Trouble

[A]fter every storm the sun will smile, for every problem there is a solution, and the soul's indefeasible duty is to be of good cheer.
~ William Rounseville (W.R.) Alger, The School of Life (1881).

Men are born to trouble at first, and exercised in it all their days. There is a cry at the beginning of life, and a groan at its close.
~ William Arnot

What a revoltin' development this is!
~ William Bendix, Catchphrase in NBC TV The Life of Riley (1953-58; also on radio from 1944-51).

Initiative can be easily discouraged by too much supervision for a man will seldom put his whole heart into a problem unless he feels that it is his own.
~ William Ian Beardmore (W.I.B.) Beveridge, The Art of Scientific Investigation (1950).

When adults first become conscious of something new, they usually either attack or try to escape from it. This is called the 'attack-espcape' reaction. Attack includes such mild forms as ridicule, and escape includes merely putting out of mind.
~ William Ian Beardmore (W.I.B.) Beveridge, The Art of Scientific Investigation (1950).

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
All pray in their distress,
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.
~ William Blake, from Songs of Innocence (1789). The Divine Image

When the souls of the oppressed
Fight in the troubled air that rages, who can stand?
~ William Blake, from Poetical Sketches (1783). Prologue, intended for a Dramatic Piece of King Edward the Fourth

Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has.
~ William S. Burroughs, The Adding Machine (1985). My Own Business

He that mischief hatcheth, mischief catcheth.
~ William Camden, Remaines of a Greater Worke, Concerning Britaine (1605).

Turbulence is life force. It is opportunity. Let's love turbulence and use it for change.
~ (William) Ramsey Clark

The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never scoring.
~ William John ("Bill") Copeland

The cares of to-day are seldom the cares of to-morrow; and when we lie down at night, we may safely say to most of our troubles -- "Ye have done your worst, and we shall meet no more."
~ William Cowper, Letter to the Revd. William Unwin (2 December 1779)

My soul is sick, with every day's report
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is fill'd.
~ William Cowper, The Task (1785). Book II. The Time-Piece

[B]ecoming extinct has its compensations. It's a good deal like beating the game. I would go so far as to say that becoming extinct is the perfect answer to everything and I defy anybody to think of a better. Other solutions are mere palliatives, just a bunch of loose ends, leaving the central problem untouched.
~ Will (William Jacob) Cuppy, How to Become Extinct (1941).

People who talk a lot about their troubles never commit suicide; talk's the greatest safety-valve there is. ... No, the suicides are the quiet ones, who can't find the words to fit their misery.
~ (William) Robertson Davies, Leaven of Malice (1954).

Lack of knowledge ... that is the problem.
~ W. Edwards Deming

The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than their minds.
~ William James "Will" Durant (recalled on his death, 7 November 1981).

[N]o man can cause more grief than that one clinging blindly to the vices of his ancestors.
~ William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust (1948).

People need trouble -- a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it. Artists do; I don't mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy.
~ William Faulkner

In this business, by the time you realize you're in trouble, it's too late to save yourself. Unless you're running scared all the time, you're gone.
~ Bill Gates

All human problems are human relationship problems.
~ William Glasser, M.D.

When we label anyone "bad", we will have more trouble dealing with him than if we could have settled for a lesser label.
~ William Glasser, M.D.

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern - why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be? To die is only to be as we were before we were born.
~ William Hazlitt, Table-Talk, or Original Essays on Men and Manners, 2nd series (1824). On The Fear of Death

Entertainment promises to make you feel better, to help you forget your troubles, to liberate you from having to think. Even when entertainment touches deep feelings, it does so as a gesture of reassurance, a combination of sentiment and sloganeering. This is what most people say they want, and the market lets them have it without anyone in a position of intellectual or social leadership telling them that they should ask more of themselves.
~ William A. Henry III, In Defense of Elitism (1994).

