Troublesome Quotes - Page 4

• The aphorism "Whatever is, is right," would be as final as it is lazy, did it not include the troublesome consequence that nothing that ever was, was wrong.

  Charles Dickens

  Evil, Lazy, Would Be

  Charles Dickens, Michael D. Aeschliman (2012). “A Tale of Two Cities: A Story of the French Revolution”, p.71, Ignatius Press

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• There is a troublesome humor some men have, that if they may not lead, they will not follow; but had rather a thing were never done, than not done their own way, tho' other ways very desirable.

  William Penn

  Leadership, Men, Done

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• The fool only is troublesome. A plan of sense perceives when he is agreeable or tiresome; he disappears the very minute before he would have been thought to have stayed too long.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Long, Fool, Disappear

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• I am told so many ill things of a man, and I see so few in him, that I begin to suspect he has a real but troublesome merit, as being likely to eclipse that of others.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Real, Men, Merit

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• Parents are untamed, excessive, potentially troublesome creatures; charming to be with for a time, in the main they must lead their own lives, independent and self-employed, with companions of their own age and selection.

  Rose Macaulay

  Independent, Self, Parent

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• Grown people know that they do not always know the why of things, and even if they think they know, they do not know where and how they got the proof. Hence the irritation they show when children keep on demanding to know if a thing is so and how the grown folks got the proof of it. It is so troublesome because it is disturbing to the pigeonhole way of life.

  Zora Neale Hurston

  Children, Thinking, Irritation

  Zora Neale Hurston (2010). “Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography”, p.37, Harper Collins

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• With joint-stock corporations, investors can place bets on the success of many different companies, without having to play a central management role in any one of them. This allows investors to diversify their financial holdings. It also allows them to capture profits on their investments, without having to get involved in the dirty, troublesome business of actually running a company.

  Jim Stanford

  Running, Dirty, Play

  Jim Stanford (2008). “Economics for everyone: a short guide to the economics of capitalism”, Pluto Pr

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• The family indeed is dead, if what we mean by it is the modern family system in which units comprised of male breadwinner and female homemaker, married couples, and their offspring dominate the land. But its ghost, the ideology of the family, survives to haunt the consciousness of all those who refuse to confront it. It is time to perform a social autopsy on the corpse of the modern family system so that we may try to lay its troublesome spirit to rest.

  Judith Stacey

  Couple, Mean, Land

  Judith Stacey (1996). “In the name of the family: rethinking family values in the postmodern age”, Beacon Pr

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• What a pity it is that there are so many words! Whenever one wants to say anything, three or four ways of saying it run into one's head together; and one can't tell which to choose. It is as troublesome and puzzling as choosing a ribbon ... or a husband.

  Julius Charles Hare

  Running, Husband, Together

  Julius Charles Hare, Augustus William Hare, Edward Hayes Plumptre (1871). “Guesses at Truth”, p.210

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• His [Turgot's] first important literary and scholastic effort was a treatise On the Existence of God. Few fragments of it remain, but we are helped to understand him when we learn that he asserted, and to the end of his life maintained, his belief in an Almighty Creator and Upholder of the Universe. It did, indeed, at a later period suit the purposes of his enemies, exasperated by his tolerant spirit and his reforming plans, to proclaim him an atheist; but that sort of charge has been the commonest of missiles against troublesome thinkers in all times.

  Andrew Dickson White

  Atheist, Effort, Enemy

  "Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason". Book by Andrew Dickson White, pp. 167-168, 1915.

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• He [George Washington Cable] has taught me to abhor and detest the Sabbath day and hunt up new and troublesome ways to dishonor it.

