Trouble In Bookland Quotes

Where's my white out?"
"Chapter ten is missing!"
"Has anyone seen my socks?"
Linda spun around.
Mistress Yvonne gripped her shoulders. "This is a regular occurrence. No need to get involved."
Faint shouts echoed down the hall. "Leprechauns! ~ Marlene Simonette

If a nation's security is only as strong as its weakest link, then America may be in serious trouble. Hawaii may be our weakest link and could have a serious impact on our nation's immigration policy. ~ Joe Arpaio

I can go back to when I was six years old. I was always getting in trouble for dreaming, and the things I got in trouble for dreaming then are the things I'm doing today. ~ Michael Flatley

Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter. ~ Charles Dickens

Work hard and meticulously. When in trouble, look closely at a text that is a good example of what you're trying to do. And be patient. ~ Lydia Davis

Half the trouble in the world arises from men trying to anticipate their time and season, and the other half from their trying to prolong them. ~ Arthur Bryant

Jane knew from Dom's flinch that he'd been hoping for a different response, but she couldn't help it--she spoke the truth.
When he acted like a gentleman, as he had at dinner, she remembered exactly why she'd fallen in love with him. But when he reminded her of how he'd made assumptions and, worse yet, used those assumptions to decide her future for her, she couldn't bear it. Because he was still doing it, still demanding his way and dictating terms and ignoring her concerns.
She understood the courtly gentleman. It was the autocratic devil she had trouble understanding.
And she might as well admit it. She twisted her head to look up at him. "I don't know how I feel about you anymore."
The pain that slashed over his features only confused her further. Was he genuinely hurt by the thought that he'd killed her love? Or was his pride merely bruised because he hadn't been able to step right back into her life as if the past meant nothing?
"At least tell me the truth about Blakeborough," he said hoarsely. "Do you love him?"
"Why does it matter?"
His eyes ate her up. "If you do, I'll keep my distance. I'll stay out of your life from now on."
"You've been doing that easily enough for the past twelve years," she snapped. "I don't see why my feelings for Edwin should change anything."
"Easily? It was never easy, I assure you." His expression was stony. "And you're avoiding the question. Are you in love with Blakeborough?"
How she wishe ~ Sabrina Jeffries

If all you can do is judge a person by their appearance, because you don't have the spirit to judge someone from within, you're in trouble. ~ Dick Gregory

It was a lot to carry out of a childhood
all those textured layers of thwarted dreams rumbling under the fifties patina
but a lot of us did it. In those manicured lives and choreographed marriages there was an often-pronounced loneliness, an emptiness that we would try to fill with our own accomplishments. And our role, the one we would have so much trouble trying to shed later, was simply to be the best little girls in the world, the high- achieving, make-no-waves, properly behaved little kittens. ~ Anne Taylor Fleming

If I had to guess, nephew, I would surmise that you are not in direct trouble as such. However, I will confess to the distinct and unsettling feeling that very large, very ponderous and most momentous wheels have been set in motion. When that happens I believe the lessons of history tend to indicate that it is best not to be in their way. Even without meaning harm, the workings and progress of such wheels are on a scale which inevitably reduces the worth of individual lives to an irrelevance at best. ~ Iain M. Banks

[ ... ] I think about the problem with running from your trouble . The problem is in the stopping. The whole time you think you're getting away from everything, the trouble is running like mad, too, trying to catch up with you. And it doesn't slow down when you do
it keeps on sprinting. So when trouble finally reaches you, it hits you hard
(p107) ~ Heather Hepler

You desire to know something of my Religion. It is the first time I have been questioned upon it: But I do not take your Curiosity amiss, and shall endeavour in a few Words to gratify it ... I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his [Jesus'] divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and I think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble.
[Letter to Ezra Stiles, March 9, 1790] ~ Benjamin Franklin

