Consoling Quotes & Sayings

In Europe, charters of liberty have been granted by power. America has set the example and France has followed it, of charters of power granted by liberty. This revolution in the practice of the world may, with an honest praise, be pronounced the most triumphant epoch of its history and the most consoling presage of its happiness. — James Madison

Ephemeral spectator of an eternal spectacle, man raises for a second his eyes to Heaven, and closes them for ever; but, during that rapid second that is granted to him, from all the quarters of Heaven, and from the outer limits of the Universe, a consoling ray darts from each world and meets his eyes, to announce to him that some connection exists between him and infinity, and that even he is linked to eternity. — Xavier De Maistre

There are times when words are extra, like raindrops on drenched grass. There are times for holding. He held her ... — Bud Macfarlane Jr.

I say, indeed: "consolation in the nonsentience of nature." For nonsentience is consoling; the world of nonsentience is the world outside human life; it is eternity; "it is the sea gone off with the sun" (Rimbaud). — Milan Kundera

Believing in the resurrection does not just mean assenting to a dogma and noting a historical fact. It means participating in this creative act of God's ... Resurrection is not a consoling opium, soothing us with the promise of a better world in the hereafter. It is the energy for a rebirth of this life. The hope doesn't point to another world. It is focused on the redemption of this one. — Jurgen Moltmann

Affliction equips the suffering to empathize with others in anguish and not only does it strengthen them, it enables them to be consoling comforters in a world full of hurt. — Donna Lynn Hope

To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the actual world. By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety that attacks us when we try to say something true about the world. This is the consoling function of narrative - the reason people tell stories, and have told stories from the beginning of time. — Umberto Eco

She wanted to own a book so badly and she had thought the copying would do it. But the pencilled sheets did not seem like nor smell like the library book so she had given it up, consoling herself with the vow that when she grew up, she would work hard, save money and buy every single book that she liked. — Betty Smith

These hotels are not consoling places. Far from it. Any number of people had hung up their hats on those pegs. Even the flies, if you thought of it, had settled on other people's noses. As for the cleanliness which hit him in the face, it wasn't cleanliness, so much as bareness, frigidity; a thing that had to be. — Virginia Woolf

The married man and the mother of a Christian family, if they are faithful to their obligations, will fulfill a mission that is as great as it is consoling: that of bringing into the world and forming young souls capable of happiness and love, souls capable of sanctification and transformation in Christ. — Thomas Merton

And, on a wide view, I could see that it makes little difference whether one dies at the age of thirty or threescore and ten - since, in either case, other men and women will continue living, the world will go on as before. Also, whether I died now or forty years hence, this business of dying had to be got through, inevitably. Still, somehow this line of thought wasn't as consoling as it should have been; the idea of all those years of life in hand was a galling reminder! — Albert Camus

Talking about your feeling with someone who is willing to listen can be enormously consoling, especially if that person has experienced a death similar to the one you are grieving. — Candy Lightner

Think of each wound as you would of a child who has been hurt by a friend. As long as that child is ranting and raving, trying to get back at the friend, one wound leads to another. But when the child can experience the consoling embrace of a parent, she or he can live through the pain, return to the friend, forgive, and build up a new relationship. Be gentle with yourself, and let your heart be your loving parent as you live your wounds through. — Henri Nouwen

The values and assumptions of that household I took in without knowing when or how it happened, and I have them to this day: The pleasure in sharing pleasure. The belief that is is only proper to help lame dogs to get over stiles and young men to put one foot on the bottom rung of the ladder. An impatient disregard for small sums of money. The belief that it is a sin against Nature to put sugar in one's tea. The preference for being home over being anywhere else. The belief that generous impulses should be acted on, whether you can afford to do this or not. The trust in premonitions and the knowledge of what is in wrapped packages. The willingness to go to any amount of trouble to make yourself comfortable. The tendency to take refuge in absolutes. The belief that you don't have to apologize for tears; that consoling words should never be withheld; that what somebody wants very much they should, if possible, have. — William Maxwell

The artist has the liberty to exaggerate, to create in his novel a world more beautiful, more simple, more consoling than ours. — Irving Stone