  Mark Twain

  Way, Taught, Dishonor

  George Washington Cable, Mark Twain, Arlin Turner (1960). “Mark Twain [and] G. W. Cable: the record of a literary friendship”

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• Those who are successfully to lead their fellow-men, should have once possessed the nobler feelings. We have all known individuals whose magnanimity was not likely to be troublesome on any occasion; but then they betrayed their own interests by unwisely omitting the consideration, that such feelings might exist in the breasts of those whom they had to guide and govern: for they themselves cannot even remember the time when in their eyes justice appeared preferable to expediency, the happiness of others to self-interest, or the welfare of a State to the advancement of a party.

  Arthur Helps

  Leadership, Party, Eye

  Sir Arthur Helps (1883). “Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd”

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• Nice distinctions are troublesome. It is so much easier to say that a thing is black, than to discriminate the particular shade of brown, blue, or green, to which it really belongs. It is so much easier to make up your mind that your neighbour is good for nothing, than to enter into all the circumstances that would oblige you to modify that opinion.

  George Eliot

  Nice, Blue, Mind

  George Eliot (1858). “Scenes of Clerical Life”, p.72

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• A tainted society has invented psychiatry to defend itself against the investigations of certain superior intellects whose faculties of divination would be troublesome.

  Antonin Artaud

  Would Be, Investigation, Faculty

  Antonin Artaud, Susan Sontag (1976). “Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings”, p.483, Univ of California Press

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• I have often felt that I would find it more complicated, troublesome and unpleasant to ascertain the feelings by which a woman lives than to plumb the innermost thoughts of an earthworm.

  Osamu Dazai

  Women, Feelings, Complicated

  Phyllis I. Lyons, Osamu Dazai (1975). “The Osamu saga: the autobiographical fiction of Dazai Osamu”

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• Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it. It is a corrective to the sluggishness of "the proper channels," a way of breaking through passages blocked by tradition and prejudice. It is disruptive and troublesome, but it is a necessary disruption, a healthy troublesome.

  Howard Zinn

  Law, Healthy, Democracy

  Howard Zinn (1997). “The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy”, p.383, Seven Stories Press

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• Among minor alterations, I may mention the substitution for the name political economy of the single convenient term economics. I cannot help thinking that it would be well to discard, as quickly as possible, the old troublesome double-worded name of our science.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Thinking, Names, Political

  William Stanley Jevons (1970). “The Theory of Political Economy”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• Humans are divided between those who can still look through the eyes of youth and those who cannot. Though it causes me frequent pain, I find it very easy to place myself in the shoes of almost any boy, and can conjure my own youth with an ease that is troublesome.

  Dave Eggers

  Pain, Eye, Boys

  Dave Eggers (2007). “What Is the What”, p.116, Vintage

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• Happiness is an equivalent for all troublesome things.

  Epictetus

  Happiness

  Epictetus (1900). “Discourses ...”

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• It is no disgrace not to be able to do everything; but to undertake, or pretend to do, what you are not made for, is not only shameful, but extremely troublesome and vexatious.

  Plutarch

  Able, Made, Disgrace

  Plutarch (1871). “Plutarch's Morals”, p.72

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• Knowledge will not be acquired without pains and application. It is troublesome and deep, digging for pure waters; but when once you come to the spring, they rise up and meet you.

  Tom Felton

  Pain, Spring, Knowledge

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• A secret, like a chore, always seems to lead to another, one even more troublesome than the first.

  Bette Lord

  Secret, Firsts, Chores

  Bette Lord (1984). “In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• Readers want what is important to be clearly laid out; they will not read what is too troublesome.

  Jan Tschichold

  Important, Want, Reader

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• We live in a society which is so saturated with sexuality that it perhaps is more troublesome now, because of that fact, for a person to look beyond their gender orientation to other aspects of who they are.

  Lance B. Wickman

  Looks, Facts, Sexuality

  Source: www.mormonnewsroom.org

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• Men of Science would do well to talk plain English. The most abstruse questions can very well be discussed in our own tongue ... I make a particular appeal to the botanists, who appear to delight in troublesome words.

  Oliver Lodge

  Men, Delight, Tongue

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