Quotes & Sayings About Squabbling

It appears that God has deliberately left us in a quandary about many things. Why did He not summarize all the rules in one book, and all the basic doctrines in another? He could have eliminated the loopholes, prevented all the schisms over morality and false teaching that have plagued His Church for two thousand years. Think of the squabbling and perplexity we would have been spared. And think of the crop of dwarfs He would have reared! He did not spare us. He wants us to reach maturity. He has so arranged things that if we are to go on beyond the "milk diet" we shall be forced to think. — Elisabeth Elliot

Your opponent's wrong doesn't automatically make you right. Most fights aren't about who's right; they are contention over degrees of wrongness. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Nothing more excruciating when you are fighting for your life than to have healthy people round you, squabbling over futilities. Who do you love best, and who most do you want with you? Blithering idiots: it's life itself, can't you see? It's life I love best, and life I want with me. Go hang yourselves, all of you, you're only sapping my strength when most I need it. Leave me in peace and let me grapple. — A.P.

Nature is not simply a technical or economical resource, and human beings are not mere numbers. To suggest that one can somehow align all the squabbling institutions of science, environmental management, government and diplomacy in an alliance of convenience to regulate the global climate seems to me optimistic. — James Buchan

Nina's eyes narrowed. "I'll remind you, Holden Maxwell, father of my children, love of my life, that we just met Reece and perhaps he doesn't wish to listen to us squabbling."
Max looked at Ham. "Kiss that good-bye. We'll be fightin' on and off through dinner. Prepare. She gets riled, we're all fucked. — Kristen Ashley

The Democratic party is really just a giant day care center for squabbling little groups. — Pat Buchanan

The wind stirred the drying leaves of wild grapevines with a papery rustle behind me, and in the distance a murder of crows passed, squabbling in shrill cries. — Diana Gabaldon

Emil and Jack established rival claims to a certain thick patch, and while they were squabbling about, Stuffy quickly and quietly stripped the bushes and fled to the protection of Dan — Louisa May Alcott

Messengers wait outside the door, to carry urgent orders for release. It is difficult, when the pen skips over a name, to associate it with the corpse it might belong to, tomorrow or the day after that. There is no sense of evil in the room, just tiredness and the aftertaste of petty squabbling. Camille drinks quite a lot of Fabre's brandy. Towards daybreak, a kind of dismal camaraderie sets in. — Hilary Mantel

Later, it would take me a minute to remember how exactly it happened. If I turned around and moved forward first, or he did. I just knew we didn't meet halfway. It was just a short distance really, not worth squabbling over. And maybe it didn't matter so much whether he took the step or I did. All I knew was that he was there. — Sarah Dessen

When activists say we need to move past the partisan divide, what they mean is: Shut up and get with my program. Have you ever heard anyone say, "We need to get past all of this partisan squabbling and name-calling. That's why I'm going to abandon all my objections and agree with you"? — Jonah Goldberg

Perhaps the most crucial stage is that of 'intraspecies chaos.' This is the proving ground, the awkward adolescence when a species either learns to come together on a global scale, or dissolves into squabbling factions doomed to extinction, whether through war or ecological disasters too great to tackle divided. — Becky Chambers

Anytime you get nine people together, whether it's at a party or it's in the conference room of the Supreme Court, you do have to maintain some order, or it does kind of degenerate into squabbling pretty quickly. — John Roberts

But if there is to be a fifth wave of feminism, I would hope that the main thing that distinguishes it from all that came before is that women counter the awkwardness, disconnect, and bullshit of being a modern woman not by shouting at it, internalizing it, or squabbling about it - but by simply pointing at it and going "HA!" instead. — Caitlin Moran

Squabbling over too little is just human nature. But it says a great deal about a person, what they do with abundance. — Tessa Dare

You have to rise above the squabbling and chaos, and keep believing. You have to always keep your goals in mind. -Hera, goddess of marriage — Rick Riordan

She was thrilling to a desire that urged her to go forward, to be in closer to that fire, to be squabbling with the dogs, and to be avoiding and dodging the stumbling feet of men. — Jack London

You see, in times of trouble, even gods can lose faith. They start putting their trust in the wrong things. They stop looking at the big picture and start being selfish. But [. . .] I'm used to perseverance. You have to rise above the squabbling and chaos, and keep believing. You have to always keep your goals in mind. — Rick Riordan

Money.. Its nothing really worth squabbling about. I mean, this is what puts people six feet under! — Burt Shavitz

Jesus did not come to the Earth to start 285 squabbling denominations fighting over the Bible. How like the devil to divide Christians over the Bible. — John Hagee

Mr. Cat and Mr. Dog were neighbors who fought like, well, cats and dogs. That is until Mr. Rat moved in. It's fascinating how easily two enemies ally at the introduction of a third. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Squabbling in public will eventually ruin football; there's no doubt it's hurting us already. Polls taken by Louis Harris - polls as valid as any political polls - indicate that very clearly. — Pete Rozelle

Flap books are the second worst book to read to a group. The worst are books that play sound effects to go along with the text. The whole time you're reading, the children are squabbling every second over who gets to push the button for the crashing cymbals. With flap books, the big problem is trying to stop the kids from tearing the flap right out of the book. It helps to have tape handy. After — Rob Armstrong

If it were left to men, there'd be nothing in the world but mating and squabbling. — Judith Tarr

They had found the seven volumes of Rowling with no help at all, but there was no squabbling. — Erika Johansen

And squabbling was de rigueur in Fairyland - not even cats were as bad.* — Terry Pratchett

Maybe individual people seem irrational because they aren't really individuals! Each one of us is a little nation-state, doing our best to settle disputes and broker compromises between the squabbling voices that drive us. — Jordan Ellenberg

I bore silent witness, thinking, There is no army of abolition. This is what the world has for heroes. Ordinary men, squabbling and prideful. Hassling each other, doing their best, busting the world free. And men like me, behind fake papers and clear-glass spectacles, keeping it chained. — Ben H. Winters

I feel that if I could sweep all this away ... all the buildings and the sects and the fierce squabbling churches ... that I might see Christ's quiet figure riding into Jerusalem on a donkey
and believe in him. — Agatha Christie

So let's raise the tone of the debate. Too often at the moment we look like schoolchildren squabbling over a toy - our most precious toy, the Earth. And the danger is that as we pull in opposite directions in our global tug of war, the Earth will end up broken - or at least unable to sustain human life. That is the worst case scenario - or maybe, from the Earth's point of view, the best. — Roz Savage

The victors always think they are righteous. But then, they always seem to start a mighty unrighteous squabbling over the spoils. — Stephen L. Carter

They're drunk now," Guy said, "and optimistic, but they will soon be squabbling over household expenses and hoping they'll find love later in the Meat Rack. They'll be arguing. 'Why did you buy that expensive leg of lamb?' And they become especially cross at the beginning of September when they realise the season is over and they've danced their tushes off and fucked a lot in the bushes, but, hey, they haven't bagged a beau for the winter and they've maxed out their credit cards. — Edmund White

I was not made for the desk and counting-house, for petty business squabbling, and legal jangling. — Jack London

If humanity is annihilated because we were too busy squabbling with one another to manage a proper stand, we probably deserve the annihilation. — G.S. Jennsen

Beautiful,' [his wife] would murmur, nudging Septimus that he might see. But beauty was behind a pane of glass. Even taste had no relish to him. He put down his cup on the little marble table. He looked at people outside; happy they seemed, collecting in the middle of the street, shouting, laughing, squabbling over nothing. But he could not taste, he could not feel. In the tea-shop among the tables and the chattering waiters the appalling fear came over him
he could not feel. — Virginia Woolf

On the other side of the curtain, children were squabbling, a baby was crying, and there was the smell of rat-and-cabbage casserole. Someone was sharpening an axe. And someone else was snoring. For a dwarf in Ankh-Morpork, solitude was something that you had to cultivate on the inside. Books — Terry Pratchett