The age-old, seemingly inexorable process whereby diseases acquire meanings (by coming to stand for the deepest fears) and inflict stigma is always worth challenging, and it does seem to have more limited credibility in the modern world, among people willing to be modern - the process is under surveillance now. With this illness, one that elicits so much guilt and shame, the effort to detach it from these meanings, these metaphors, seems particularly liberating, even consoling. But the metaphors cannot be distanced just by abstaining from them. They have to be exposed, criticized, belabored, used up. — Susan Sontag

Nothing keeps me in such awe as perfect beauty; now, there is something consoling and encouraging in ugliness. — Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Loss doesn't feel redeemable. But for me one consoling aspect is the recognition that, in this at least, none of us is different from anyone else: We all lose loved ones; we all face our own death. — Meghan O'Rourke

There is nothing perhaps so generally consoling to a man as a well-established grievance; a feeling of having been injured, on which his mind can brood from hour to hour, allowing him to plead his own cause in his own court, within his own heart, and always to plead it successfully. — Anthony Trollope

The long ghosts are walking the halls. When my mother died I felt expanded, slowly, durably, over time. I felt suffused with her truth, spread through, as with water, color or light. I thought she'd entered the deepest place I could provide, the animating entity, the thing, if anything, that will survive my own last breath, and she makes me larger, she amplifies my sense of what it is to be human. She is part of
me now, total and consoling. And it is not a sadness to acknowledge that she had to die before I could know her fully. It is only a statement of the power of what comes after. — Don DeLillo

It is consoling that he who must judge us dwell in us to save us always from all of our miseries, and to pardon us. — Therese De Lisieux

It took me a long time, my lifetime so to speak, to realise that the colour of an eye half seen, or the source of some distant sound, are closer to Giudecca in the hell of unknowing than the existence of God, or the origins of protoplasm, or the eistence of self, and even less worthy than these to occupy the wise, It's a bit much, a lifetime, to achieve this consoling conclusion, it doesn't leave you much time to profit by it. — Samuel Beckett

There's something unnatural about a woman finding babies or, more specifically, conversation about babies, boring. They'll think she's bitter, jealous, lonely. But she's also bored of everybody telling her how lucky she is, what with all that sleep and all that freedom and spare time, the ability to go on dates or head off to Paris at a moments notice. It sounds like they're consoling her, and she resents this and feels patronized by it. — David Nicholls

I can never look at these apparent contradictions between the great laws of nature without a feeling of physical uneasiness which amounts to suffering. Were mankind reduced to the necessity of choosing between two parties, one of whom injures his interest, and the other his conscience, we should have nothing to hope from the future. Happily, this is not the case; and to see Aristus regain his economical superiority, as well as his moral superiority, it is sufficient to understand this consoling maxim, which is no less true from having a paradoxical appearance, "To save is to spend. — Frederic Bastiat

Construed as turf, home just seems a provisional claim, a designation you make upon a place, not one it makes on you. A certain set of buildings, a glimpsed, smudged window-view across a schoolyard, a musty aroma sniffed behind a garage when you were a child, all of which come crowding in upon your latter-day senses
those are pungent things and vivid, even consoling. But to me they are also inert and nostalgic and unlikely to connect you to the real, to that essence art can sometimes achieve, which is permanence. — Richard Ford

At the present time there still exist many doctrines which choose to leave in the shadow certain troubling aspects of a too complex situation. But their attempt to lie to us is in vain. Cowardice does not pay. Those reasonable metaphysics, those consoling ethics with which they would like to entice us only accentuate the disorder from which we suffer. — Simone De Beauvoir

I doubted it. Some people say trying is all that matters, but unfortunately it's only the first step. Sometimes you're got to catch a break and win one, too. You've got to stand up on the bar and do the antler dance. Plus, as I now knew as well as anyone, people really suck at consoling themselves. — James Patterson

I wish I could live underwater. Maybe then my skin would absorb the sea's consoling silence. — Cristina Garcia

She began to sing, but I could not make out the words. It must have been a love song, to judge from the slightly pained expression on her face, and the way she tightly gripped the microphone. I noticed a flash of white skin on her neck. As she reached the climax of the song, her eyes half closed and her shoulders thrown back, a shudder passed through her body. She moved her arm across her chest to cradle her heart, as though consoling it, afraid it might burst. I wondered what would happen if I held her tight in my arms, in a lovers' embrace, melting into one another, bone on bone ... her heart would be crushed. The membrane would split, the veins tear free, the heart itself explode into bits of flesh, and then my desire would contain hers - it was all so painful and yet so utterly beautiful to imagine. — Yoko Ogawa

