Weekend Words: Stumble
Last week an unfortunate 12-year-old boy stumbled into a 17th-century Baroque painting by Neapolitan artist Paolo Porpora, and this week Jeb! Bush continues to stumble in the wake of Death Star Trump.
Last week an unfortunate 12-year-old boy stumbled into a 17th-century Baroque painting by Neapolitan artist Paolo Porpora, and this week Jeb! Bush continues to stumble in the wake of Death Star Trump.
I have no way, and therefore want no eyes; I stumbled and I saw.
—Shakespeare, King Lear
Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.
—Ryszard Kapuscinski
It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object; beware of this stumbling block.
—Paul Gauguin
Self-love for ever creeps out, like a snake, to sting anything which happens to stumble upon it.
—Lord (George Gordon) Byron
Men stumble over pebbles, never over mountains.
—Emilie Cady
I watched them stumble Into some crazy hovel, too beat to grumble; Saw them file inward, slipping from their backs Rifles, equipment, packs. 15 On filthy straw they sit in the gloom, each face Bowed to patched, sodden boots they must unlace, While the wind chills their sweat through chinks and cracks.
—Siegfried Sassoon, “The Dream”
All too often forced to share our bed with those who cannot fathom our soul, can we not be forgiven if we believe ourselves fated to stumble one day upon the man or woman of our dreams.
—Alain de Botton, On Love
One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.
—Jane Austen
Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.
—Gertrude Stein, Everybody’s Autobiography
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
—Sir Winston Churchill
A stumble may prevent a fall.
—Thomas Fuller
What wond’rous life in this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons as I pass,
Ensnar’d with flow’rs, I fall on grass.
—Andrew Marvel, “The Garden”
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly.
—Theodore Roosevelt, “Citizenship in a Republic”
