

  • I share all your antipathy to the noisy Plebeian excursionist. Avisit to Ramsgate during the season and the vision of the crowded, howling sands has left in me feelings which all my Radicalism cannot allay. At the same time I think that the lower orders are seen unfavourably when enjoying themselves. In labour and trouble they are more dignified and less noisy.

    - G(ilbert) K(eith) Chesterton
    Letter to E C Bentley. Collected in Maisie Ward Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1943).

  • Assoon as I stepped out of my mother's womb on to dry land, I realized that I had made a mistake†but the trouble with children is that they are not returnable.

    - Quentin Crisp
    US  film  actress.  Originally  a  nightclub  dancer,  she  began  in silent films in1925 and found fame in the1930s and1940s. 1968  The Naked Civil Servant, ch.2.

  • What's the aim of the school of business, for example? They teach students how business is conducted today and how to perpetuate it. Any wonder we're in trouble? They ought to be preparing students for the future, not for the past.

    -W(illiam) Edwards Deming
      Interview in the Wall Street  Journal, 4  Jun.

  • War, he sung, is toil and trouble; Honour but an empty bubble. Never ending, still beginning, Fighting still, and still destroying, If the world be worth thy winning, Think, oh think, it worth enjoying.

    -John Dryden
      Alexander's Feast, l.97^102.

  • The trouble with Moore is that he knows what a work of art is, and is trying to make one.

    - Roger Eliot Fry
    c.1930  Of Henry Moore. Quoted in Robert Medley Drawn from the Life: a Memoir (1983).

  • Women liketosit downwith trouble as if it were knitting.

    - Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
      The Sheltered Life, pt.3, section 3.

  •    Question not, but live and labour Till yon goal be won, Helping every feeble neighbour, Seeking help from none; Life is mostly froth and bubble, Two things stand like stone: in another's trouble, in your own.

    - Adam Lindsay Gordon
    KINDNESSCOURAGE1866  'Ye Wearie Wayfarer: Hys Ballad. In Eight Fyttes', in Bell's Life in Victoria, Nov1866, collected in Sea Spray and Smoke Drift (1867).

  • The trouble is that no devastating or redeeming fires have ever burnt in my life† My life began by flickering out.

    - Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov
      Oblomov, pt.2, ch.4 (translated by David Magarshak).

  • boss there is always a comforting thought in time of trouble when it is not our trouble 554

    - Don(ald Robert Perry) Marquis
      archy does his part,'comforting thoughts'.

  •    Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting†there are quite enough realcauses oftroublealready, and weneed not add to them by encouraging young men to kickeach other on the shins amid the roars of infuriated spectators.

    - George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair Orwell
      'The Sporting Spirit'.

  • Gertie recommended her to adopt the habit of not magnifying grievances; if you wanted to view trouble, you could take opera-glasses, but you should be careful to hold them the wrong way round.

    -W(illiam) Pett Ridge
      Love at Paddington Green, ch.4.

  • The trouble with me is, I always have to read that stuff by myself. If an actor reads it out, I hardly listen. I keep worrying about whether he's going to do something phoney every minute.

    -J(erome) D(avid) Salinger
      Of Hamlet.The Catcher in the Rye, ch.16.

  • The trouble with girls is, if they like a boy, no matter how big a bastard he is, they'll say he has an inferiority complex, and if they don't like him, no matter how nice a guy he is, or how big an inferiority complex he has, they'll say he's conceited. Even smart girls do it.

    -J(erome) D(avid) Salinger
    The Catcher in the Rye, ch.18.

  • I am a woman of the world, Hector; and I can assure you that if you will only take the trouble always to do the perfectly correct thing, and to say the perfectly correct thing, you can do just what you like.

    - George Bernard Shaw
      Lady Utterword to Hector Hushabye. Heartbreak House, act1.

  • Thereal priceofeverything, whateverything reallycosts to themanwho wants to acquire it, isthetoil and trouble of acquiring it. Labour was the first price, the original purchase money that was paid for all things.

    - Adam Smith
      An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of theWealth of Nations, bk.1, ch.5.

  • A lie is an abomination unto the Lord, and a very present help when in trouble.

    - Adlai E(wing) Stevenson
      Speech,Washington, Jan.

  • Here, where the world is quiet, Here, where all trouble seems Dead winds'and spent waves'riot In doubtful dreams of dreams.

    - Algernon Charles Swinburne
      Poems and Ballads,'The Garden of Proserpine'.

  • Trouble trouble and it will trouble you!

    - P(amela) L(yndon) Travers
      Mary Poppins. Mary Poppins, ch.12.

  • Well-a-well, man that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble, as the Scripture says.

    - Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens Twain
      Aunt Polly.TheAdventures ofTom Sawyer, ch.1.

  • Whenindanger, ponder. Whenintrouble, delegate. And when in doubt, mumble.

    - Robert Ferdinand,Jr Wagner
      In the NewYorkTimes,17 Feb.

  • Laugh, and the world laughs with you: Weep, and you weep alone; For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth, It has trouble enough of its own.

    - EllaWheeler Wilcox
      Poems of Passion,'Solitude'.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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