Straw Camel's Back Quotes

There is a time in our lives, usually in mid-life, when a woman has to make a decision - possibly the most important psychic decision of her future life - and that is, whether to be bitter or not. Women often come to this in their late thirties or early forties. They are at the point where they are full up to their ears with everything and they've "had it" and "the last straw has broken the camel's back" and they're "pissed off and pooped out." Their dreams of their twenties may be lying in a crumple. There may be broken hearts, broken marriages, broken promises.

Straw met camel's back. Breaking commenced.

The straw that breaks the camel's back always looks light enough, until it lands.

Here is the problem: Collect a hundred, or a thousand, of those, and your life is miserable and your marriage doomed. Do not pretend you are happy with something if you are not, and if a reasonable solution might, in principle, be negotiated. Have the damn fight. Unpleasant as that might be in the moment, it is one less straw on the camel’s back. And that is particularly true for those daily events that everyone is prone to regard as trivial—even the plates on which you eat your lunch. Life is what repeats, and it is worth getting what repeats right.

And then, one Saturday morning, I came down to breakfast, and it all came to a head when she flat-out told me that I wasn’t going to training. Straw met camel’s back. Breaking commenced. “You have no right to tell me—” “You do not want to finish that sentence, missy. You want to sit down, close your mouth, and eat.” “How am I supposed to eat with my mouth closed?” “Bryn, that’s enough.

Because when you feel physically and mentally low, molehills become mountains, slight set-backs seem like disasters, and the smallest problem tends to be the final straw to break the camel’s back.

Collect a hundred, or a thousand, of those, and your life is miserable and your marriage doomed. Do not pretend you are happy with something if you are not, and if a reasonable solution might, in principle, be negotiated. Have the damn fight. Unpleasant as that might be in the moment, it is one less straw on the camel’s back.

Hey, new girl. You know the straw that broke the camel's back? Is that the same thing as the last straw?

One glance. Once stare. Was all it took to take my lungs to long for air. The moment I saw you, is the moment I found myself. It was unreal; this love thrill, My soul it manifest. I was obsessed. Maybe that's where I went wrong, love possessed. Forced to cross the Rubicon, no protest. From your end ‘cause we shared the same sentiment Love we earned, time we burned, look at what we've done. Now we at the point of no return, no taking it back. Our world like centre CERN, particles go round and back. All we do is speak out of turn, Argue, push buttons;
I guess that's the straw hun, That broke the camel's back.

I remember once, on a family skiing trip to the Alps, Dad’s practical joking got all of us into a particularly tight spot. I must have been about age ten at the time, and was quietly excited when Dad spotted a gag that was begging to be played out on the very serious-looking Swiss-German family in the room next door to us. Each morning their whole family would come downstairs, the mother dressed head to toe in furs, the father in a tight-fitting ski suit and white neck scarf, and their slightly overweight, rather snooty-looking thirteen-year-old son behind, often pulling faces at me. The hotel had the customary practice of having a breakfast form that you could hang on your door handle the night before if you wanted to eat in your room. Dad thought it would be fun to fill out our form, order 35 boiled eggs, 65 German sausages, and 17 kippers, then hang it on the Swiss-German family’s door. It was too good a gag to pass up. We didn’t tell Mum, who would have gone mad, but instead filled out the form with great hilarity, and sneaked out last thing before bed and hung it on their door handle. At 7:00 A.M. we heard the father angrily sending the order back. So we repeated the gag the next day. And the next. Each morning the father got more and more irate, until eventually Mum got wind of what we had been doing and made me go around to apologize. (I don’t know why I had to do the apologizing when the whole thing had been Dad’s idea, but I guess Mum thought I would be less likely to get in trouble, being so small.) Anyway, I sensed it was a bad idea to go and own up, and sure enough it was. From that moment onward, despite my apology, I was a marked man as far as their son was concerned. It all came to a head when I was walking down the corridor on the last evening, after a day’s skiing, and I was just wearing my ski thermal leggings and a T-shirt. The spotty, overweight teenager came out of his room and saw me walking past him in what were effectively ladies’ tights. He pointed at me, called me a sissy, started to laugh sarcastically, and put his hands on his hips in a very camp fashion. Despite the age and size gap between us, I leapt on him, knocked him to the ground, and hit him as hard as I could. His father heard the commotion and raced out of his room to find his son with a bloody nose and crying hysterically (and overdramatically). That really was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and I was hauled to my parents’ room by the boy’s father and made to explain my behavior to Mum and Dad. Dad was hiding a wry grin, but Mum was truly horrified, and I was grounded. So ended another cracking family holiday!

