Quotes About Predicament

How does the saying go? When two locusts fight, it is always the crow that feasts.' Is that a Luo expression?' I asked. Sayid's face broke into a bashful smile. We have a similar expression in Luo,' he said, 'but actually I must admit that I read this particular expression in a book by Chinua Achebe. The Nigerian writer. I like his books very much. He speaks the truth about Africa's predicament. the Nigerian, the Kenya - it is the same. We share more than divides us.

The United States is in a tough spot.

A problem is something to solve. If there's no solution, it's not a problem, so stop treating it like one.

There is fear as to whether Japan, reduced to such a predicament, could ever manage to pay reparations to certain designated Allied Powers without shifting the burden upon the other Allied Powers.

On Waugh) ...and his capability to cut himself off from reality in order to become a detached spectator of his own predicament. The same mechanism of imagination which produce feelings of panic, can also - if guaided by forceful will - generate couradge.

What am I going to do with all these bodies?" Said Jimmy, just a bit plaintively."I can't keep them, I don't have the cupboard space.

Here's a pretty kettle of fish!

Here's a pretty state of things!Here's a pretty how-de-do!

Our present predicament is due more than anything else to the fact that we have learnt to understand and control to a terrifying extent the forces of nature outside us, but not those that are embodied in ourselves.

with her through an angel that someone nearby could relate. The two women had one important predicament in common—questionable pregnancies, sure to stir up some talk. Elizabeth hadn't been out of the house in months. It

I've been a signed artist, but it's only been a full year-and-a-half. I'm still kind of new to money and this kind of lifestyle, so me being in a messed up predicament wasn't too long ago.

From beginning to end, the Holy Scriptures testify that the predicament of fallen humanity is so serious, so grave, so irremediable from within, that nothing short of divine intervention can rectify it.

Our current predicament cannot be wholly blamed on a suffocating media sector. It cannot be wholly blamed on filter bubbles, trapping citizens in the prison of their own worldviews. It cannot be wholly blamed on Russian sabotage of our presidential election. Hard not to notice, though, that all three of those disabling conditions can be laid at the feet of Facebook.

So, you know, when I think of survival as a creative act, it's not trying to plaster over the isolation or to, you know, rewrite your predicament into something positive with a happy ending or some kind of neat resolution. It's writing into the unknown.

Hugo Dockerill was the first and only letter-recipient to remain cheerful in the face of his predicament, and certainly the first to demonstrate a belief that all the world's problems could be solved if only decent people sat down at a table together and set things straight. If he objected to being accused of murder, he concealed it well.

Only in his dreams had he encountered this sensation before: the doom-laden knowledge that one is trapped in a predicament that makes no sense and will never make sense, no matter what one does.

Zugzwang. It's when you have no good moves. But you still have to move.

One of Leibowitz's favorite stories was about a donkey placed equidistant from two bundles of hay. In the story the donkey can't decide which bundle of hay is closer to him, and so dies of hunger.

There is going to be a calamity, and whenever there is a calamity, Merrill is there.

Hobson's choice is sometimes taken to mean a dilemma or difficult decision, but in fact means no choice at all. It derives from a sixteenth-century Cambridge stable-keeper named Thomas Hobson, who hired out horses on a strict rotation. The customer was allowed to take the one nearest the stable door or none at all.

dilemma. 'The chief dilemma facing Mr Greenspan is whether or not to raise interest rates' (Sunday Times). Dilemma does not mean just any difficulty or predicament. Strictly speaking, it applies only when someone is faced with two courses of action, both unsatisfactory. Fowler accepted its extension to contexts involving more than two alternatives, but even then the number of alternatives should be definite and the consequences of each unappealing.

Everything now had been taken from him, his striving after goodness, his hopes, his pride, even that human revenge upon fate--to destroy his own life-- for he was invulnerable. A terrible predicament he was in, to be utterly suicidal, and unable to perish.

He also knew that there is no escape from power like his, no exit, no way out of the predicament that being always on creates; there is only death.

With such a limited span of days, some will live through sadder times than others. I'm sorry that you are here now. I am sorry you were tricked into this predicament. You were appointed captains of a sinking vessel. I have a longer lifespan than you. I have seen much. Seasons of order degenerate into chaos. Devastation comes and goes. I await the next hour when I am needed. It always comes.