Assuage Quotes & Sayings

I've never known any trouble that an hour's reading didn't assuage — Charles De Secondate

The corniest movie ever made about the white man's need to lose his identity and assuage racial, political, sexual and historical guilt. — Armond White

I was finished with assuming the best intentions of those who abandoned me, done trying to assuage my loneliness in barren places. — Saleem Haddad

Only the sacrifice of an innocent god could justify the endless and universal torture of innocence. Only the most abject suffering by God could assuage man's agony."208 Berger sees the brilliance of — Timothy J. Keller

The immediate instinct was to assuage her concerns, to tell her yes, because I knew that was what she wanted to hear, — Jennifer L. Armentrout

With God for thy portion thou art rich indeed, for He will supply thy need, comfort thy heart, assuage thy grief, guide thy steps, be with thee in the dark valley, and then take thee home, to enjoy Him as thy portion for ever. "I have enough," said Esau; this is the best thing a worldly man can say, but Jacob replies, "I have all things," which is a note too high for carnal minds. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Once, in Lisbon, I tried my best to work the phone book in a way that would assuage a longing [Alice and I] had for certain Chinese dishes ... — Calvin Trillin

Let us therefore reject all superstition in order to become more human; but in speaking against fanaticism, let us not imitate the fanatics: they are sick men in delirium who want to chastise their doctors. Let us assuage their ills, and never embitter them, and let us pour drop by drop into their souls the divine balm of toleration, which they would reject with horror if it were offered to them all at once. — Voltaire

Fifty feet away, five volunteers waited behind a curtain with high-powered rifles, though only four were loaded. The theory was that none of the five would ever know for sure that he killed a man, and this was somehow suppose to assuage his guilt later in life, in the event that he had a change of heart and became burdened. What a crock! There was a long list of volunteers, all eager to put a bullet dead center in another's man's heart. — John Grisham

There was only one thing I wanted: to be left alone, without too many demand upon my person, so that for a few moments each day I might be allowed to assuage my hunger. — Muriel Barbery

Our children cannot be assumed to follow in our footsteps, assuage our losses, or compensate for our inadequacies. — Madeline Levine

The intoxication of frenzy and, ultimately, some suitable crime reveal
in a moment the whole meaning of a life. Without exactly advocating crime, the romantics insist on
paying homage to a basic system of privileges which they illustrate with the conventional images of the
outlaw, the criminal with the heart of gold, and the kind brigand. Their works are bathed in blood and
shrouded in mystery. The soul is delivered, at a minimum expenditure, of its most hideous desires
desires that a later generation will assuage in extermination camps. Of course these works are also a
challenge to the society of the times. But romanticism, at the source of its inspiration, is chiefly concerned
with defying moral and divine law. That is why its most original creation is not, primarily, the
revolutionary, but, logically enough, the dandy. — Albert Camus

Although the progress of civilisation has undoubtedly contributed to assuage the fiercer passions of human nature, it seems to have been less favourable to the virtue of chastity, whose most dangerous enemy is the softness of the mind. The refinements of life corrupt while they polish the intercourse of the sexes. The gross appetite of love becomes most dangerous when it is elevated, or rather, indeed, disguised by sentimental passion. — Edward Gibbon

Vassily cleared his throat, probably impatient with Gabriel's bookshelf manners. 'You'll have to excuse me,' Gabriel said, putting back the booklet, 'I have a severe addiction to ink.'
'Don't we all?' Vassily nodded. 'Thank God we have other addictions to assuage it a little. — Jean-Christophe Valtat

And therefore as soon as the storm began to assuage of his fury (which was a long half hour) willing to give his men no longer leisure to demur of those doubts, nor yet allow the enemy farther respite to gather themselves together, he stept forward commanding his brother, with JOHN OXNAM and the company appointed them, to break the King's Treasure house: the — Charles Eliot

And if persuasive discourse deceived her soul, it is not on that account difficult to defend her and absolve her of responsibility, thus: discourse is a great potentate, which by the smallest and most secret body accomplishes the most divine works; for it can stop fear and assuage pain and produce joy and make mercy abound. — Gorgias

