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Trouble

  • Too often in ironing out trouble someone gets scorched.

  • Trouble, like the hill ahead, straightens out when you advance upon it.

  • Nobody knows the trouble we've seen — but we keep trying to tell them.

  • In my experience, people who go about looking for trouble usually find it.

  • ... fretting at trouble only doubles it.

    • George Sand,
    • 1870, in Francis Steegmuller and Barbara Bray, eds., Flaubert-Sand: The Correspondence ()
  • ... when one has an insatiable appetite for trouble all sorts will serve ...

  • Day after day she dragged her trouble over to our house like a sick animal she couldn't cure, couldn't kill.

  • You can't drown your troubles ... because troubles can swim.

  • Don't borrow trouble. The interest is too high.

  • It's not the end of the world.

  • Trouble is a chisel that shapes and designs.

  • A silver lining is usually pretty wistful optimism. In fact, the chances are, you have to find a silver lining to the silver lining, if you know what I mean. As for me, I like my silver without any cloud.

  • Old roses ... are full of instructions on how to live right. ... If you are attacked by disease, abandonment, or a bad chain of events, do not necessarily despair. There is always the chance you were bred to be tough.

  • ... things are never so indescribably ghastly that they can't get worse.

  • ... half the trouble in life is caused by pretending there isn't any.

  • The same fire that hardens the egg will melt the butter; and much depends on the personality type, whether you customarily rise to a challenge or whether you sink. For as long as I can remember, I have been a sinker. One challenge, and I drop like a rock.

  • ... it isn't true, by the way, that nothing is as bad as you think it's going to be. Some things are exactly as bad as you thought they were going to be, and some things are worse.

  • Trouble is said to be good for an artist's soul but almost never is.

  • It's always something to remind you that everything ain't never gonna be alright!

  • When you get to the end of your rope — tie a knot in it and hang on.

  • Troubles, even the dullest, are always mildly interesting at the first hearing ...

  • The only really satisfactory confidante for your troubles is someone who enjoys them, and this inevitably cuts out anyone who actually loves you.

  • It has turned out to be an annus horribilis.

    • Elizabeth II,
    • on a year of scandals, in U.S. News & World Report ()
  • People who hate trouble generally get a good deal of it.

  • There ain't nothing from the outside that can lick any of us.

  • ... to have a crisis, and act upon it, is one thing. To dwell in perpetual crisis is another.

  • Look at a problem as an opportunity, not a disaster.

  • Bad and good, loving and unloving, ugly and handsome are not so separated as lucky and unlucky. She felt cold around the heart. Those miserable ones for whom nothing ever went right, whose stores burned down, whose wives had female diseases, whose children whined, who were themselves stricken with kidney disease, beaten in horse trades, burdened with cows that soured and tobacco that mildewed, who got sick on good whisky, broke wind in company and were constipated in private, this was the common run of mankind, and after tomorrow morning, he, who had lived in his pride of being above such men, would be right down in their midst.

  • I have always been better able to confront the disaster that is real than the one I imagine.

  • She would take any amount of trouble to avoid trouble.

  • Accident is veiled necessity.

  • A dead grief is easier to bear than a live trouble.

  • Troubles cured you salty as a country ham, / smoky to the taste, thick skinned and tender inside ...

  • How beautiful is trouble / actively pursued.

  • Women like to sit down with trouble as if it were knitting.

  • The truth is, we like to talk over our disasters, because they are ours; and others like to listen, because they are not theirs.

  • To speak broadly, the troubles of life as we find them are mainly traceable to the heart or the purse.

  • ... we know that the Furies do not come uninvited.

  • When a great burden is lifted, the relief is not always felt at once. The galled places still ache.

  • A depressing and difficult passage has prefaced every new page I have turned in life.

  • Adversity is a good school.

    • Charlotte Brontë,
    • 1839, in Margaret Smith, ed., The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, vol. 1 ()
  • I have no faith in the sense of comforting beliefs which persuade me that all my troubles are blessings in disguise.