I could see the smudge of a pistol in his reflection’s grip, aimed right at my back. “I’m pretty good at reading people,” I said calmly, not turning around. “Figuring out their motivations. What makes them tick.” He didn’t say anything. I could almost hear him breathe. “You’re thinking, right about now,” I said, “that I’m the straw that’s breaking the camel’s back. That if you took me out of the picture, your life would be a whole lot simpler and safer. I don’t blame you for that. If I was in your shoes, I’d feel the same way. But I’m going to ask you a question, Gary. Just one question.” Still no reply. I imagined his finger curling around the trigger, a gentle squeeze from doomsday. “Gary, you know my name. And you’ve read Harmony’s file on me. The crime scene reports. The speculation and the rumors. You’ve seen the pictures of the bodies. Or what’s left of them. Do you believe what’s in that file, Gary?” His voice was almost too soft to hear. “I do,” he whispered. “You’re a fucking monster.” “Good. Then I want to ask you another question. You’ll get one shot, Gary, just one shot…so what do you think will happen if it doesn’t kill me?” His reflection’s arm wavered, then dropped limply to his side. I let myself out.

He stood for a few seconds watching the corpse spasm and shock hit him hard like a punch to the stomach. Fuck! That could have been me, he thought. Mirza grasped his arm, dragging him to his senses. The Indian lectured, “Sir, you can’t always rely on yourself. A single straw is useless, but together, many straws make a broom.” What? Broom? His thoughts muddled, Bishop rubbed at his throat, leaning wearily on the soldier. “Is that the same straw that broke the camel’s back, Mirza?” he croaked. “What are you, a fucking philosopher now?” His words sounded ungrateful but the expression on his face told a different story. “Thanks, mate.

I knew from experience that events tend to gang up on you. It's not one straw that breaks the camel's back - it's the cumulative straws piling up and weighing you down. - Kiki Lowenstein

The night that we were going to Lagos, there was a car [sent by Paul] in front of my place, and I just thought, ‘You know what? I’ve got to put an end to this.’ I just said, ‘That’s it, I think I’m going to leave.’ My wife and I were both having tough times trying to keep all the plates in the air, the way things were. I’m in one of the top bands in the world, and we’re living in a dingy, one-bedroom, furnished apartment. It was just really a rat hole. The toilet had a big tank above it, where you’d pull the chain to flush it, and the [manufacturer’s] name on the toilet was Thomas Crapper and Sons. But this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. “I picked up the phone and called Paul, and I said, ‘I’m done. I can’t do this anymore.’ It was hard to do, really, extremely hard to do. And he was shocked.” An argument ensued, both Seiwell and Paul becoming increasingly incensed, until Paul slammed down the phone. Five minutes later, Seiwell’s phone rang, and as soon as he put the receiver to his ear, he heard Linda, shouting, “How dare you inconvenience us?

The straw that breaks the camel’s back always looks light enough, until it lands.

Don’t you think that’s unfair? If you care about him, then why not show how his faith in nurturing you all has paid off and manage your own work appropriately instead of running to him for every tiny issue.” Anger boiled in my gut, and my grip tightened around the glass in my hand. “The guy needs a break too, carrying that sort of burden, the burden of multiple people and his own heavy load; it wears a person down. What’s to say that last night wasn’t just the straw that broke the camel’s back?

Complex failures have more than one cause, none of which created the failure on its own. Usually a mix of internal factors, such as procedures and skills, collides with external factors, such as weather or a supplier’s delivery delay. Sometimes, the multiple factors interact to exacerbate one another; sometimes they simply compound, as with the straw that broke the camel’s back.

When you increase cognitive load, you are essentially giving the other person too much to think about, so their lie falls apart. A useful technique is to actually state something untrue yourself, and watch their response. Not only will this tell you what their baseline behavior is to non-truths, but the extra piece of information will be one more straw on the camel’s back. Do this a few times, switching between true and false, and you are asking the liar to juggle a lot on the spot, mentally speaking.

And that was the last time I went back to my home church, the straw that broke the camel’s back. I was out in the world, pursuing my dream, speaking my truth, using my talents, summoning the courage to share my fears and insecurities in front of strangers to entertain them and leave them happier and feeling less alone, and this guy thought I had fallen from grace because I occasionally said dirty words? Well, fuck that. I never went back.