We are participatory beings who inhabit a participatory reality, seeking relationships that enhance our sense of what it means to be alive. In terms of dharma practice, a true friend is more than just someone with whom we share common values and who accepts us for what we are. Such a friend is someone with whom we share common values and who accepts us for what we are. Such a friend is someone whom we can trust to refine our understanding of what it means to live, who can guide us when we're lost and help us find the way along a path, who can assuage our anguish through the reassurance of his or her presence. — Stephen Batchelor

Lust is different from desire. There are women who will gladly assuage your lust. I will not.
"You want me. I heard it. I feel it."
It matters little what we want, I shot back, using his words against him. I may be your weapon. But I am not your queen. — Amy Harmon

The healing power of art is not a rhetorical fantasy. Fighting to keep language, language became my sanity and my strength. It still is, and I know of no pain that art cannot assuage. For some, music, for some, pictures, for me, primarily, poetry, whether found in poems or in prose, cuts through noise and hurt, opens the wound to clean it, and then gradually teaches it to heal itself. Wounds need to be taught to heal themselves. — Jeanette Winterson

Pray to God with tears in your eyes whenever you want illumination or find yourself faced with any doubt or difficulty. The Lord will remove all your impurities, assuage your mental anguish, and give you enlightenment. — Sarada Devi

Art is the pure realization of religious feeling, capacity for faith, longing for God ... The ability to believe is our outstanding quality, and only art adequately translates it into reality. But when we assuage our need for faith with an ideology we court disaster. — Gerhard Richter

He's supposed to look out for you."
"I do!" Kieran sounded offended. "You should be proud of her. Hart requested her presence personally at the Drake coronation."
I closed my eyes briefly. We were doomed.
"You went to a vampire ceremony?" Grandpa asked evenly.
"He didn't know?" Kieran asked.
"No, he didn't."
"Sorry."
Grandpa vibrated with rage. "I will not tolerate this kind of behavior in my family!"
"It's different now," Kieran tried to assuage him. "I'm dating Solange Drake. They're a good family."
Grandpa went red, then purple. Kieran took a step back. I whacked Grandpa between the shoulder blades.
"Grandpa, breathe! — Alyxandra Harvey

I'm your uncle?"
Oh. So that's what was bothering him. Izzy could have done a lot of things at this moment to assuage Eibhear's annoyance. A lot of things.
She didn't do any of them.
Instead she said, "Well ... you are my uncle." She brushed a bit of nonexistent dirt off his bare shoulder. "And I was your ward until years later when you finally had your vile, dirty uncle way with me."
"Izzy. — G.A. Aiken

Perhaps our imagination needs crime stories to fulfill some craving we have, as a way to assuage a darkness in ourselves. — James Nesbitt

The fact is that there is a profound spiritual hunger in the western world which, for a variety of reasons, its church is no longer able to assuage. So a book which suggests that there is a spiritual significance to the Christian story but that this has been suppressed by the church undoubtedly appeals to those who are anxious to square this circle. — Melanie Phillips

It was actually books that started to make those pockets of freedom, which I hadn't otherwise experienced. I do see them as talismans, as sacred objects. I see them as something that will protect me, I suppose, that will save me from things that I feel are threatening. I still think that; it doesn't change. It doesn't change, having money, being successful. So from the very first, if I was hurt in some way, then I would take a book
which was very difficult for me to buy when I was little
and I would go up into the hills, and that is how I would assuage my hurt. — Jeanette Winterson

It is very much in the interest of the food industry to exacerbate our anxieties about what to eat, the better to then assuage them with new products. — Michael Pollan

Well, then, if I admit I know who you are and really couldn't care less will that assuage your damaged manhood enough that we can get past this and move on to something that ends with your giving me a sandwich? (Leta) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