  • But the cloud never comes in that quarter of the horizon from which we watch for it.

  • ... it was like living in a house that couldn't be cured of the habit of catching on fire, on a ship that got wrecked every day.

  • ... one should discuss one's difficulties only when they are over.

  • If you look at life one way, there is always cause for alarm.

  • Any pilot may Navigate in smooth water. He who can conduct a Ship in a Storm, tho he has harder labour, will feel more Satisfaction when he reflects, that his Labours have largely contributed to her Safety.

    • Abigail Adams,
    • letter (1788), in John P. Kaminski, The Quotable Abigail Adams ()
  • If a person is hit hard enough, even if she stands, she falls.

  • ... the little things in life often make more trouble than the big things.

  • ... let's not borrow trouble. The rate of interest is too high.

  • ... adversity is so rough a teacher!

  • Ah! the difference, whether the hearse stands before one's own door, or one's neighbor's.

  • Turbulence, like many forms of trouble, cannot always be seen. We bounce so hard my arms sail helplessly above my head. In evolution, wing bones became arms and hands; perhaps I'm de-evolving.

  • Time is a Test of Trouble — / But not a Remedy — / If such it prove, it prove too / There was no Malady --.

    • Emily Dickinson,
    • c. 1863, in Thomas H. Johnson, ed., The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson ()
  • A trouble shared was a trouble exacerbated.

  • If only life were one long crisis, everyone would be perfect.

  • Problems, unfortunately, can be addicting. Like it or not, we take a certain amount of pride in the very problems that distress us.

  • Emotional troubles are like landfill. Get them outside, and the air disintegrates them.

    • Joan Rivers,
    • with Richard Merryman, Still Talking ()
  • The great crises of life are not, I think, necessarily those which are in themselves the hardest to bear, but those for which we are least prepared.

  • I think there is this about the great troubles — they teach us the art of cheerfulness; whereas the small ones cultivate the industry of discontent.

  • Once you begin being naughty, it is easier to go on and on, and sooner or later something dreadful happens.

  • She had observed that it was from those who had never sailed stormy waters came the quickest and harshest judgments on bad seamanship in heavy seas.

  • ... I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship.

  • Some flowers give out little or no odour until crushed.

    • Abigail May Alcott,
    • 1842, in Eve LaPlante, Marmee and Louisa: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother ()
  • Part of the trouble is that I've never properly understood that some disasters accumulate, that they don't all land like a child out of an apple tree.

  • One should be allowed to choose one's burden.

  • ... our old nurse used to say, 'If you don't trouble trouble, trouble won't trouble you,' and, 'Let sleeping dogs lie.'

  • There is a country proverb which says, 'If you don't trouble trouble — trouble won't trouble you.'

  • Troubles never come singly.

  • Hard times require furious dancing.

  • In the face of adversity, stand tall and look stern straight ahead. No one will have the opportunity to ride your back, unless it is bent. And no one will have the opportunity to slay you or wither your spirit — unless your head is bent downward in shame or despair, and you can't see the tragedy before you or the hope that lies ahead.

  • Almost anything is easier to get into than to get out of.

  • ... serious difficulties don't vanish by themselves, they are standing around your bed when you open the eyes the next morning.

  • ... the night of trouble is at times so dark that the interwoven gold with which Providence relieves the woof of calamity remains undiscovered.

  • There never was a storm that didn't end.

  • Great difficulties may be surmounted by patience and perseverance.

    • Abigail Adams,
    • 1775, in Frank Shuffelton, ed., The Letters of John and Abigail Adams ()
  • This is how Americans think. You believe that if something terrible happens to someone, they must have deserved it.

  • The rainiest nights, like the rainiest lives, are by no means the saddest.