Cutangle nodded. He felt that the last couple of hours had somehow carried him along without him actually touching the sides, and for a moment he nursed the strangely consoling feeling that his life was totally beyond his control and whatever happened no one could blame him. Filling his boots with water while adrift on a flooded river at midnight with what he could only describe as a woman seemed about as logical as anything could be in the circumstances. — Terry Pratchett

He hadn't yet had enough experience with humans to know that the thing they hold dearest to their hearts, the last thing they relinquish when all else is fading, is the consoling belief in the inferiority of others. — Gregory Maguire

It is well known that apes in the wild offer spontaneous assistance to each other, defending against leopards, say, or consoling distressed companions with tender embraces. — Frans De Waal

In his early text, somewhat cumbersomely titled 'Towards a Critique of Hegel's PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT,' the young Karl Marx famously noted that religion - the Christian faith, he meant primarily - is 'the opiate of the people.' It's a drug, and it's a 'downer' or 'depressant' insulating people from the pain of oppressive social realities and consoling them with a dream world of heavenly bliss. Alternatively, religion can function as an 'upper,' a 'stimulant' energizing people for the tasks at hand - a function of religion Marx failed to grasp. — Miroslav Volf

The spiritual life is a stern choice. It is not a consoling retreat from the difficulties of existence; but an invitation to enter fully into that difficult existence, and there apply the Charity of God and bear the cost. — Evelyn Underhill

The frivolity with which all theatrical activity is conducted has one consoling feature-there are no rules of behavior that apply regularly to any part of the theatre. — Moss Hart

The supreme satisfaction is to be able to despise one's neighbor and this fact goes far to account for religious intolerance. It is evidently consoling to reflect that the people next door are headed for hell. — Aleister Crowley

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words, "And this too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction! — Abraham Lincoln

The Christian religion alone has been able to cure these twin vices, not by using one to expel the other according to worldly wisdom, but by expelling both through the simplicity of the Gospel. For it teaches the righteous, whom it exalts, even to participation in divinity itself, that in this sublime state they still bear the source of all corruption, which exposes them throughout their lives to error, misery, death and sin; and it cries out to the most ungodly that they are capable of the grace of their redeemer. Thus, making those whom it justifies tremble and consoling those whom it condemns, it so nicely tempers fear with hope through this dual capacity, common to all men, for grace and sin, that it causes infinitely more dejection than mere reason, but without despair, and infinitely more exaltation than natural pride, but without puffing us up. — Blaise Pascal

The public's abiding fascination with flaying saucers, C.G. Jung suggests, 'may be a spontaneous reaction of the subconscious to fear of the apparently insoluble political situation in the world that may lead at any moment to catastrophe. At such times eyes turn heavenwards in search of help, and miraculous forebodings of a threatening or consoling nature appear from on high. — Ken Hollings

Again and again, faith in a possible satisfaction of the human race breaks through at the very moments of most zealous discord because humankind will never be able to live and work without this consoling delusion of its ascent into morality, without this dream of final and ultimate accord. — Stefan Zweig

He calls his brother. it is the wrong brother from whom to seek consolation, but what can he do? When it comes to consolation it is always the wrong brother, the wrong father, the wrong mother, the wrong wife, which is why one must be content to console oneself and be strong and go on in life consoling others. — Philip Roth

Across the desolation lay a supreme indifference, the casualness of night and another day, and yet the secret intimacy of those hills, their silent consoling wonder, made death a thing of no great importance. You could die, but the desert would hide the secret of your death, it would remain after you, to cover your memory with ageless wind and heat and cold. — Fante J

That my plans have lately gone somewhat awry is the sort of risk one must take if life is to be superb. — Gore Vidal

Many people tried comforting us with words. But there are no consoling words! I really just wanted people to be quiet. I appreciated those who cried with me, hugged me, and offered a brief prayer, but words were unnecessary. — Shelley Ramsey

Avoid at all costs those who are only by your side in moments of sadness to offer consoling words. What they are actually saying to themselves is: "I am stronger. I am wiser. I would not have taken that step." Stay close to those who are by your side in happy times, because they do not harbor jealousy or envy in their hearts, only joy to see you happy. Avoid those who believe they are stronger than you, because they are actually concealing their own fragility. Stay close to those who are not afraid to be vulnerable, because they have confidence in themselves and know that, at some point in our lives, we all stumble; they do not interpret this as a sign of weakness, but of humanity. Avoid — Paulo Coelho