As he stood by the desolate fire, he felt that the only one thing which could assuage his grief would be thorough and complete retribution, brought by his own hand upon his enemies. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Of course 'Hamlet' is a debate about the nature and morality of revenge and whether it is right to do something to assuage your angry feelings. — Samuel West

Using a wide variety of media, we could demonstrate for our fellow Americans their anxieties, desires, insufficiencies, and frustrations
and how to assuage them all. We informed you in six seconds that you needed something you didn't know you lacked. We made you want anything that anyone willing to pay us wanted you to want. We were hired guns of the human soul. We pulled the strings on the people across the land and by god they got to their feet and they danced for us. — Joshua Ferris

Always remember how much more valuable is the strength of fortitude, than the grace of sensibility. Do not, however, confound fortitude with apathy; apathy cannot know the virtue. Remember, too, that one act of beneficence, one act of real usefulness, is worth all the abstract sentiment in the world. Sentiment is a disgrace, instead of an ornament, unless it lead us to good actions. The miser, who thinks himself respectable, merely because he possesses wealth, and thus mistakes the means of doing good, for the actual accomplishment of it, is not more blamable than the man of sentiment, without active virtue. You may have observed persons, who delight so much in this sort of sensibility to sentiment, which excludes that to the calls of any practical virtue, that they turn from the distressed, and, because their sufferings are painful to be contemplated, do not endeavour to relieve them. How despicable is that humanity, which can be contented to pity, where it might assuage!" St. — Eliza Parsons

I never knew a sorrow that an hour of reading could not assuage, a great man had once said. Let's put it to the test. — Anna Gavalda

We love as soon as we learn to distinguish a separate 'you' and 'me.' Love is our attempt to assuage the terror and isolation of that separateness. — Judith Viorst

Others try to remove guilt by shifting the standards of right and wrong in the name of cultural progression. One of the easiest ways to assuage guilt is to convince ourselves that our moral standards are impractical or outdated. Greed is not wrong; it's necessary in the good of ambition. Promoting ourselves is the only way to be successful. Lust is natural for contemporary men and women, and sex is expected regardless of marriage or gender. We attempt to remove our guilt by redefining right and wrong according to cultural fads. Yet guilt remains. No matter how hard — David Platt

Taking photographs can assuage the itch for possession sparked by the beauty of a place; our anxiety over losing a precious scene can decline with every click of the shutter. — Alain De Botton

Among all the modes by which love is brought into being, among all the agents which disseminate that blessed bane, there are few so efficacious as this gust of feverish agitation that sweeps over us from time to time. For then the die is cast, the person whose company we enjoy at that moment is the person we shall henceforward love. It is not even necessary for that person to have attracted us, up till then, more than or even as much as others. All that was needed was that our predilection should become exclusive. And that condition is fulfilled when - in this moment of deprivation - the quest for the pleasures we enjoyed in his or her company is suddenly replaced by an anxious, torturing need, whose object is the person alone, an absurd, irrational need which the laws of this world make it impossible to satisfy and difficult to assuage - the insensate, agonising need to possess exclusively. — Marcel Proust

If some saw the Indians as living in prelapsarian innocence, there were others who judged them to be savage beasts, devils in the form of men. The discovery of cannibals in the Caribbean did nothing to assuage this opinion. The Spaniards used it as a justification to exploit the natives mercilessly for their own mercantile ends. For if you do not consider the man before you to be human, there are few restraints of conscience on your behavior towards him. It was not until 1537, with the papal bull of Paul III that the Indians were declared to be true men possessing souls. — Paul Auster

Make songs for Death as you would sing to Love -But you will not assuage him. He aloneOf all the gods will take no gifts from men. — Sara Teasdale

It took me several minutes to persuade myself to watch the news. During which time I gave myself a stern talking to. That turned into me considering a local pub that would be the perfect place to drown my sorrows in a barrel of tequila, though after much introspection, I scratched the idea just to avoid needless drunken embarrassment. Then, admittedly, I contemplated pouncing Andrew for another steamy romp session. Despite its proven potency to assuage stress and tension, I decided now was not the time to indulge in explosive sexcapades. — Laura Kreitzer