  • Most trouble is unnecessary. Between the indignity of being born and the agony of dying enough bad things must of necessity happen to people. But we can't be satisfied with that. We have to go to work and see how much additional trouble we can create. Misunderstanding, turmoil, effort put on all the wrong things, and then more misunderstanding.

  • Nobody knows you when you're down and out.

    • Bessie Smith,
    • song title associated with her (1929), in Elaine Feinstein, Bessie Smith ()
  • Crises are two edged; they always create possibilities for both evil and good.

  • There are two kinds of ordeals, of course: those we choose and those that seem to choose us.

  • Usually one gets a heavier cross when one attempts to get rid of an old one.

    • Edith Stein,
    • 1936, in Dr. L. Gelber and Romaeus Leuven, O.C.D., eds., The Collected Works of Edith Stein, vol. 5 ()
  • Things that don't get better, get worse.

  • If a care is too small to be turned into a prayer, it is too small to be made into a burden.

  • 'Tis emblematic, the rose of youth and health soon fades when watered by the tear of affliction.

  • ... a trouble shared is a trouble half endured.

  • I don't so much mind the falling, but I do seem to select the hardest spots to light on.

  • Feed the alligators and you get bigger alligators.

  • Problems are messages.

  • Experience has convinced me that life's patches of awfulness may be purposeful and, in the end, benevolent.

  • Dr. Johnson said that telling one's troubles was asking for pity or praise. ... But it is more than that. You ask to be met at the point of your reality.

  • ... there is always this about a nadir, that any subsequent motion must inevitably be upwards. Unless, of course, the pendulum has stopped.

  • Shifting problems is the first rule for a long and pleasant life.

  • ... life has this in common with prizefighting: if you've received a belly blow, it's likely to be followed by a right to the jaw.

  • You may never know when things start to go bad, but when things are worse you know it.

  • Ah, trouble, trouble, there are the two different kinds ... there's the one you give and the other you take.

  • At first trouble is a new experience — gradually you learn that — that it isn't fatal.

  • Let sleeping dogs lie is an excellent maxim, unless you are stronger than the dog.

  • What turns a work crisis into a life crisis is the infusion of dread.

  • One suffers in silence from the trouble that humiliates.

  • Some folks goes right under when trouble comes, but I carry mine fur an' easy.

  • ... things never seem as bad as they are.

  • Deprivation and frustration are as much a part of life as gratification.

  • Dare we face the question of just how much of the darkness around us is of our own making?

  • Let me never hear the world 'trouble.' Only tell me how the thing is to be done, to be done rightly, and I will do it if I can.

    • Queen Victoria,
    • in Augustus J.C. Hare, The Story of My Life, vol. 5 ()
  • ... he was the man for trouble. He regretted, of course, that people should get into it, but being in he was their man.

  • Tribulation first makes one realize what one is.

  • We are all of us very perfect creatures so long as we are not tried.

  • ... the worst times come to an end if you can only wait long enough.

  • Build for yourself a strong box, / Fashion each part with care; / When it's strong as your hand can make it, / Put all your troubles there; / ... / Lock all your heartaches within it, / Then sit on the lid and laugh.

    • Bertha Adams Backus,
    • "Then Laugh" (1911), in Hazel Felleman, ed., The Best Loved Poems of the American People ()
  • ... it is not given to everyone to shine in adversity.

  • Nobody knows the trouble you've seen — and nobody wants to.

  • ... people in great trouble don't change to other people. They only change to themselves.

  • One thing can be said for inviting trouble — it generally accepts.

  • I always knew I would turn a corner and run into this day, but I ain't prepared for it nohow.

  • It's darn today, damn tomorrow, and next week it'll be goddamn.

  • [On her husband Diego Rivera:] I suffered two grave accidents in my life. One in which a steetcar knocked me down. ... The other accident is Diego.

  • Troubles seldom come singly; they recognize a hospitable home and keep the door open.

  • Most of us think we've had more trouble than we deserve.

  • The unfortunate thing about certain ills is that they bring others in their train — more serious ones ...