The ethical task of the modern writer is to be not a creator but a destroyer - a destroyer of shallow inwardness, the consoling notion of the universally human, dilettantish creativity, and empty phrases. — Susan Sontag

There are moments in life when all we can bear is the sense that our friend is near us; our wounds would wince at the touch of consoling words, that would reveal the depths of our pain. — Honore De Balzac

A rich, vibrant, consoling, hard-won prayer life is the one good that makes it possible to receive all other kinds of goods rightly and beneficially. [Paul] does not see prayer as merely a way to get things from God but as a way to get more of God himself. — Timothy Keller

Obviously there are exceptions, but I suspect that for many people the main reason they cling to religion is not that it is consoling, but that they have been let down by our educational system and don't realize that non-belief is even an option. — Anonymous

Therefore, doing the Stations of the Cross was still more laborious than consoling, and required a sacrifice. It was much the same with all my devotions. They did not come easily or spontaneously, and they very seldom brought with them any strong sensible satisfaction. Nevertheless the work of performing them ended in a profound and fortifying peace: a peace that was scarcely perceptible, but which deepened and which, as my passions subsided, became more and more real, more and more sure, and finally stayed with me permanently. — Thomas Merton

Though aware that there is nothing in the universe that suggests any purpose for humanity, one way that we can find a purpose is to study the universe by the methods of science, without consoling ourselves with fairy tales about its future, or about our own. — Steven Weinberg

Consoling a miserable soul, wiping the tears of a crying person is greater than any worldly achievement. — Mata Amritanandamayi

Philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia have never sought to do away entirely with the status hierarchy; they have attemptee, rather, to institute new kinds of hierarchies based on sets of values unrecognised by, and critical of, those of the majority.. They have provided us with persuasive and consoling reminders that there is more than one way of succeeding in life. — Alain De Botton

How thrilling to discover one had depths, how consoling to find them less polluted than the shallows, how encouraging to identify the enemy not as a fissure in the will but as a dead fetus in the specimen jar of the unconscious. My attention was being paternally led away from the excruciating present to the happy, healthy future that would be enabled by an analysis of the sick past, as though the priest had nothing to do but study old books and make bright forecasts, the present not worthy of notice. — Edmund White

I remember staying to look at it for a long time, as one would linger within reach of a consoling whisper. The sky was pearly grey. It was one of those overcast days so rare in the tropics, in which memories crowd upon one, memories of other shores, of other faces. — Joseph Conrad

So I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbour's lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires — F Scott Fitzgerald

I shall be in Paris in two days. Well, all is finished. The waves of
human mediocrity rise to the sky and they will engulf the refuge whose
dams I open. Ah! courage leaves me, my heart breaks! O Lord, pity the
Christian who doubts, the sceptic who would believe, the convict of
life embarking alone in the night, under a sky no longer illumined by
the consoling beacons of ancient faith. — Joris-Karl Huysmans

That one can understand The Waste Land without even trying is consoling news for all students of literature. — Terry Eagleton

Hope is often just a consoling thought, our naive disclaimer, retracting the possibility of a certain reality that we don't have the power to change. — Kavita Kane

Humour is ... the all-consoling and ... the all-excusing, grace of life. — C.S. Lewis

When the horror recedes and the world resumes its normal shape, you cannot forget it. You have seen what is really there, the empty horror that exists when the consoling illusion of our mundane experience is stripped away, so you can never respond to the world in quite the same way again. — Karen Armstrong

And Christ, through His own salvific suffering, is very much present in every human suffering, and can act from within that suffering by the powers of His Spirit of truth, His consoling spirit. — Pope John Paul II

Religion provides the only story that is fundamentally consoling in the face of the worst possible experiences - the death of a parent, for instance. In fact, many religions take away the problem entirely, because their adherents ostensibly believe that they're going to be reunited with everyone they love, and death is an illusion. — Sam Harris

I know whether or not I am confused most readily by noticing
being mindful of
my capacity for feeling caring concern ... when I feel myself in caring connection
encouraging, consoling, or appreciating
I feel the twin pleasures of clarity and goodness. It doesn't matter if the connection I feel is to myself or a person I know or people I don't know or even the whole world. The lively impulse of caring is what counts. [p. 20] — Sylvia Boorstein

