troubled waters

The tide that was rushing in to pull them both out to troubled waters was stopped at the edge of the shore by the ringing of the telephone.

2000, Kathryn M. White, Troubled Waters: I Never Came This Way Before, page 158

I will observe the 'troubled waters' of such a programme and try to reveal how the actors involved steer the course of the research process.

2005, Ange Wieberdink, Troubled Waters: The Ambivalence of South-North Partnerships in Research for Development

As we can see from this brief interview, the decision to enter the kinky lifestyle is not an easy one. My experience tells me, however, that if kinky people are anything, they are a determined lot. The ship of kink sails troubled waters indeed but sail on it does.

2005, Annabelle du Fouet, “Kinksters and kinksterettes—Who are these people, anyway?” (chapter 1), in Weather Balloons Make Rotten Sex Toys, Ellora's Cave, →ISBN, page 24

Indeed, the research has required experimental tactics and an ability to steer through troubled waters of messy ethnographic research – feeling, living and surviving the resulting productive 'creative chaos' of my own constitution, and of my mode of working and thinking (sometimes a blessing, at other times an excruciating curse) – which, now that I come to think of it, may be a "birth gift" from my mother and father with their blend of a perfectionist sense for structured analytic order, versus the fragility of artistic freedom-seeking creativity and improvisation, and an addition of stubbornness on my part.

2018, Julia Kirch Kirkegaard, Wind Power in China

The rain falling in torrents– the rolling waves, commingling their heavy roar with the pealing claps of thunder– the quiverying lighning, flashing in burnished brighness across the mighty deep, exposing its troubled waters to full view – the laboring ship, rolling from side to side, creaking in every plank as if going to pieces– the winds sweeping, in their fury, from wave to wave– all conspire to fill the mind with wonder, awe, and astonishment.

1847, S. W. Remington, William Vane: Or, The Young Deserter: A Moral Tale, page 26

In the Perseus and Andromeda series we go again in the Dragon country, through troubled waters, where the waves foam round picturesque rock on which we do not fear to slip, wearing Mercury's sandals.

1902, Year-book of the Council of Supervisors of the Manual Arts, page 121