Stumble Over Quotes & Sayings

Men stumble over pebbles, never over mountains. — Marilyn French

A believer has forgiveness of sin, and Christ will not cast him out. Sin will ever remain part of the Christian's flesh, as seen, for instance, in evil desires referred to in Rom. 6-8. 'But as long as a man comes to Me in faith, even though he should stumble, I shall see to it that this does not harm him.' His sinful flesh will have no dominion over him; there is no condemnation for those who are incorporated into the body of Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:1), although they are not yet entirely pure, and their flesh is not completely mortified. — Martin Luther

Philately is normally a boys' hobby but for some reason it was in vogue at my junior school. Between the ages of eight and ten I collected avidly. I'd pore over my Stanley Gibbons book, obsessively checking my collection's value. I always hoped I'd stumble across a really valuable one, a Penny Black or an Inverted Jenny, but it wasn't to be. — Sophie Ellis-Bextor

We were received with warmth and bustling kindliness by the proprietor....She called us "you boys" and acted as if she had been expecting us for days, possibly years.
"Goodness me, just look at you boys!" she clucked in astonishment and delight. "You look as if you've been wrestling bears!"
I suppose we must have looked a sight. Katz was liberally covered in blood from his fraught stumble through the woods, and there was tiredness all over us, even in our eyes.
"Now you boys go up and get yourselves cleaned up and come down to the porch and I'll have a nice jug of iced tea waiting for you. Or would you rather lemonade? Never mind, I'll make both. Now go on!" And off she bustled.
"Thanks, Mom," we muttered in dazzled and grateful unison. — Bill Bryson

Well that was a waste of time. Not to mention gas money and new pantyhose. This sucks, pardon my French. She'd been certain - one hundred percent sure - that she was acing the interview for the private school librarian job. She didn't stumble over any answers. The woman conducting the interview was relaxed and — Marie Martine

Learning to write clean code is hard work. It requires more than just the knowledge of principles and patterns. You must sweat over it. You must practice it yourself, and watch
yourself fail. You must watch others practice it and fail. You must see them stumble and retrace their steps. You must see them agonize over decisions and see the price they pay for making those decisions the wrong way. — Robert C. Martin

Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain. The mind does not create what it perceives, anymore than the eye creates the rose. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

One of the things I love about bound books is their sheer physicality. Electronic books live out of sight and out of mind. But printed books have body, presence. Sure, sometimes they'll elude you by hiding in improbable places: in a box full of old picture frames, say, or in the laundry basket, wrapped in a sweatshirt. But at other times they'll confront you, and you'll literally stumble over some tomes you hadn't thought about in weeks or years. I often seek electronic books, but they never come after me. The may make me feel, but I can't' feel them. They are all soul with no flesh, no texture and no weight. They can get in your head but can't whack you upside it. — Will Schwalbe

We understand today that the physical universe is bigger and older and operates very differently than how the biblical writers, and all other ancient people, thought. Many Christians stumble over this, thinking they are showing respect for the Bible and obeying God by making the biblical story mesh with modern science, or rejecting modern science entirely in favor of God's Word. But there is no need to feel embarrassed or unfaithful by acknowledging that ancient writers wrote from an ancient mind-set. When ancient Israelites wrote as they did about the physical world, they were expressing their faith in God in ways that fit their understanding. It shouldn't get our knickers in a twist to admit that, from a scientific point of view, they were wrong. That doesn't make their faith or the God behind it all any less genuine. — Peter Enns

Is it really for the tournaments or are you going for the women?" "You know, I'm not sure why you always make me out to be such a lady's man," Reuben admonished his father mildly. "I'm just looking for the perfect girl for me." "Well," growled the duke, "nobody could accuse you of not being diligent in your search, with close attention paid to every subject you study. Very close attention." The young knight shrugged. "You can't find the perfect girl if you aren't looking, can you now? And as for your question - I am indeed going for the tournaments. And if I should happen to stumble over a dragon that needs to be slain or a damsel in distress on the way, I wouldn't say no to that either." "You're mad! Completely mad! — Robert Thier

The only magic that's left in the world right now is the magic that we make ourselves, deliberately. You're not going to stumble over enchantment by chance. You have to be open to it, looking for it, and when you first think you might have glimpsed it, you have to will it into your life with every machination available to you. — Megan Lindholm

Companies that grow for the sake of growth or that expand into areas outside their core business strategy often stumble. On the other hand, companies that build scale for the benefit of their customers and shareholders more often succeed over time. — Jamie Dimon

People stumble over the truth from time to time,
but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened. — Winston S. Churchill

Extraverts, in other words, often stumble over themselves. They can talk too much and listen too little, which dulls their understanding of others' perspectives. They can fail to strike the proper balance between asserting and holding back, which can be read as pushy and drive people away.* — Daniel H. Pink

Men do not stumble over mountains, but over molehills. — Confucius

Wherever primitive man put up a word, he believed he had made a discovery. How utterly mistaken he really was! He had touched a problem, and while supposing he had solved it, he had created and obstacle to its solution. Now, with every new knowledge we stumble over flint-like and petrified words and, in so doing, break a leg sooner than a word. — Friedrich Nietzsche

To free desire from the tendency to cling, we have to be willing to stumble over ourselves. — Mark Epstein

Hungarians introduce themselves by stating their family name first then their given name. This can be very confusing at first, especially when you have to introduce yourself and stumble over your own name. This will endear you to Hungarians in much the same way we feel affection for a retarded puppy. — Mark Adamsbaum

Better than putting things in the attic you never use again. This way, you get to live the summer over for a minute or two here or there along the way through the winter, and when the bottles are empty the summer's gone for good and no regrets and no sentimental trash lying about for you to stumble over forty years from now. Clean, smokeless, efficient, that's dandelion wine.
(page 266 in the 1975 hardback) — Ray Bradbury

We can throw stones, complain about them, stumble on them, climb over them, or build with them. — William Arthur Ward

We can choose to throw stones, to stumble on them, to climb over them, or to build with them. — William Arthur Ward

I wish my prose to be transparent-I don't want the reader to stumble over me; I want him to look through what I'm saying to what I'm describing. I don't want him ever to say, Oh, goodness, how nicely written this is. That would be a failure. — V.S. Naipaul

We live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one another, and I think we thus lose some respect for one another. — Henry David Thoreau

The little dog-eared books in the meeting-house proved poor reading ... So many of them were about unnaturally good children who never did wrong, and unnaturally bad children who never did right. At the end there was always the word MORAL, in big capital letters, as if the readers were supposed to be too blind to find it for themselves, and it had to be put directly across the path for them to stumble over. — Annie Fellows Johnston

We're all guilty of saying things, especially on social media, that hurt one another, that leave scars, and damage relationships. As I stumble over my mistakes in this area, I'm coming to realize that relationships with good people are precious things that should not be taken lightly. They are never worth risking for the sake of being right about some triviality that won't be remembered a month or a year from now. — Bobby Adair

He had never clearly fathomed the true weight of a word of good, truth, and purity cast in the stream of human speech and the deep bend it cut in it. Nor had he thought that a word spoken boldly and loudly, with no hint of false shame, but rather with courage, that this word would not drown in the ugly cries of fashionable satyrs but would plunge like a pearl into the abyss of public life and always find itself a shell.
Many stumble over a good word, blushing in embarrassment, and utter a careless word boldly and loudly, never suspecting that it, too, unfortunately, will not go for naught but will leave a long trail of often times ineradicable evil.
p. 296 — Ivan Goncharov

2. Stutter. I can be on the phone for hours with my best friend, but if confronted by a cute guy, wham! I get power outage, my brain is short circuited. You'd be lucky to get anything out of me besides "er...um...uh..." and a ton of blushing.
3.Stumble. I trip over my own feet. Yeah it's easy to do that when you're five feet seven and gangly, but I managed to make the dance teacher cry when I was five years old. Or even worse, I knock things over and spill things over and spill food. — Aya Ling

It is all my fault! But the blind man when he stumbles over a stone, curses the stone, not the blindness that made him stumble. 17 — Henryk Sienkiewicz

To trace the history of a river or a raindrop is also to trace the history of the soul, the history of the mind descending and arising in the body. In both, we constantly seek and stumble upon divinity, which like feeding the lake, and the spring becoming a waterfall, feeds, spills, falls, and feeds itself all over again. — Gretel Ehrlich

Once he reached the farm he followed a barely used dirt road that led towards the sandstone cliffs. He heard the dog scrabbling across the rocky ground. The huffling of her breath. Some of the rocks were quite large and he turned and watched her stumble into them. In terrain like this she could easily break a leg and yet she lurched on, determined to find him. When she finally reached him she touched his leg with her nose, before settling down a few feet away, blind head looking out of over the dry Limpopo below. He wished he could pluck out her eyes and hold them in his hands like marbles. Rub them together, make thunder, bring rain. Instead he nudged the safety catch off his rifle and shot her. — Lisa Fugard

I missed the moonlight, the stars. There were times I forgot that there was an entire universe above the clouds. It was as if a shroud had been pulled around the Earth. Over time, we would forget everything that we had once struggled so hard to observe and learn and prove. We would forget about Jupiter and its churning storms. We would forget about the Big Dipper, about Halley's comet. We would stumble across telescopes in old department stores and never give them a second look, never wonder about the things they once made large. — Jason Gurley

So tell me: were you born broken just like me, born hungry? Are we all of us born with some part of us missing? Are we each us born with a hole?....Born with a hole and no earthly way of finding just the exact right plug to fill it, not 'til you've tried 'em from A to Z and back once more: booze, fags, work, candy, men, girls, heroin, methedrine, methadone, God. Tried having a baby. Tried killing yourself. A hundred religions, from Calvin to the Dalai Lama and back again; tried every damn thing you could think of and some you had to stumble over....You stick a plug in your weakness like a finger in the proverbial dike and let pressure build up let it swell and swell 'til there's nothing left but tension, nothing left but what's left over--the absence, not the presence. The wound you shape your soul around. — Gemma Files

In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble
because the Christ-life is inside him, repairing him all the time, enabling him to repeat (in some degree) the kind of voluntary death which Christ Himself carried out. - Mere Christianity — C.S. Lewis

There is a fire raging, and we have two choices: we can turn our backs, or we can try to fight it. Yes, talking about racism is hard to do, and yes, we stumble over the words - but we who are white need to have this discussion among ourselves. Because then, even more of us will overhear, and - I hope - the conversation will spread. — Jodi Picoult

Often we can achieve an even better result when we stumble yet are willing to start over, when we don't give up after a mistake, when something doesn't come easily but we throw ourselves into trying, when we're not afraid to appear less than perfectly polished. — Sharon Salzberg

For many people religion can be so easy they stumble right over it. — Kathie Lee Gifford

In the dewy wood tinselled with bewildering moonlight, the bumbling, tumbling babies of the fairy creche trip over the hem of her dress, which is no more nor less than the margin of the wood itself; they stumble in the tangled grass as they play with the coneys, the quick brown fox-cubs, the russet fieldmice and the wee scraps of grey voles, blind velvet Mole and striped Brock with his questing snout - all the denizens of the woodland are her embroiderings, and the birds flutter round her head, settle on her shoulders and make their nests in her great abundance of disordered hair, in which are plaited poppies and ears of wheat. — Angela Carter

Over the years I've learned that a surefooted and confident mapmaker does not a swift traveler make. I stumble and fall, and I constantly find myself needing to change course. And even though I'm trying to follow a map that I've drawn, there are many times when frustration and self-doubt take over, and I wad up that map and shove it into the junk drawer in my kitchen. It's not an easy journey from excruciating to exquisite, but for me it's been worth every step. — Brene Brown

At every turn I took, I prayed that I would not stumble over her body. Every time I didn't, it gave me hope that she was still alive. — James Patterson

Burning in a hot tunnel of dismay, my humiliation complete as I shake without reason and stumble over words and have nothing to say about my 'illness' which anyway amounts only to knowing that there's no point in anything because I'm going to die. — Sarah Kane

Our faithful obedience delights his heart. His life in us produces fruit. When we are needy or afraid, he intercedes for us and stands guard over us. Jesus picks us up when we stumble. He forgives us so we can make fresh starts. When we get to know and rely on him, he does all this and much, much more. — Jim Reapsome

Men sometimes stumble over the truth, but often pick themselves up and hurry off as though nothing had happened — Winston S. Churchill

Don't stumble over something behind you. — Seneca The Younger

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened. — Winston S. Churchill

Why writers stumble over words when talking? Because we have so much to say, our mouths can't keep up with our brains. — Ksenia Anske

Yes,she worked as a stripper in her grandmother's bakery!" she blurts out.What?! It's so unfortunate that my mouth is full of rice right now. Why did I take such a big bite? It's taking forever to chew!"Stripping in a bakery, huh?" Zane says with a ridiculously adorable half smile. "That's pretty awesome."I just keep shaking my head in a tiny mortified sort of way. "I don't ... I'm not a stripper," I stumble over my words,hideously embarrassed. Mom's eyes are huge right now. "Oh, no!" she gasps. "Did I just call you a stripper?!"Indeedly-doodly, Mother. — Nicole Christie

Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something. — Gertrude Stein

Hope works like that. It hinds and blends in, only to pop out when you least expect it. It's always a surprise, something you step on, trip over, or stumble on by accident. It hides in the divots of our lives. in the loneliest valleys. It's like a child, always playing hide and seek to keep our lives unpredictable. Just when we're about to give up, hope turns on, like light, to guide out way. — Katie Kacvinsky

Oh, it's mysterious lamplit evenings, here in the galaxy, one after the other. It's one of those nights when I wander from window to window, looking for a sign. But I can't see. Terror and a beauty insoluble are a ribband of blue woven into the fringes of garments of things both great and small. No culture explains, no bivouac offers real haven or rest. But it could be that we are not seeing something. Galileo thought that comets were an optical illusion. This is fertile ground: since we are certain that they're not, we can look at what scientists are saying with fresh hope. What if there are really gleaming castellated cities hung upside-down over the desert sand? What limpid lakes and cool date palms have our caravans passed untried? Until, one by one, by the blindest of leaps, we light on the road to these places, we must stumble in darkness and hunger. — Annie Dillard

Whenever I stumble over my own feet, or blurt out a thought that makes no sense at all, or leave the house wearing one pattern too many, I always think, It's okay, I'm from New Jersey. I love New Jersey, because it's not just an all-purpose punch line, but probably a handy legal defense, as in, Yes, I shot my wife because I thought she was Bigfoot, but I'm from New Jersey. — Paul Rudnick

I object in the strongest possible terms to the fact that the instant we stumble over possibly the most important thing anybody's ever found anywhere ever, the first thing SC does is snap into Full-Scale Raving Paranoia mode and apply this M32 total-secrecy-or-we'll-pull-your-plugs-out-baby — Anonymous

Don't give up. Keep going. there is always a chance that you stumble onto something terrific. I have never heard of anyone stumbling over anything while he was sitting down — Ann Landers

With all those stars in the sky, why isn't there enough light for us to see by? We stumble like blinded sheep.'
'As you can see, it is clouding over. The stars can't pierce the gloom; they just wait it out. That isn't the stars fault. It is their custom to stay heavenly. — Gregory Maguire

All things are in the hand of heaven, and Folly, eldest of Jove's daughters, shuts men's eyes to their destruction. She walks delicately, not on the solid earth, but hovers over the heads of men to make them stumble or to ensnare them. — Homer

If you think there's a god, then there is, and if you don't, then there isn't. At least while we stumble around in the dark during our mortal life, that is. We'll find out the answer for sure when it's over, and if we don't, well, we'll never know that we didn't. — Anthony Bjorklund

Ten minutes ago, Frank though he was going to prison. Now he knows he's not, and part of him thinks he should just be glad he's getting out of this at all, but he's not. He's not glad. He's furious. He's known the world is broken for a long time, he's known that, but sometimes he's amazed at how broken; even now, at this point in his life, nearing fifty years old, he can stumble across something that makes him realize all over again that the world is not only broken, but beyond fixing. No amount of glue can ever make it right. And yet, you have to focus on your little part of it, don't you? You have to focus on your little corner of the world and glue what cracks you can. Otherwise there's no hope at all. — Ryan David Jahn

I say no when I should say yes. I say yes when I should say no. I stumble into holy moments not realizing where I am until they are over. I love poorly, then accidently say the right thing at the right moment without even realizing it, then forget what matters, then show tenderness when it's needed, and then turn around and think of myself way too often. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened. — Winston Churchill

If you stumble over mere believability, what are you living for? Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe? Reason is excellent for getting food, clothing and shelter. Reason is the very best tool kit. Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away. But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater — Yann Martel

The analysts try in vain to conceal the fact that they do not deduce: they combine, they compose ... when they do arrive at the truth they stumble over it after groping their way along. — Evariste Galois

(Excerpt from a standup routine by Matt Graham
Last Friday, my roommate sent me out to get some canned fish, because we're having some Catholic survivalists over for dinner. Weirdest thing happened. I'm coming up the steps, I stumble, all the groceries fall down the stairs. Except for a can of salmon, which falls up the stairs. Bizarre experience, but it gave me an idea. Couple nights later I was driving the wrong way down a one-way street. Cop pulled me over. I told him I was spawning. He said, 'Young man, I have reason to believe you're DUI. You know what that is?' I said, 'Do I! — Stefan Fatsis

It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense. We should all be dead. I thought I should like to see us all dead, one on top of the other. A pyramid of flesh with the whitefolks on the bottom, as the broad base, then the Indians with their silly tomahawks and teepees and wigwams and treaties, the Negroes with their mops and recipes and cotton sacks and spirituals sticking out of their mouths. The Dutch children should all stumble in their wooden shoes and break their necks. The French should choke to death on the Louisiana Purchase (1803) while silkworms ate all the Chinese with their stupid pigtails. As a species, we were an abomination. All of us. — Maya Angelou