I believe the experiences reported in this book are reproducible by anyone who wishes to try.
I went to Africa. You can go to Africa. You may have trouble arranging the time or the money, but everybody has trouble arranging something. I believe you can travel anywhere if you want to badly enough.
And I believe the same is true of inner travel. You don't have to take my word about chakras or healing energy or auras. You can find about them for yourself if you want to. Don't take my word for it.
Be as skeptical as you like.
Find out for yourself. ~ Michael Crichton

It does not feel reductive to read fiction through this prism, nor will you find the numbing sameness Nunez's narrator deplores - in fact, these books deliver us from numbing sameness. They are remarkably various, and they trouble debates that traffic in certainties. They come laden with confusion, doubt, subtlety - is it excessively earnest to call it truth? ~ Parul Sehgal

The trouble with remakes is that people fall in love with the original. It's like peanut butter. If you try to change the taste of peanut butter, you're in trouble. ~ Sylvester Stallone

Scout, if there's ever anything that happens to you or something - you know - something you might not want to tell Atticus about - "
"Huh?"
"You know, if you get in trouble at school or anything
you just let me know. I'll take care of you. ~ Harper Lee

Real comfort is found when I understand that I am held in the hollow of the hand of the One who created and rules all things. The most valuable thing in my life is God's love, a love that no one can take away. When my identity is rooted in him, the storms of trouble will not blow me away.

This is the comfort we offer people. We don't comfort them by saying things will work out. They may not. The people around them may change, but they may not. The Bible tells us again and again that everything around us is in the process of being taken away. God and his love are all that remain as cultures and kingdoms rise and fall. Comfort is found by sinking our roots into the unseen reality of God's ever-faithful love. ~ Paul David Tripp

The trouble some people have being German, I thought, I have being human. In a way it was stupid to be more disturbed by a dead bird than by those other things, the wars and riots and the massacres in the newspapers. But for the wars and riots there was always an explanation, people wrote books about them saying why they happened: the death of the heron was causeless, undiluted. ~ Margaret Atwood

Why to be in this room?
If I was smart... I won't stay in this room and I will move in a room where people are more clever than me... but If it's easy as possibility... I want without a trouble to finish school. ~ Deyth Banger

Midnight rolled her eyes, as though Aidan was being ridiculous. "I bet you were a good girl back home," she said to Tana. "A good girl all your life until you finally met the trouble you want to get in."
"You obviously don't know her at all," Aidan told Midnight gruffly. Then he turned back to Tana. "Did he bite you? ~ Holly Black

In France that is the one rule, never make trouble. ~ Nancy Mitford

The trouble with life is that there are so many beautiful women and so little time. ~ John Barrymore

I that in heill wes and gladnes Am trublit now with gret seiknes And feblit with infermite: Timor Mortis conturbat me.* * Fear of Death troubles me. ~ William Dunbar

Do I look the sort to cause trouble?" he asks. For the first time, he looks me directly in the eye. I catch my breath as his eyes slam into me. They're the gray of the sky right before a blizzard.
"Well, they did just throw you into a cell," I say, voice soft. "But, no." I break our gaze, finishing my thoughts silently.
You like the sort that brings it. ~ Jennifer Ellision

Stella: I got a nose for trouble. I can smell it ten miles away ... I can smell trouble right here in this apartment. First you smash your leg. Then you get to lookin' out the window. See things you shouldn't see. Trouble. I can see you in court now, surrounded by a bunch of lawyers in double-breasted suits. You're pleading: 'Judge, it was only a little bit of innocent fun. I love my neighbors like a father.' And the Judge says, 'Well, congratulations, you've just given birth to three years in ... ' ~ Thelma Ritter

