problems

Problems/Solutions 

1. As rust eats iron, so care eats the heart —Auguste Ricard
2. Being a new employee … it’s like picking up a screenplay and starting to act your part, only it’s Act Three and you have not been in Acts One or Two —Carol Clark, New York Times, July 28, 1986
3. Burdensome as a secret —French proverb
4. Carry your problems with you from place to place like a Santa Claus sack —George Garrett
5. Ceased to be an apparent problem … the way crumbs swept under a rug cease to be an apparent problem —Rick Borsten
6. Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body —Seneca, The Elder
7. (Doubt … ) dug at his peace of mind like a broken fingernail —F. van Wyck Mason
8. (The electronics-crammed production booth is beginning to) resemble the bridge of a destroyer under air attack —Michael Cieply, writing about taping of a Bill Cosby television segment that ran into problems, Wall Street Journal, September 26, 1986
9. Face a problem with all the joy of a team preparing for a game it expects to lose. —Anon
10. Felt speaking about one’s personal problems was rather like talking about one’s surgery scars … a subject of consuming interest only to one’s self —C.D.B. Bryan
11. Heading toward disaster, as certainly as a four-year-old behind the wheels of a Maserati —Vincent Canby, New York Times, February 28, 1986
12. He was like a mathematician with an abstruse problem, worrying over it, but worrying very calmly and impersonally —James Hilton
13. I am a man smothered with women and children, like a duck with onions —Sir Charles Napier

    Napier made these comparisons when he reflected on his life in England after retiring as commander of British forces in northern India.

14. An international crisis is like sex, as long as you keep talking about it, nothing happens —Harold Coffin, Reader’s Digest, September, 1961
15. It’s [being on a losing streak] like a little time box that’s going to explode —John Pennywell, football player on Columbia University’s Lions, New York Times, November 8, 1986
16. (I was) living as if I were squeezed in an iron hand —Honoré de Balzac
17. (The whole of) my life has passed like a razor … in hot water or a scrape —Sydney Smith
18. (My immediate) problems … as untouchable as a raw wound —Norman Mailer
19. The problem stayed in the front of his mind like a sheer cliff he could not begin to climb —Ken Follett
20. Pry at the mousehole of a solution like a cat with infinite patience —Bill Granger
21. Second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes, come easily on and off —Charles Dickens
22. Sign of trouble … like seeing a cannon muzzle poke out of the woods —James Sterngold, New York Times, March 22, 1986
23. The solution rushed on him like a fire storm —T. Coraghessan Boyle
24. They’re [troubles] piled on my head like snows on a mountain top —Bernard Malamud
25. They would gnaw on it for days like two puppies with a rubber bone —Charles Portis
26. Troubled as a plane with one wing —Anon
27. Trouble … fell across her shoulders like a cloak. It was as if she had touched a single strand of a web, and felt the whole thing tremble and knew herself to be caught forever in its trembling —Ellen Gilchrist
28. Troublesome as a wasp in one’s ears —Thomas Fuller
29. Troubles visited from above like tornadoes —Marge Piercy
30. Weaponless deterrence is like bodiless sex. It gets you nowhere —James Morrow
31. Women like to sit down with trouble as if it were knitting —Ellen Glasgow
32. Work like an antitoxin … before the complications come —Clifford Odets

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problems

• life coach - An advisor who helps people with problems, decisions, and goal attainment in daily life.
• empathy, sympathy - Empathy denotes a deep emotional understanding of another's feelings or problems, while sympathy is more general and can apply to small annoyances or setbacks.
• gravity - Comes from Latin gravitas, from gravis, "heavy, important"—and it can apply to situations and problems as well as to people.
• insoluble - Can be applied to problems that cannot be solved as well as substances that will not dissolve in liquids.