I stumble across the sea of tarmac, finding pavement, concealment and a brick wall. Palms brace against the scrubby surface. My stomach churns and then bubbles over, burning my throat as acrid yellow acid spills from my lips in frothy discomposure. It splatters the pavement like a spray of blood. — Rebecca Clare Smith

There is a string that connects us that is not visible to the eye. Maybe every person has more than one soul they are connected to, and all over the world there are those invisible strings ... Maybe the chances that you'll find each and every one of your soul mates is slim. But sometimes you're lucky enough to stumble across one. And you feel a tug. And it's not so much a choice to love them though their flaws and through your differences, but rather you love them without even trying. You love their flaws. — Tarryn Fisher

The true way goes over a rope which is not stretched at any great height but just above the ground. It seems more designed to make people stumble than to be walked upon. — Franz Kafka

Since when did historians concern themselves with facts?" The zanthyr leaned back on one elbow and waved his dagger idly. "Once in a while some historian will stumble over the truth, but most of the time he'll pick himself up again and continue on as if nothing has happened. And yet, some things ... " He straightened and settled Ean a telling look. "Some truths are better left to myth and legend, Prince of Dannym. — Melissa McPhail

When you stumble, keep walking,
when a door closes, keep knocking,
when you win, stand tall
and always remember,
God is sovereign over all. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Huntin too hard for the truth ain't a good idea, y'know," he added. "By the time you stumble over it, it ain't the truth no more. Unless there's death in it. I reckon death is about as close to truth as a man can come. — Peter Matthiessen

Dawn.
The transformation is gruesome and brings me to my feet. My legs nearly buckle, but I stumble to the doorway, terrified for the man-beast in the destroyed room.
He screams and roars, shaking with pain, and grief, and such horrible shame. My heart bleeds, weeping for him. I fall to my knees, helpless to do anything but watch.
When it is finally, blessedly over, my Beast bows his head, looking utterly exhausted. His rumbling breaths are a comfort like nothing I've ever known.
I cannot give up on the monster of a man. For this gentle, tormented Beast, I must fight on. I must find a way to free him. — Alianne Donnelly

In your rare embrace, sometimes I am lost nowadays. In these years, you have changed. I have changed. Every single day, we're fighting our feuds silently; inventing devious ways to hurt one another. Our gazes keep to our feet: wavering, pirouetting and crisscrossing, so as to not stumble, even inadvertently, upon each other. Our windows look out at other windows looking in at us. Mynahs no longer come by in our balconies. Branches, not of a mango tree, but of a conglomerate, surround them instead. The silhouettes of concrete buildings sometimes shine in the rain's aftermath, but remain concrete. Today, as the Ganga rises and rages all over the city, people run for their lives, but I let it wash over my soul and flood my tears.'
('Left from Dhakeshwari') — Kunal Sen

I stumble in behind them, almost tripping on my own feet. They both turn to look at me as I grip the edge of the counter to balance myself. Tag raises an eyebrow at me. "Did you even talk to this girl?" "No" "Damn, dude, she's got you tripping all over yourself, and you don't even know what her voice sounds like? I'd hate to see what happens when you actually have a conversation with her." "I don't know who she is. I've never seen her before, but she drives a nice car. I want to know her. — Michelle Dare

That child would stumble over the pattern in a rug. — Maya Angelou

Architecture is (in part) "the art of leaving out irrelevant details". Leaving out details, sadly, often derails into religiously ignoring details. The key word, however, is 'irrelevant': as the Chinese proverb says: people stumble over molehills, not over mountains. An architect consciously leaves out details that he or she has decided are irrelevant to the decisions to be made. — Gerben Wierda

Montmorency's ambition in life, is to get in the way and be sworn at. If he can squirm in anywhere where he particularly is not wanted, and be a perfect nuisance, and make people mad, and have things thrown at his head, then he feels his day has not been wasted.
To get somebody to stumble over him, and curse him steadily for an hour, is his highest aim and object; and, when he has succeeded in accomplishing this, his conceit becomes quite unbearable. — Jerome K. Jerome

Intoxicated with her success and his awed eyes, and with the way the wind rushed by and flicked delicate strands of saliva across her cheeks, Will spread out her arms, spun in a pirouette. Shumba chose that moment to stumble over a rabbit hole and with a terrific crash, that sounded and resounded for miles and miles of flei, Will fell into the long grass. — Katherine Rundell