Far be in from me to dictate how you should assuage your guilt. Do you have a lot of it?"
She bit his good shoulder. "You're about to find out."
She toppled them both off the bench and onto the mat. "Well, ouch. I take it guilt doesn't bring out your gentler side. — J.D. Robb

She closed her eyes and began to weave a song. She abandoned the familiar melodies she'd played so many times before and went in search of something new, no longer wanting a song fed on pain or guilt. She needed one that could replace those wounds with strength, with resolve, with confidence. She needed a song that could not only assuage, but heal and build anew. The notes stumbled around the room, tripping over beds and empty stools and hollow men sleeping. They warbled and fell, haphazard, chaotic, settling without flight. Fin's forehead creased and she persisted. She let her fingers wander, reached out with her mind. She chased the fleeting song she'd glimpsed once before. In Madeira she'd felt a hint of it: something wild, untameable, a thing sprung whole and flawless from the instant of creation. — A.S. Peterson

Masterpieces of art possess immense potential to advance a worldview that could help assuage the societal terrors posed by globalization, the most thoroughgoing socioeconomic upheaval since the Industrial Revolution, which has set off a pandemic of retrogressive nationalism, regional separatism, and religious extremism. — Martin Filler

Hasn't it ever occurred to you that in your promiscuous pursuit of women you are merely trying to assuage your subconscious fears of sexual impotence?"
"Yes, sir, it has."
"Then why do you do it?"
"To assuage my fears of sexual impotence. — Joseph Heller

By identifying with the powerful, the disempowered achieve a measure of safety, at least for a moment. By doing the bidding of those in power, they become a necessary part of the system, useful so long as they serve to contain the stirrings and strivings of the oppressed. By making the rules and values of their oppressor their own, they separate themselves from the rest of their group and, temporarily at least, assuage the pain of their stigmatized status. — Lillian B. Rubin

There is nothing you can do to assuage your conscience when you commit sins. Crime is a spiritual assault on the soul. — Vikram Chatwal

Does an architecture to assuage the spirit have a place? — Arthur Erickson

Daddy never believed in closure. He said it was a false psychological concept. Something invented by therapists to assuage white Western guilt. In all his years of study and practice, he'd never heard a patient of color talk of needing "closure." They needed revenge. They needed distance. Forgiveness and a good lawyer maybe, but never closure. He said people mistake suicide, murder, lap band surgery, interracial marriage, and overtipping for closure, when in reality what they've achieved is erasure. — Paul Beatty

Where's the hope that can abate
The grief of hearts thus desolate
That can Youth's keenest pangs assuage,
And mitigate the gloom of Age?
Religion bids the tempest cease,
And, leads her to a port of peace;
And on, the lonely pilot steers
Through the lapse of future years. — Thomas Haynes Bayly

Nothing could assuage the secular grief that was your heritage. — Aldous Huxley

Carl Schmitt could boast with some justice that the Nazi revolution was orderly and disciplined. But the reason lies not so much within the Nazis themselves as in the lack of an effective opposition. For millions the Nazi ideology did assuage their anxiety, did end their alienation, and did give hope for a better future. Other millions watched passively, not deeply committed to resistance. "Let them have a chance" was a typical attitude. Hitler took the chance and made the most of it. — George L. Mosse

You are tired of being alone. You told me."
"You don't know," he said in a low, almost hostile voice. He shook his head. "I don't even know what
I'm doing with you. You're not like anyone else who's in my life - " He stopped abruptly. "Did you ever
drink too much wine,Alice ?" He held up the glass in his hand and waggled it idly, making the ruby
contents swirl.
"I'm not one to overindulge."
"No, you wouldn't be,Allow me to explain, then, that the more you drink, the more thirsty you become. Not all the wine in the world can assuage the thirst for water. Water. Wine makes
you merry, but a man needs water to keep him alive. Pure, clean, sweet water. I am parched,Alice , scorched like a wasteland, burning
like a damned soul in hell. I thirst. — Gaelen Foley