False beliefs can be every bit as consoling as true ones, right up until the moment of disillusionment. — Richard Dawkins

In times of uncertainty, we tend to move away from deterministic world views. And when we try to find moral footing for our actions, we compare ourselves to the foil of all foils, the Nazi period. It's a quest for moral certainty by saying, "Even if we're not doing great these days, at least we're not the Third Reich." Which can be consoling or alarmist. There's always a present-day agenda behind it. — Gavriel David Rosenfeld

There are noble tones, ordinary ones, tranquil harmonies, consoling ones, others which excite by their vigour. — Paul Gauguin

Only the very greatest art invigorates without consoling. — Iris Murdoch

A consoling thought: what matters is not what we do, but the spirit in which we do it. Others suffer too; so much so that there is nothing in the world but suffering; the problem is simply to keep a clear conscience. — Cesare Pavese

Radicalism usually prospers in the gap between rising expectations and declining opportunities. This is especially true where the population is young, idle, and bored; where the art is impoverished; where entertainment - movies, theater, music - is policed or absent altogether; and where young men are set apart from the consoling and socializing presence of women. — Lawrence Wright

It's a consoling notion that death is a very tiny hole, and you need to make yourself very small to get through it. One obviously needs to lighten off, and a rucksack full of bricks or a mantelpiece full of trophies will certainly have to be abandoned - the sooner the better, I say. — Michael Leunig

Love? Do I love? I walk
Within the brilliance of another's thought,
As in a glory. I was dark before,
as Venus' chapel in the black of night:
But there was something holy in the darkness,
Softer and not so thick as the other where;
And as rich moonlight may be to the blind,
Unconsciously consoling. Then love came,
Like the out-bursting of a trodden star. — Thomas Lovell Beddoes

If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered. — Stanley Kubrick

There is no feeling more comforting and consoling than knowing you are right next to the one you love. — Oscar Wilde

Like a tide-race, the waves of human mediocrity are rising to the heavens and will engulf this refuge, for I am opening the flood-gates myself, against my will. Ah! but my courage fails me and my heart is sick within me!
Lord, take pity on the Christian who doubts, on the unbeliever who would fain believe, on the galley-slave of life who puts out to sea alone, in the night, beneath a firmament no longer lit by the consoling beacon-fires of the ancient hope!
(A Rebours, final words) — Joris-Karl Huysmans

The cliche is that misery loves company. Another is that there is fellowship among thieves. But thieves do not seek the consoling presence of the fellowship of police officers. Sinful misery does not love the company of purity. — R.C. Sproul

The desire to make the horse happy and the cabman happy, had reached the point of a bizarre longing to take them to bed with him. And that, he knew, was impossible. For Stevie was not mad. It was, as it were, a symbolic longing; and at the same time it was very distinct, because springing from experience, the mother of wisdom. Thus when as a child he cowered in a dark corner scared, wretched, sore, and miserable with the black, black misery of the soul, his sister Winnie used to come along, and carry him off to bed with her, as into a heaven of consoling peace. Stevie, though apt to forget mere facts, such as his name and address for instance, had a faithful memory of sensations. To be taken into a bed of compassion was the supreme remedy, with the only one disadvantage of being difficult of application on a large scale. And looking at the cabman, Stevie perceived this clearly, because he was reasonable. — Joseph Conrad

Every child matures, which is both a blessing and a damn shame. Children can imagine worlds that never exist, worlds far more interesting and consoling than an adult knows. — Kilroy J. Oldster

The bottom line may be that my inventing buildings is, indeed, a very private kind of activity. But it's done to be shared. It is comforting and consoling. From the reactions I get I can see I'm not doing something strange. — Peter Zumthor

How very beautiful and consoling our faith is! For the little work we do here on earth it promises in return all the joys of assured happiness. — Rose Philippine Duchesne

Perhapsthemost sublimeinsights oftheJewishprophets and the Christian gospel is the knowledge that since perfection is love, the apprehension of perfection is at once the means of seeing one's imperfections and the consoling assurance of grace which makes this realization bearable. This ultimate paradox of high religion is not an invention of theologians or priests. It is constantly validated by the most searching experiences of life. — Reinhold Niebuhr

I would never call Jerusalem beautiful or comfortable or consoling. But there's something about it that you can't turn away from. — Pico Iyer

Stories are consoling, fiction is one of the consolation prizes for having lived in the world. — Don DeLillo