Anyone can complain; but to see precisely what is wrong is a gift. Accurate diagnosis comes from a unique power of vision and indicates the likelihood of an equally unique capacity to remedy the fault.
~ William Ernest (W.E.) Hocking, Types of Philosophy (1929).

[P]roblems are all soluble by the enlightened and regenerate will.
~ William Dean Howells, My Literary Passions (1895). Chapter XXXI. Erckmann-Chatrian, Bjorstjerne Bjornson

Men are like fish. Neither would get in trouble if they kept their mouths shut.
~ (Col.) William C. Hunter, Brass Tacks (1910).

Visionary people face the same problems everyone else faces; but rather than get paralyzed by their problems, visionaries immediately commit themselves to finding a solution.
~ Bill Hybels, Who Are You When No One's Looking (1987). Cultivating Vision

There may be but a step between you and death. Now -- If time be short, your trouble cannot be long.
~ William Jay, from Short Discourses To Be Read In Families, Volume II (1812). Discourse XIX. Contentment With Little

I don't think what has happened to me is that different from what happens to most people. The only difference is the scale. People seem to think my problems are larger than life, but they're not larger than my life.
~ Billy Joel, The New York Times Magazine (15 September 2002). The Stranger

I would not leave you in times of trouble.
We never could have come this far.
I took the good times,
I'll take the bad times,
I'll take you just the way you are.
~ Billy Joel, from The Stranger (1977 album). Just the Way You Are

Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upwards: that is normal, and we may just as well accept the fact.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, from A Writer's Notebook (1949). 1941 entry

We should not make light of the troubles of children. They are worse than ours, because we can see the end of our trouble and they can never see any end.
~ William Middleton, quoted in Reveries Over Childhood and Youth (1916).

The chaos in your soul will give birth to a dancing star.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

The thousand mysteries around us would not trouble but interest us, if only we had cheerful, healthy hearts.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Method goes far to prevent trouble in business; for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those that have business depending, both what to do and what to hope.
~ William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude (1693). Part I. Patience

The jealous are troublesome to others, but a torment to themselves.
~ William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude (1693). Part II. Of Jealousy

It is not the ought-ness of this problem that we have to consider, but the is-ness!
~ William Pickens, in Children of the Slaves (1920). III. Orators and Actors, Preachers and Singers

A conference is just an admission that you want somebody to join you in your troubles.
~ Will Rogers

It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so.
~ Will Rogers

There is one rule that works in every calamity. Be it pestilence, war, or famine, the rich get richer and poor get poorer.
~ Will Rogers

You won't find a solution by saying there is no problem.
~ William Rostler

You go into a community and they will vote 80 percent to 20 percent in favor of a tougher Clean Air Act, but if you ask them to devote 20 minutes a year to having their car emissions inspected, they will vote 80 to 20 against it. We are a long way in this country from taking individual responsibility for the environmental problem.
~ William D. Ruckelshaus, in The New York Times (30 November 1988).

Say! You've struck a heap of trouble --
Bust in business, lost your wife;
No one cares a cent about you,
You don't care a cent for life;
Hard luck has of hope bereft you,
Health is failing, wish you'd die--
Why, you've still the sunshine left you
And the big, blue sky.
~ Robert William Service, Comfort

Affliction is enamoured of thy parts,
And thou art wedded to calamity.
~ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye
Than twenty of their swords.
~ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Are you come to meet your trouble? The fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it.
~ William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

Deeper than e'er plummet sounded.
~ William Shakespeare, The Tempest. Act III, scene iii

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth. Act IV, scene i

Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and owlet's wing, --
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth. Act IV, scene i

How camest thou in this pickle?
~ William Shakespeare, The Tempest. Act V, scene i

I have had my labour for my travail.
~ William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida. Act I, scene i

It is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that I am troubled withal.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part II. Act I, scene ii

My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirred;
And I myself see not the bottom of it.
~ William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida. Act III, scene iii

Show me the steep and thorny way ...
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet. Act I, scene iii

So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.
~ William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream

This late dissension grown betwixt the peers
Burns under feigned ashes of forged love
And will at last break out into a flame.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part I

Unnatural deeds
Do breed unnatural troubles.
~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth. Act V, scene i

If you would not confront your neighbor and demand his money at the point of a gun to solve every new problem that may appear in your life, you should not allow the government to do it for you.
~ William E. Simon, A Time For Truth (1978).

Deep streams run still, -- and why? Not because there are no obstructions, but because they altogether overflow those stones or rocks round which the shallow stream has to make its noisy way; 'tis the full life that saves us from the little noisy troubles of life.
~ William Smith, in The Story of William and Lucy Smith (1889). Part III. Chapter XXXVI. This Friendly World

Wherever I go in this country, people know there is a problem.
~ Billie Snedden, Campaigning in 1974

To solve a problem or to reach a goal, you don't need to know all the answers in advance. But you must have a clear idea of the problem or the goal you want to reach.
~ William (W.) Clement Stone

Trouble is the common lot of all.
~ William A. "Billy" Sunday

The centre of trouble is not the turbulent appetites -- though they are troublesome enough. The centre of trouble is in the personality of man as a whole, which is self-centred and can only be wholesome and healthy if it is God-centred.
~ William Temple (Archbishop of York), from Nature, Man And God: Being the Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Glasgow in the Academic Years 1932-1933 and 1933-1934 (1934).

[T]he more ingenious men are, they are the more apt to trouble themselves.
~ Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet, in Miscellanea, the Third Part (1701). I. An Essay On Popular Discontents

A disease in the family that is never mentioned.
~ William Trevor (of the troubles in Northern Ireland), in Observer (18 November 1990).

Letting your mind play is the best way to solve problems.
~ Bill Watterson, Speech at Kenyon College Commencement, Gambier, Ohio (20 May 1990). Some Thoughts on the Real World by One Who Glimpsed It and Fled

Calm in the raging waters. (Saevis tranquillus in undis.)
~ William I, Prince of Orange (aka William the Silent)

There was a time when I should have been glad to be delivered out of my troubles; but I own I see another scene, and could wish to live a little longer.
~ William, Prince of Orange (William III), (c. 21 February 1702)

Up! up! my friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?
~ William Wordsworth, from Lyrical Ballads (1798). The Tables turned; an Evening Scene, on the same subject

For the test of the heart is trouble,
And it always comes with the years,
And the smile that is worth the praises of earth
Is the smile that shines through tears.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox, from An Erring Woman's Love (1892). Worth While

Times look bad, things look mighty blue,
You look for help and find that all your friends,
Is paddlin' their own canoe.
~ Egbert Austin "Bert" Williams, from Sons of Ham (1900 musical). (When It's) All Going Out and Nothing Coming In

There's no use talking about the problem unless you talk about the solution.
~ Betty Williams, PeaceJam Foundation (4 July 1995). An Interview with Betty Williams

The night is dark, the waters deep,
Yet soft the billows roll;
Alas! at every breeze I weep --
The storm is in my soul.
~ Helen Maria Williams, from Poems (1786), Volume I. A Song, Verse VI.

If you start making statements that you can't back up, you're in trouble.
~ Jimy Williams, The Associated Press (2 November 2001). Williams Ready for New Challenge With Astros

I'm pretty good at sensing when there's going to be trouble, so I just scoot off because you don't fight if you don't have to ...
~ Robbie Williams

I always preached to him to stay away from trouble. Stay away from trouble, stay away. If you stay away you'll be all right. Trouble just found him.
~ Robert Williams (on his teenage son, Ernie, who was gunned down by gang members), The Associated Press (23 November 2002). Vigil Held for L.A. Gang Victim

Snow and adolescence are the only problems that disappear if you ignore them long enough.
~ Earl Wilson, quoted in Reader's Digest (January 1963).

Prepare for hard battle, hope for a vulnerable target.
~ Robert Charles Wilson, A Bridge Of Years (1991).