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.
Dear Madam,
I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln — Abraham Lincoln

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom. — Abraham Lincoln

As the corporation's size and power grew, so did the need to assuage people's fears of it. The corporation suffered its first full-blown legitimacy crisis in the wake of the early-twentieth-century merger movement, when, for the first time, many Americans realized that corporations, now turned behemoths, threatened to overwhelm their social institutions and governments. — Joel Bakan

Alright! You sir, you sir, how about a shave?
Come and visit your good friend Sweeney.
You sir, too sir? Welcome to the grave.
I will have vengenance.
I will have salvation.
Who sir, you sir?
No ones in the chair, Come on! Come on!
Sweeney's. waiting. I want you bleeders.
You sir! Anybody!
Gentlemen now don't be shy!
Not one man, no, nor ten men.
Nor a hundred can assuage me.
I will have you!
And I will get him back even as he gloats
In the meantime I'll practice on less honorable throats.
And my Lucy lies in ashes
And I'll never see my girl again.
But the work waits!
I'm alive at last!
And I'm full of joy! — Stephen Sondheim

I wanted literature to assuage human loneliness, but nothing can assuage human loneliness. Literature doesn't lie about this
which is wha makes it essential. — David Shields

The power of prayer is so profound that it can assuage our emotions. It calms the mind, dilutes all our worries, gives an anchor to fears and endows us with a remarkable peace of mind. — Balroop Singh

If it be a point of humanity for man to bring health and comfort to man, and especially to mitigate and assuage the grief of others, and by taking from them the sorrow and heaviness of life to restore them to joy, that is to say, to pleasure, why may it not then be said that nature does provoke every man to do the same to himself? — Thomas More

How despicable is that humanity, which can be contented to pity, where it might assuage! — Ann Radcliffe

And this pleasure, different from every other, had in the end created in him a need of her, which she alone, by her presence or by her letters, could assuage, almost as disinterested, almost as artistic, as perverse as another need which characterised this new period in Swann's life, where the sereness, the depression of the preceding years had been followed by a sort of spiritual superabundance, without his knowing to what he owed this unlooked-for enrichment of his life, any more than a person in delicate health who from a certain moment grows stronger, puts on flesh, and seems for a time to be on the road to a complete recovery: - this other need, which, too, developed in him independently of the visible, material world, was the need to listen to music and to learn to know it. — Marcel Proust

It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of
the need to assuage an unusual power drive. — Robert Greenleaf

There is no worse feeling than being unable to assuage the suffering of the innocent. — Adriana Trigiani

Jaden felt their boredom, their tired eternity. Beyond that, she felt their dying essence. They were immortal - all-powerful beings - and yet they were powerless against the onslaught of ever-changing time. They were lost in a modern world, one they didn't have the energy to understand. And, in being lost, they were immobilized against it. Not even their judgments could assuage their exhausted wisdom of forever. — Michelle M. Pillow

Hello, my name is Noam and I have the answer to all your problems. It's all the fault of the evil Americans, the bad conservative ones that fill the airwaves with their lies and are in power and want to oppress the world. There. Now give me money so that I can soothsay again and assuage your guilt. — John Ringo

How, then, does the written word work? What part of a reader absorbs it - or should that be a double question: what part of a reader absorbs what part of a text?
I think that underneath, or alongside, a reader's conscious response to a text, whatever is needy in him is taking in whatever the text offers to assuage that need. — Diana Athill

Black America "isn't just as fissured as white America; it is more so," wrote Gates. And the mounting intraracial disparities mean that the realities of race no longer affect all blacks in the same way. There have been perverse consequences: in part to assuage our sense of survivor's guilt, we often cloak these differences in a romantic black nationalism - something that has become the veritable socialism of the black bourgeoisie.32 — Jason L. Riley

Pastries ... can only be appreciated to the full extent of their subtlety when they are not eaten to assuage our hunger, when the orgy of their sugary sweetness is not destined to full some primary need but to coat our palate with all the benevolence of the world. — Muriel Barbery

There's a pressure at all hours of the day only a poem can assuage. — Kristen Henderson

If only nature is real and if, in nature, only desire and destruction are legitimate, then, in that all humanity does not suffice to assuage the thirst for blood, the path of destruction must lead to universal annihilation. — Albert Camus

Too many people try to assuage pain that can never be eradicated. All you can do is salute the grief, acknowledge that you carry it, too, and that even though we all travel that path alone, we are not alone in traveling it. — M.J. Rose

In short, I am doing what I can, I suffer with the same universal suffering, and I try to assuage it, I possess only the puny forces of a man, and I cry to all: Help me! — Victor Hugo

This is to assuage our conscience, darling" she would explain to Blanca. "But it doesn't help the poor. They don't need charity; they need justice. — Isabel Allende

In a society that prates about, but seldom practices, communication, the craving to be listened to, heard, understood - which originates with the first terrified wail, the circling arms, the breast, the consolatory murmur - is hard to assuage. — Nancy Mairs

They say that "Time assuages" -
Time never did assuage -
An actual suffering strengthens
As Sinews do, with age -
Time is a Test of Trouble -
But not a Remedy -
If such it prove, it prove too
There was no Malady — Emily Dickinson

All the Junos, the Grammy nominations, the gold and platinum records, did nothing to assuage my conviction that I was an out-and-out loser. — Dan Hill

The war is not going well and it is time to say why ... It has been fought with half-measures. It has been fought with an eye on the wishes of our 'coalition partners.' It has been fought to assuage the Arab 'street.' It has been fought to satisfy the diplomats rather than the generals ... why have we not loosed the B-52s and the B-2s to carpet-bomb Taliban positions? And why are we giving the Taliban sanctuary in their cities? We could drop leaflets giving civilians 48 hours to evacuate, after which the cities become legitimate military targets. — Charles Krauthammer

All the joys of earth will not assuage our thirst for happiness; while a single grief suffices to shroud life in a sombre veil, and smite it with nothingness at all points. — Sophie Swetchine

I'm sick of reading a bunch of hand-wringing bullshit intended to please your circle of friends, or assuage one's guilt of some kind or another. Take a position, have a point of view and fucking live or die with the consequences or don't write. — Kenyon Farrow

The greater part of the suffering in the world is caused not by wicked intents and hard hearts, but by the careless desire to shirk unpleasant facts, and the soft-heartedness that will assuage momentary pain at the price of making a life-long cripple, either mentally, morally, or physically. — Marah Ellis Ryan

An oven that is stopp'd, or river stay'd,
Burneth more hotly, swelleth with more rage:
So of concealed sorrow may be said;
Free vent of words love's fire doth assuage;
But when the heart's attorney once is mute,
The client breaks, as desperate in his suit. — William Shakespeare

I've never known any trouble than an hour's reading didn't assuage. — Arthur Schopenhauer

You are not naked when you take off your clothes. You still wear your religious assumptions, your prejudices, your fears, your illusions, your delusions. When you shed the cultural operating system, then, essentially you stand naked before the inspection of your own psyche ... and it's from that position, a position outside the cultural operating system, that we can begin to ask real questions about what does it mean to be human, what kind of circumstance are we caught in, and what kind of structures, if any, can we put in place to assuage the plan and accentuate the glory and the wonder that lurks, waiting for us, in this very narrow slice of time between the birth canal and the yawning grave. In other words we have to return to first premises. — Terence McKenna

Your ego-depletion seems problematically difficult to assuage. — Orson Scott Card

When I have my interview with my God, our conversation will focus on the individuals whose self-esteem I was able to strengthen, whose faith I was able to reinforce, and whose discomfort I was able to assuage - a doer of good, regardless of what assignment I had. These are the metrics of that matter in measuring my life. This realization, which occurred nearly fifteen years ago, guided me every day to seek opportunities to help people in ways tailored to their individual circumstances. My happiness and my sense of worth has been immeasurably improved as a result. — Clayton M Christensen