  • But unfortunately, Genji reflected, people who do not get into scrapes are a great deal less interesting than those who do.

  • There are two kinds of trouble: The kind you have and the kind you haven't. There are but few of the first sort, but of the second there is no end.

  • Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you.

  • ... contemplating the misfortunes of others does not lighten one's own trouble but instead adds to it.

  • From the fallen tree everybody makes firewood.

  • A worried man could borrow a lot of trouble with practically no collateral ...

  • What a world this would be if we could forget our troubles as easily as we forget our blessings.

  • The worst of my life is over, / I hope, / And may the best things, please, / come soon.

  • ... God has given me the bread of adversity and the water of trouble ...

    • Anne Askew,
    • The Latter Apprehension and Examination of the Worthy Martyr of God, Mistress Anne Askew, Written By Herself
    • ()
  • People who think dying is the worst thing don't know a thing about life.

  • In the deep valleys, and deeper still, / I found my heights ... against my will.

    • Leonora Speyer,
    • "Down to the Heights," in Harriet Monroe, ed., Poetry ()
  • Living in a culture that prefers to shut out the dark, avoid shadows, and anesthetize pain means that many people are isolated. ... Family, friends, and co-workers, fearful of the dark, are reluctant to participate in our shadow experience and may urge us to be done with the dark before it is done with us.

  • Just as there are rocks which receive the constant shock and spray, the battering of waves, so there are heads about which passions roar.

  • Here's a pretty kettle of fish.

    • Queen Mary,
    • in Frances Lonsdale Donaldson, Edward VIII: The Road to Abdication ()
  • I've ridden on the back of trouble all my life.

  • ... nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be.

  • When fate's got it in for you there's no limit to what you may have to put up with.

  • Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms, you would never see the beauty of their carvings.

  • Trouble was only trouble, and once you were in, it wasn't as bad as being afraid of trouble.

  • It is in the middle of misery that so much becomes clear. The one who says nothing good comes of this is not yet listening.

  • Sometimes, you know, you have to cause trouble to end trouble.

  • A bad penny is sure to return.

  • Down on me, down on me, / Looks like everybody in this whole round world / Is down on me.

    • Janis Joplin,
    • "Down on Me," Big Brother & the Holding Company ()
  • ... sleep on your troubles ... there's good advice in the pillow.

  • Shipwreck in youth is sorrowful enough, but one looks for storms at the spring equinox. Yet it is the September equinox that drowns.

  • If we had no winter the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.

    • Anne Bradstreet,
    • "Meditations Divine and Moral" (1664), in John Harvard Ellis, ed., The Works of Anne Bradstreet in Prose and Verse ()
  • Beany thought, as troubled human beings have always thought, how trivial other folks' problems were, compared to her own.

  • When my husband Frank and I were living in Pakistan many years ago, our six-month-old baby died. An old Punjabi who heard of our grief came to comfort us. 'A tragedy like this is similar to being plunged into boiling water,' he explained. 'If you are an egg, your affliction will make you hard-boiled and unresponsive. If you are a potato, you will emerge soft and pliable, resilient and adaptable.' It may sound funny to God, but there have been many times when I have prayed, 'O Lord, let me be a potato.'

    • Billie Wilcox,
    • in Karen J. Kauffman, With Faith All Things Are Possible ()
  • The night is dark, the waters deep, / Yet soft the billows roll; / Alas! at every breeze I weep — / The storm is in my soul.

  • flowers grow / out of the dark / moments.

  • ... trouble is the great equalizer.

  • Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life and, when it comes, hold your head high, look it squarely in the eye and say, 'I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me.' Then repeat to yourself the most comforting of all words: 'This too shall pass.'

  • ... trouble is not a sign of inadequacy, stupidity or inferiority, but rather an inescapable part of life — proof that you are a card-carrying member of the human race.

  • Affliction is more apt to suffocate the imagination than to stimulate it.

  • Shit happens.

  • The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves.