Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Difficulties
Die grössten Schwierigkeiten liegen da, wo wir sie nicht suchen.
The greatest difficulties lie where we are not looking for them.
Goethe—Sprüche in Prosa. P. 236.
Nil agit exemplum, litem quod lite resolvit.
The illustration which solves one difficulty by raising another, settles nothing.
Horace—Satires. II. 3. 103.
Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.
Samuel Johnson—Rasselas. Ch. XIII.
Blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.
Matthew. XXIII. 24.
So he with difficulty and labor hard
Mov’d on, with difficulty and labor he.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. II. L. 1,021.
Ardua molimur; sed nulla nisi ardua virtus.
I attempt a difficult work; but there is no excellence without difficulty.
Ovid—Ars Amatoria. II. 537.
Men might as well have hunted an hare with a tabre.
Richard the Redeles. (1399).
It is as hard to come as for a camel
To thread the postern of a small needle’s eye.
Richard II. Act V. Sc. 5. L. 16.
Nil tam difficile quin quærendo investigari possiet.
Nothing is so difficult but that it may be found out by seeking.
Terence—Heauton timoroumenos. IV. 2. 8. Herrick—Hesperides. No. 1009. Seek and Find.
Nulla est tam facilis res, quin difficilis siet,
Quum invitus facias.
There is nothing so easy in itself but grows difficult when it is performed against one’s will.
Terence—Heauton timoroumenos. IV. 6. 1.
There is such a choice of difficulties, that I own myself at a loss how to determine.
James Wolfe—Dispatch to Pitt. Sept. 2, 1759.