Plotting covetousness and deliberate contrivance, in order to compass a selfish end, are nowhere abundant but in the world of the dramatist: they demand too intense a mental action for many of our fellow-parishioners to be guilty of them. It is easy enough to spoil the lives of our neighbors without taking so much trouble; we can do it by lazy acquiescence and lazy omission, by trivial falsities for which we hardly know a reason, by small frauds neutralized by small extravagances, by maladroit flatteries, and clumsily improvised insinuations. We live from hand to mouth, most of us, with a small family of immediate desires; we do little else than snatch a morsel to satisfy the hungry brood, rarely thinking of seed-corn or the next year's crop. Mr. ~ George Eliot

His heart hurt. His head hurt. Guilt and love and resentment were all tangled up inside him, and every time he tried to unravel the knot in his gut, it just got worse. He was ashamed of the mess he'd made, of the trouble he's brought too to his father's door. But he was mad too. And how could he be angry at his father? The person who loved him most in the world, who had worked to give him everything he had, the person he'd take a bullet for any day of the week? ~ Leigh Bardugo

If you don't concentrate on counting the money, people soon realize that money is not the focus of your consciousness, so they give you everything other than money: kudos, acclaim, praise, etc., etc. And sooner or later you'll be in trouble. ~ Stuart Wilde

If there is trouble in the country, neither I nor my people made it, and all that we have ever done, after much endurance on our part, is to maintain and uphold the constitution and institutions of our country, and to protect an injured, innocent, and persecuted people against misrule and mob violence. ~ Joseph Smith Jr.

The idea of an anthropic principle began with the remark that the laws of nature seem surprisingly well suited to the existence of life. A famous example is provided by the synthesis of the elements. According to modern ideas, this synthesis began when the universe was about three minutes old (before then it was too hot for protons and neutrons to stick together in atomic nuclei) and was later continued in stars. It had originally been though that the elements were formed by adding one nuclear particle at a time to atomic nuclei, starting with the simplest element, hydrogen, whose nucleus consists of just one particle (a proton). But, although there was no trouble in building up helium nuclei, which contain four nuclear particles (two protons and two neutrons), there is no stable nucleus with five nuclear particles and hence no way to take the next step. The solution found eventually by Edwin Salpeter in 1952 is that two helium nuclei can come together in stars to form the unstable nucleus of the isotope beryllium 8, which occasionally before it has a chance to fission into two helium nuclei absorbs yet another helium nucleus and forms a nucleus of carbon. However, as emphasized in 1954 by Fred Hoyke, in order for this process to account for the observed cosmic abundance of carbon, there must be a state of the carbon nucleus that has an energy that gives it an anomalously large probability of being formed in the collison of a helium nucleus and a nucleus of beryllium 8. (Prec ~ Steven Weinberg

Reason may be depended upon to keep its balance when God gives the surcease of tears in time of trouble. ~ Gene Stratton-Porter

Again the king sighed. "That is a different matter."
"Fine," Dragon said promptly. "I shall solve your problem for you." He made to rise.
Rycca did not mask her response. She grabbed hold of his wrist with both her hands and yanked hard. "Sit down," she said emphatically, and then just to soften it, "I pray you,my lord."
After a moment's shock, Alfred laughed. He shook his head ruefully. "You three must know how men envy you? The beauty of your wives is spoken of with awe, yet I am pleased to see they are not lacking in spirit either."
"Mayhap too much spirit," Dragon growled, but he did not look truly angry, merely frustrated.
"Your killing Wolscroft will only cause more trouble," Alfred said. "No, this must be handled within the law."
Slowly, Dragon resumed his seat but he looked in no way pleased about it. Rycca returned her hands to her lap and tried hard to look abashed. He wasn't fooled but he did reach over, take hold of her chair, and haul it up close to his so that he could rest an arm around her shoulders. A rather heavy arm, she thought, reminded of his strength and will.Not that she minded. Above all, she wanted him near her,not off risking his life against her father. ~ Josie Litton

In game play it was always my philosophy that patience would win out. By that, I meant patience to follow our game plan. If we believed in it, we would wear the opposition down and would eventually get to them. If we broke away from our style, however, and played their style, we would be in trouble. And if we let our emotions, rather than our reason, command the game we would not function effectively. ~ John Wooden

