Esau sells his birthright for a mess of pottage.

-Bible (Old Testament)
  Chapter heading for Genesis 25 (in the Geneva Bible).

Ithink thereareinnumerablegods.What we onearth call God is a little tribal God who has made an awful mess.

-Burroughs,William S(eward)
  In Paris Review, Fall.

   Success is relative: It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
  The Family Reunion, pt.2, sc.3.

And so each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling, Undisciplined squads of emotion.

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
  Four Quartets,'East Coker', pt.5.

They were careless people,Tom and Daisyöthey smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

-Fitzgerald, F(rancis) Scott Key
  The Great Gatsby, ch.9.

Here's another fine mess you've gotten me into.

-Hardy, Oliver originally Norvell HardyJr
Of Laurel. Line delivered in Another Fine Mess (1930) and other films.

If the war didn't happen to kill you it was bound to start you thinking. After that unspeakable idiotic mess you couldn't go on regarding society as something eternal and unquestionable, like a pyramid.You knew it was just a balls-up. 628

-Orwell, George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair
  Coming Up For Air, pt.2, ch.8.

Madam, if you don't know by now, don't mess with it! SeeArmstrong 30:75.

-Waller, Fats (Thomas Wright)
When asked what jazz was. Quoted in Marshall StearnsTheStory ofJazz (1956).