A dictionary of Proverbs (Oxford Paperback Reference)

answer see ASK a silly question and you get a silly answer; a CIVIL question deserves a 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 storm

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  1749 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; trouble
  

If ANYTHING can go wrong, it will
Commonly 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.

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  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