When I am trying to understand the method of winning in the endgame with two bishops against the knight, chess is a science, when I admire a beautiful combination or study, then chess is art, and when I am complicating position in the approaching time trouble of my opponent, then chess is sport. ~ Ashot Nadanian

I just know that there are plenty of people who are in terrible trouble and can't get out. And so I'm impatient with those who think that it's easy for people to get out of trouble. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

They were learning that New York had another life, too - subterranean, like almost everything that was human in the city - a life of writers meeting in restaurants at lunchtime or in coffee houses after business hours to talk of work just started or magazines unpublished, and even to lay modest plans for the future. Modestly they were beginning to write poems worth the trouble of reading to their friends over coffee cups. Modestly they were rebelling once more. ~ Malcolm Cowley

Stigma takes many forms, comes from all directions, is sometimes blatantly overt, but can also be remarkably subtle. It is the cruel comment, the unkind smirk, the extrusion from the group, the lost job opportunity, the rejected marriage proposal, the ineligibility for life insurance, the inability to adopt a child or pilot a plane.

But it is also the reduced expectation, the helping hand when none is needed or wanted, the solicitous sympathy that one cannot really be expected to measure up.

And the secondary psychological and practical harms of having a mental disorder come only partly from how others see you. A great deal of the trouble comes from the change in how you see yourself: the sense of being damaged goods, feeling not normal or worthy, not a full fledged member of the group.

It is bad enough that stigma is so often associated with having a mental disorder, but the stigma that comes from being mislabeled with a fake diagnosis is a dead loss with absolutely no redeeming features. ~ Allen Frances

Religion is scarcely distinguishable from childhood delusions like the "imaginary friend" and the bogeyman under the bed. Unfortunately the God delusion possesses adults. A delusion is something that people believe in despite a total lack of evidence and such delusions ask for trouble because disagreements between incompatible beliefs cannot be settled by reasonable argument. Most religious people are very decent and nice But in a sense they have brought religious extremism on the world by teaching people the virtues of unquestioned faith. ~ Richard Dawkins

He still wasn't looking at me, which meant I was still in trouble. I swear, sometimes this partnership is like being married. We fight all the time and neither one of us is getting married. ~ John G. Hartness

There's a picture there that people realize that, we stop helping Israel, we lose God's hand, and we're in big time trouble. ~ Dan Webster

People misunderstand happiness. They think it's the absence of trouble. That's not happiness, that's luck. Happiness is the ability to live well alongside trouble. No two people have the same trouble, or the same way of metabolizing it. Q.E.D. - No two happy people are happy in the same way ... Every day brilliant people, people smarter than I, wallow in safe tragedy and pessimism, shying from what really takes guts - recognizing how much courage and labor happiness demands. ~ Rachel Kadish

They are in a dilemma, they are in trouble now. Hate them and strike them. ~ Saddam Hussein

I will sleep all day; I love staying in bed with my dog and reading and not getting up and checking my phone. And that gets me into trouble because I have things to do, and that's not very productive. ~ Brittany Snow

There's always trouble in the Middle East. I can't recall any time in my life when there hasn't been trouble there. ~ Helen McCloy

One thing had always confused Quentin about the magic he read about in books: it never seemed especially hard to do. There were lots of furrowed brows and thick books and long white beards and whatnot, but when it came right down to it, you memorized the incantation - or you just read it off the page, if that was too much trouble - you collected the herbs, waved the wand, rubbed the lamp, mixed the potion, said the words - and just like that the forces of the beyond did your bidding. It was like making salad dressing or driving stick or assembling Ikea furniture - just another skill you could learn. It took some time and effort, but compared to doing calculus, say, or playing the oboe - well, there really was no comparison. Any idiot could do magic. ~ Lev Grossman

The trouble with those people is that they think all the best things are made in the cities. It is not so. ~ Ernest Poole