It was a while before my mind was quiet enough for reading. The conversation with Shevraeth I was determined not to think about. What was the use? It was over, and it was clear it wasn't going to be repeated.
Recalling the name he'd mentioned, Lady Trishe
one of the names Bran had spoken earlier that morning
I realized it was Shevraeth they were planning to go riding with. She wouldn't enjoy this ride was what Nee had said, meaning that I wouldn't enjoy it because Shevraeth would be along. What it probably also meant, I realized glumly, was that they wouldn't enjoy having me along if I glared at Shevraeth and started squabbling. — Sherwood Smith

Economics pretends to be a science. Its practitioners fill blackboards with equations and clog computers with data. But it is really a faith, or more accurately a set of overlapping and squabbling faiths, each with its own doctrines. — Alex Berenson

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities. — Theodore Roosevelt

Improbable as it may be, the day still has a few indignities left. The day waters down indignity with frustration to make it last longer. Abomination, thy name is Subway. He cannot enter. They flood through turnstiles, hips banging rods, and will not let him enter. He must get home, but it's all he can do to get halfway in before another one charges at him. A fish out of school. Everybody knows how it works except for him. All of them from every floor are crammed into this one subway car: the makers of memos, the routers of memos, the indexers filers and shredders of memos, the always-at-their-desks and the never-around. How do they all fit. Squabbling like pigeons over stale crumbs of seats. Everyone thinks they are more deserving, everyone thinks their day has been harder than everyone else's, and everyone is correct. — Colson Whitehead

You know," she said to Ferbus, "I've been thinking."
"Well, there's a first time for everything."
Not in the mood for his antics, Lex grabbed a pair of scissors and brandished them in his face. "I really suggest you rid your work space of sharp objects, we wouldn't want any unfortunate castrations, now would we?"
"Driggs!" Ferbus yelled into the spidery Lair, where Driggs had wandered to get away from their constant squabbling. "Your partner is threatening to neuter me!"
"Yeah, she does that," Driggs said from within. — Gina Damico

The argument had been in full swing when Matthew's father telephoned with the news that a funny turn Matthew's mother had suffered the previous week had been diagnosed as a mini-stroke. After this, she and Matthew felt that squabbling about Strike was in bad taste, so they went to bed in an unsatisfactory state of theoretical reconciliation, both, Robin knew, still seething. It was — Robert Galbraith

Often, economists spend their energies squabbling with one another, but arguably the more important contrast is between our broadly liberal economic worldview and the various alternatives - common around the globe - that postulate natural hierarchies of religion, ethnicity, caste and gender, often enforced by law and strict custom. — Tyler Cowen

It is thus tolerance that is the source of peace, and intolerance that is the source of disorder and squabbling. — Pierre Bayle

According to Ommaney, prior to their departure Zinat Mahal had been squabbling loudly with Jawan Bakht after the latter had fallen in love with one of his father's harem women. He also began using the family's now scarce financial resources to bribe the guards to bring him bottles of porter: 'What an instance of the state of morals and domestic economy of Ex-Royalty,' wrote a disapproving Ommaney to Saunders. 'Mother and son at enmity, the son trying to form a connection with his father's concubine, and setting at nought the precepts of his religion, buying from, and drinking, the liquor of an infidel. — William Dalrymple

Money is nothing really worth squabbling about. This is what puts people six feet under. You know, I don't need it. — Burt Shavitz

Man to man, my eye Kipps snorted. It was like seeing two schoolgirls squabbling over a scented pencil. You should have heard the squeals. — Jonathon Stroud

Life is calmness with squabbling,
accumulating traditions and self-consciousness.
elaborate meals, medicine, law,
pretty pictures unspoiled,
rocking the cradle and holding the hammer,
impressive skies of gray and blue,
believing in what we can't settle,
the mystery of iniquity,
the absolutely sincere predictions of fools,
lighter moods like these. — Brian D'Ambrosio