Reading literature is a way of reaching back to something bigger and older and different. It can give you the feeling that you belong to the past as well as the present, and it can help you realize that your present will someday be someone else's past. This may be disheartening, but it can also be strangely consoling at times. — Wendy Lesser

Hm," said the Count, rubbing his lips and regarding Miles with cool approval. "Interesting. Well. For your fourth consoling thought, I would point out that in this venue" - a wave of his finger took in Vorbarr Sultana, and by extension Barrayar - "acquiring a reputation as a slick and dangerous man, who would kill without compunction to obtain and protect his own, is not all bad. In fact, you might even find it useful. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Because Roen is a strong-minded woman, and there's something consoling in the regard of a woman. Roen never desires me, or if she ever does, it's not the same. — Kristin Cashore

Beauty can be consoling, disturbing, sacred, profane; it can be exhilarating, appealing, inspiring, chilling. It can affect us in an unlimited variety of ways.. Yet it is never viewed with indifference; beauty demands to be noticed; it speaks to us directly like the voice of an intimate friend. If there are people who are indifferent to beauty, then it is surely because they do not perceive — Roger Scruton

If you ask a conservative for a statement of his political convictions, he may well say that he has none, and that the greatest heresy of modernity is precisely to see politics as a matter of convictions as though one could recuperate, at the level of political purpose, the consoling certainty which once was granted by religious faith. In another sense, however, conservatism does rest in a system of belief, and is opposed as much to the theory as to the practice of socialist and liberal politics. — Roger Scruton

He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan. — Alain De Botton

He sank upon the old yellow sofa, the sofa of his lifetime and of so many years before, and buried his head on the shabby, tattered arm. A succession of sobs broke from his lips -- sobs in which the accumulated emotion of months and the strange, acute conflict of feelings that had possessed him for the three weeks just past found relief and a kind of solution. Lady Aurora sat down beside him, and laid her finger-tips gently on his hand. So, for a minute, while his tears flowed and she said nothing, he felt her timid, consoling touch. At the end of the minute he raised his head; it came back to him that she had said "we" just before, and he asked her whom she meant. — Henry James

Pity can purge us of hostility and arouse feelings of identification with the characters, but it can also be a consoling reassurance which leads us to believe that we have understood, and that, in pitying, we have even done something to right a wrong. — Richard Wright

But if love were convenient there wouldn't be millions of songs and movies and books obsessing over it, or therapists and doctors consoling all the people falling in and out of it. — Katie Kacvinsky

The fable says that the tortoise won in the end, which is consoling, but the hare shows a good deal of speed and few signs of tiring. — Northrop Frye

If being an anti-art artist is difficult, being an anti-art art historian is a hard position indeed. His doctrinal revolutionism brings forth nothing new in art but reenacts upheavals on the symbolic plane of language. It provides the consoling belief that overthrows are occurring as in the past, that barriers to creation are being surmounted, and that art is pursuing a radical purpose, even if it is only the purpose of doing away with itself. — Harold Rosenberg

There are those who are awkward in the face of sorrow, fearing to say the wrong thing; to them, I say, there is no wrong in comfort, ever. A kind word, a consoling arm ... these things are ever welcome. — Jacqueline Carey

In times of hurt and discouragement, it may be consoling for all of us to recall that no one can do anything permanently to us that will last for eternity. Only we ourselves can affect our eternal progression. — Marvin J. Ashton

Letters were first invented for consoling such solitary wretches as myself. Having lost the substantial pleasures of seeing and possessing you, I shall in some measure compensate this loss by the satisfaction I shall find in your writing. — Heloise

After a spent day, I
walked back in a fever.
The whole way home
the sun touched my cheeks.
The blissful evening glow
spread across the meadows
and I called this light
the blood I shed.
My hot burning blood lay
consoling the entire world.
So I walked with pride
Now that all was tilled.
I didn't know what was happening,
I leaned against a fence post,
in my blood that covered
the meadows near and far. — Robert Walser

People who are less happy, I find, are always consoling those who are more. — Renata Adler

I love to disturb people, because only by disturbing them you can make them think. They have stopped thinking for centuries. Nobody has been there to disturb them. People have been consoling them. I am not going to console anybody ... Because the more you console them, the more retarded they remain. Shog them, hit them hard, give them challenge. That challenge will bring their full capacities to the climax. — Rajneesh