Steve Holland: There was one version of it where they were all walking up the stairs after having gotten back from the airport and their trip to Stockholm, and just as they got to the fourth floor, the elevator would ding and it would open. There was a talk about a moment in which Sheldon and Amy say, “It’s crazy; we won the Nobel Prize and in some ways, everything’s exactly the same,” and then the elevator opens, and that would have been the end of the show. The tag would have still been them sitting on the couch, but as we were breaking the story, we thought about two things: the moment where Sheldon was freaking out because Amy had gotten the haircut; and the Nobel Prize, it was like the straw that broke the camel’s back. So it seemed right for the elevator to open then, and also, I just thought it would be much less expected to have it happen so much earlier in the episode.

More than a straw that broke the camel’s back, this was the log that crushed the animal and finished it off. I’d been falsely convicted of a crime, exiled to a frozen remote planet, preventing me from participating in my appeal, wrapped in a stinky animal skin, handed over to an alien who’d found me lacking—and now I had to live in a cave during an eternal winter?

A lot of science fiction is about the end game. What happens during a sudden alien invasion or what happens long after the world as we know it has changed. And I love that kind of writing. But what I found myself wondering about was what happens at the beginning of change, before the catastrophe. What happens if the change to our world is simply the straw that broke the camel's back.

Do not pretend you are happy with something if you are not, and if a reasonable solution might, in principle, be negotiated. Have the damn fight. Unpleasant as that might be in the moment, it is one less straw on the camel’s back.

If there's one lesson that I've been taught it is that when it comes to the bad, everyone wants to be a drop in the ocean. Insignificant and without fault. They want to be a drop instead of the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Just as I was on the verge of release, loud banging was heard at the front door, rudely jolting us back to reality. Desperately adjusting my spinning vision to normality, I saw Toby fuming in front of our nakedness. The boy was shouting obscenities at Jack and me. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back; I had enough of Toby’s erratic behavior. I commanded him to leave my flat, and our relationship terminated from that moment forward. I had no wish to see this irrational guy again. I was no longer responsible for his childishness, even if he threatened suicide. By now I had enough of his stupidity and told him that was none of my business if he decided to take his own life. Toby stomped out of my lodgings, cursing and hurling profanity at us. This offensive episode had ruptured our evening of blissful sexuality. Jack and I decided to take a hiatus. I also needed a respite from Toby’s drama. My four-year on-again-off-again relationship with the Portuguese Filipino ended that very evening. I had been holding on to that relationship, hoping I would uncover a glimmer of your positive traits in the boy. I learned that people don’t change; what changes is our perception of them. Toby slowly relinquished his suicidal absurdity over time. Our friendship remained cordial despite all that had transpired. He continued to try to reignite our passions, which to me had passed the point of no return. I never looked back after I left for Canada to pursue my postgraduate studies. That was the final chapter to my relationship with Toby. Well, Young, here we are, reminiscing about the past when we have the present and the future to enjoy each other’s company. Be well, be good, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Love you always, Andy.

1977 Palawan Island, Philippines   Taer and Anak became our tour guides, accompanying us wherever we went. Although we did not pay for their services, we treated them to meals and paid their entrance fees to places of interest. Whenever I asked about their home and schooling schedules, they provided anomalous excuses.               The first few nights, they stayed at my hut. Since we had nothing in common besides unbridled sex, I soon grew weary of their presence. Moreover, I needed time alone, but they couldn’t bear the thought of leaving. They clung onto me as if I were their saviour.               I had no choice but to bid them to return home – and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. They confided in me that they had run away from their dysfunctional families and were homeless before we met. They had been relying on me to provide for them. I now had a problem I hadn’t envisioned.               So, I consulted with my rowing buddies. These were their suggestions: ●       Without telling the boys, move to another part of the city. ●       Call it quits and compensate the boys with some financial aid. ●       Break off all ties with them. I ended up doing all three, but that was not the end of Taer and Anak. My saving grace was that I had not told the boys my return date to Canada. The rest of my Palawan Island vacation was spent avoiding the Filipino teenagers. More to the point, this was what transpired after my ‘Dear John’ conversation with them.

We are all different: we have different limits and different vulnerabilities. As one man said to me, “The straw that broke the camel’s back came at the end of many hammer-blows on the same back.

Stress is like an allergic person's reaction to the environment. If you have hay fever, you will probably be able to tolerate some allergens. When you really have trouble is when you are exposed to several allergens over too short a period of time. This is a classic case of "the straw that broke the camel's back". Given a number of stressors in a short time, just about any dog may behave aggressively.