C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Quarrels
In a false quarrel there is no true valor.
Thy head is as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat.
The quarrel is a very pretty quarrel as it stands.
I won’t quarrel with my bread and butter.
Jars concealed are half reconciled.
The best quarrels, in the heat, are cursed by those that feel their sharpness.
I thought your love eternal. Was it tied so loosely that a quarrel could divide?
Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side.
Beware of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, bear it, that the opposer may beware of thee.
We often quarrel with the unfortunate to get rid of pitying them.
I consider your very testy and quarrelsome people in the same light as I do a loaded gun, which may, by accident, go off and kill one.
When two men quarrel, who owns the cooler head is the more to blame.
Persons unmask their evilest qualities when they do quarrel.
It requires two indiscreet persons to institute a quarrel; one individual cannot quarrel alone.
If he had two ideas in his head, they would fall out with each other.
Women always find their bitterest foes among their own sex.
Weakness on both sides is, as we know, the motto of all quarrels.
When worthy men fall out, only one of them may be faulty at the first; but if strife continue long, commonly both become guilty.
We are sure to be losers when we quarrel with ourselves; it is a civil war, and in all such contentions, triumphs are defeats.
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.
I wish it were never one’s duty to quarrel with anybody; I do so hate it: but not to do it sometimes is to smile in the devil’s face.
One should not quarrel with a dog without a reason sufficient to vindicate one through all the courts of morality.
Coarse kindness is at least better than coarse anger; and in all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of its dullness.
In love quarrels the party that loves the most is always most willing to acknowledge the greater fault.
Contention, like a horse full of high feeding, madly hath broke loose, and bears down all before him.
The quarrels of lovers are like summer storms; everything is more beautiful when they have passed.
Thou! why, thou wilt quarrel with a man that hath a hair more, or a hair less, in his beard than thou hast. Thou wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes.
A man may quarrel with himself alone; that is, by controverting his better instincts and knowledge when brought face to face with temptation.
In most quarrels there is a fault on both sides. A quarrel may be compared to a spark, which cannot be produced without a flint, as well as steel. Either of them may hammer on wood forever; no fire will follow.
If you cannot avoid a quarrel with a blackguard, let your lawyer manage it, rather than yourself. No man sweeps his own chimney, but employs a chimney-sweeper, who has no objection to dirty work, because it is his trade.
Two things, well considered, would prevent many quarrels: first, to have it well ascertained whether we are not disputing about terms, rather than things; and, secondly, to examine whether that on which we differ is worth contending about.
I never love those salamanders that are never well but when they are in the fire of contentions. I will rather suffer a thousand wrongs than offer one. I have always found that to strive with a superior is injurious; with an equal, doubtful; with an inferior, sordid and base; with any, full of unquietness.