All complain. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Make every bargain clear and plain,
That none may afterwards complain. [ Proverb ]
Have you found your life distasteful?
My life did, and does, smack sweet.
Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?
Mine I saved and hold complete.
Do your joys with age diminish?
When mine fail me, I'll complain.
Must in death your daylight finish?
My sun sets to rise again. [ Browning ]
O loss of sight, of thee I most complain!
Blind among enemies, O worse than chains.
Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age! [ Milton ]
O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear
What man has borne before!
Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care,
And they complain no more. [ Longfellow ]
Who hath not heard the rich complain
Of surfeits, and corporeal pain?
He barred from every use of wealth.
Envies the ploughman's strength and health. [ Gay ]
Alas! I have not words to tell my grief;
To vent my sorrow would be some relief;
Light sufferings give us leisure to complain;
We groan, we cannot speak, in greater pain. [ Dryden ]
He that dares not venture must not complain of ill luck. [ Proverb ]
Those that complain of every thing, never want the headache. [ Proverb ]
All complain of want of memory, but none of want of judgment. [ Proverb ]
They complain wrongfully of Neptune, that twice suffered shipwreck. [ Proverb ]
I must complain the cards are ill-shuffled till I have a good hand. [ Swift ]
Lovers complain of their hearts, but the distemper is in their heads. [ Proverb ]
If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on. [ Kant ]
He cannot complain of a hard sentence who is made master of his own fate. [ Friedrich Schiller ]
If you sleep till noon, you have no right to complain that the days are short. [ Proverb ]
Why complain of wanting light? It is courage, energy, perseverance that I want. [ Carlyle ]
Why should we complain, since we are so little moved by the complaints of others? [ Alfred Bougeart ]
No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. [ Thomas Jefferson ]
In condemning the vanity of women, men complain of the fire they themselves have kindled. [ Lingrie ]
Women complain of the lack of virtue in men, and do not esteem those who are too strictly virtuous. [ Blondel ]
An injury cannot be done to a consenting party, (i.e. if he consents or connives, he cannot complain. [ Law ]
This is the method of genius, to ripen fruit for the crowd by those rays of whose heat they complain. [ Margaret Fuller ]
Those who seek for something more than happiness in this world must not complain if happiness is not their portion. [ Froude ]
He that blows the coals in quarrels he has nothing to do with, has no right to complain if the sparks fly in his face. [ Ben. Franklin ]
With vivid words your just conceptions grace. Much truth compressing in a narrow space; Then many shall peruse, but few complain, And envy frown, and critics snarl in vain. [ Pindar ]
The pilot who is always dreading a rock or a tempest must not complain if he remain a poor fisherman. We must at times trust something to fortune, for fortune has often some share in what happens. [ Metastasio ]
Nature has lent us life, as we do a sum of money; only no certain day is fixed for payment. What reason then to complain if she demands it at pleasure, since it was on this condition that we received it? [ Cicero ]
People seem to think themselves in some ways superior to heaven itself, when they complain of the sorrow and want round about them. And yet it is not the devil for certain who puts pity into their hearts. [ Anne Isabella Thackeray ]
It is sufficient to have a simple heart in order to escape the harshness of the age, in order not to fly from the unfortunate; but it is to have some understanding of the imperishable law, to seek them in the forgetfulness against which they dare not complain, to prefer them in their ruin, to admire them in their struggles. [ Senancour ]