civil answer; a SOFT answer turneth away wrath.
anvil see the CHURCH is an anvil which has worn out many hammers.ANY port in a storm1749 J. CLELAND Memoirs of Woman of Pleasure II. 133 It was going by the right
door, and knocking desperately at the wrong one. .. I told him of it: ‘Pooh,’ says he ‘my
dear, any port in a storm.’ 1821 SCOTT Pirate I. iv. As the Scotsman’s howf [refuge] lies
right under your lee, why, take any port in a storm. 1965 J. PORTER Dover Three ii. It
was not quite the sort of company with which Dover would mix from choice but, as the
jolly sailors say, any port in a storm. 1983 M. BOND Monsieur Pamplemousse iv. On the
principle of any port in a storm he made a dive for the nearest cubicle. necessity;
troubleIf ANYTHING can go wrong, it willCommonly known as Murphy’s Law, this saying has numerous variations, and the concept
was certainly known much earlier in engineering or scientific circles: e.g., 1878 Minutes
Proceedings of Institute of Civil Engineers li. 8 (13 Nov. 1877 session) It is found that
anything that can go wrong at sea generally does go wrong sooner or later. The formulation as
a ‘law’ is said to have been made in 1949 by George Nichols, then a project manager working
in California for the American firm of Northrop, developing a remark made by a colleague,
Captain E. Murphy, of the Wright Field Aircraft Laboratory. The contexts of some early
quotations appear to support this origin: e.g., 1955 Aviation Mechanics Bulletin May-June 11
Murphy’s Law: If an aircraft part can be installed incorrectly, someone will install it that way.
1953 A. ROE Making of Scientist 46 There is.. the physicist who introduced me to
one of my favorite ‘laws’, which he described as ‘Murphy’s law or the fourth law of
thermodynamics’ (actually there were only three the last I heard) which states: ‘If
anything can go wrong it will.’ 1956 Scientific American Apr. 166 Dr. Schaefer’s
observation confirms this department’s sad experience that editors as well as laboratory
workers are subject to Murphy’s Laws, to wit: 1. If something can go wrong it will, [etc.].
1980 A. E. FISHER Midnight Men vii. Of course, the up train was delayed. There was
some vast universal principle. If anything can go wrong it will. 2000 Washington Post 28
Dec. E1 Tune out the pundits. .. I subscribe to a corollary of Murphy’s Law (‘Anything
that can go wrong, will’), which is Pundit’s Law: Anything experts predict will happen,
will not. error