Oil on troubled waters. [ Bede ]
It is good fishing in troubled waters. [ Proverb ]
A woman moved is like a fountain troubled,
Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty. [ William Shakespeare, The Taming Of The Shrew ]
Better kiss a knave than be troubled with him. [ Proverb ]
O magic sleep! O comfortable bird
That broodest over the troubled sea of the mind
Till it is hushed and smooth! [ Keats ]
His early dreams of good outstripped the truth,
And troubled manhood followed baffled youth. [ Byron ]
In this wild world the fondest and the best
Are the most tried, most troubled and distressed. [ Crabbe ]
He that hath no ill fortune is troubled with good. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
He led on; but thoughts
Seem'd gathering round which troubled him. The veins
Grew visible upon his swarthy brow,
And his proud lip was press'd as if with pain.
He trod less firmly; and his restless eye
Glanc'd forward frequently, as if some ill
He dared not meet were there. [ Willis ]
Apt words have power to 'suage The tumors of a troubled mind;
And are as balm to festered wounds. [ Milton ]
A quiet mediocrity is still to be preferred before a troubled superfluity. [ Suckling ]
Loose his beard and hoary hair streamed, like a meteor, to the troubled air. [ Gray ]
O Fortune, how thy restless, wavering state has fraught with cares my troubled wit! [ Queen Elizabeth ]
We are not troubled by the evanescence of time, if the eternal is every moment present. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream - it may be so the moment after death. [ Hawthorne ]
Troubled blood through his pale face was seen to come and go, with tidings from his heart, as it a running messenger had been. [ Spenser ]
We all dread a bodily paralysis, and would make use of every contrivance to avoid it; but none of us is troubled about a paralysis of the soul. [ Epictetus ]
I have always looked upon alchemy in natural philosophy to be like enthusiasm in divinity, and to have troubled the world much to the same purpose. [ Sir W. Temple ]
What is life? A gulf of troubled waters, where the soul, like a vexed bark, is tossed upon the waves of pain and pleasure by the wavering breath of passions. [ Miss L. E. Landon ]
There is never the body of a man, how strong and stout soever, if it be troubled and inflamed, but will take more harm and offense by wine being poured into it. [ Plutarch ]
That inexhaustible good-nature which is the most precious gift of Heaven, spreading itself like oil over the troubled sea of thought, and keeping the mind smooth and equable in the roughest weather. [ Washington Irving ]
After the fever of life - after wearinesses, sicknesses, fightings and despondings, languor and fretfulness, struggling and failing, struggling and succeeding - after all the changes and chances of this troubled and unhealthy state, at length comes death - at length the white throne of God - at length the beatific vision. [ Newman ]