Salve Quotes & Sayings

Come, go with us, speak fair; you may salve so,
Not what is dangerous present, but the los
Of what is past. — William Shakespeare

I am not sure if love is a salve or just a deeper kind of wound. — Erica Jong

Poetry is no less than this:
An unexpected workplace kiss
The brandy in the spirit cage
A salve upon our wounded age
That lustful swell, the secret damp
The yellow of the attic lamp
The drifting, smoky, hazel haze
Of wooded hills on autumn days
Between the thoughts of summer lost
And anvil of the winter frost — Martin Newell

Blessed be His name that He has arranged that one Person of the Sacred Trinity should undertake this office of Comforter, for no man could ever perform its duties. We might as well hope to be the Savior as to be the Comforter of the heartbroken! — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

We are all one - or at least we should be - and it is our job, our duty, and our great challenge to fight the voices of division and seek the salve of reconciliation. — Roy Barnes

The only balm to sorrow is memory; the only salve for the pain of losing someone to death is acknowledging the life that existed before. — Nina Sankovitch

Introducing the idea of beauty as a salve and of aesthetics making something difficult accessible. — Henri Cole

Sleep is pain's easiest salve, and doth fulfill all the offices of death, except to kill — John Donne

There was nothing that was such a salve to my grieving heart as the hawk returning. — Helen Macdonald

Hating hurts the hater the most. Hating is not a salve for the wounded soul, it is an abrasive that keeps the soul wounded and raw and oversensitive. — Jack R. Rose

a woman with young children is not a woman but a mammal, salve, croon, water carrier — Rachel Zucker

Kind words are salve to a cankered soul; spread generously. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Fobbit is fast, razor sharp, and seven kinds of hilarious. Thank you, Mr. Abrams, for the much needed salve
it feels good to finally laugh about Iraq. Fobbit deserves a place alongside Slaughterhouse Five and Catch-22 as one of our great comic novels about the absurdity of war. — Jonathan Evison

People can't handle guilt. Their minds won't let them for very long. So they make up excuses. Excuses work like a salve, allaying the guilt, letting you forget the real problem. — Darynda Jones

Miss Alcasid commented. "You know, when you believe, when you have faith in what you ask for, even though how insignificant it may seem to others, as long as your prayer is said with pure intentions, it will be granted." (Chapter 18) — Ryanne Salve

I carry about eight lip balms: Burt's Bees, Rosebud Salve, Eos. — Lena Headey

Then he crossed his arms over his chest and began to listen to the radiant voices of the slaves singing the six o'clock Salve in the mills, and through the window he saw the diamond of Venus in the sky that was dying forever, the eternal snows, the new vine whose yellow bellflowers he would not see bloom on the following Saturday in the house closed in mourning, the final brilliance of life that would never, through all eternity, be repeated again. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Hate is love on fire, set out to burn like a flare on the side of the road. It says, stop here. Something terrible has happened. Envy is like, the skin you're in burns. And the salve is someone else's skin. — Alexander Chee

In August 1867, a thirteen-year-old142 boy who had severely cut his arm while operating a machine at a fair in Glasgow was admitted to Lister's infirmary. The boy's wound was open and smeared with grime - a setup for gangrene. But rather than amputating the arm, Lister tried a salve of carbolic acid, hoping to keep the arm alive and uninfected. The wound teetered on the edge of a terrifying infection, threatening to become an abscess. But Lister persisted, intensifying his application of carbolic acid paste. For a few weeks, the whole effort seemed hopeless. But then, like a fire running to the end of a rope, the wound began to dry up. A month later, when the poultices were removed, the skin had completely healed underneath. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

I once asked her if she was happy. "That depends on what I am able to get done today," she said, laughing. She told me that the completion of her daily tasks was the only thing she felt she had control over. They were a form of meditation, of salve. Kept busy, she had no time to ruminate and no time for opinions, certainly not feminist ones. I pressed her: "I mean, are you happy with your life, Rajima?" "I don't know," she said uncomfortably, as if she'd never really considered such a question. "When there is little you can do, you do what you can." Happiness for my grandmother seemed to be a verb rather than a noun. She had so little control over her own life. Yet she took control, out of thin air for herself, when she could. — Padma Lakshmi

The bonus is really one of the great give-aways in business enterprise. It is the annual salve applied to the conscience of the rich and the wounds of the poor. — E.B. White

Your words are so powerful that they can break
hearts or fill them with joy. Your words have
the ability to comfort a wounded soul or shatter
someone's confidence. Your words can act as your
messengers of hope or a salve for a broken human
being. — Rachel C. Weingarten

Is that the ultimate need? To secure some agent to act as a salve, a bandage, a cover-up, concealer over the black eye, as opposed to facing the issue head on. Nobody wants to address the fist. We'd all much rather take something for the pain and make it all go away. — Katandra Jackson Nunnally

Time begins the healing process of wounds cut deeply by oppression. We soothe ourselves with the salve of attempted indifference, accepting the false pattern set up by the horrible restriction of Jim Crow laws. — Rosa Parks

I took Eugene Sue's Arthur from the reading-room. It's indescribable, enough to make you vomit. You have to read this to realize the pitifulness of money, success, and the public. Literature has become consumptive. It spits and slobbers, covers its blisters with salve and sticking-plaster, and has grown bald from too much hair-slicking. It would take Christ of art to cure this leper. — Gustave Flaubert

Avoidance doesn't solve anything; it merely serves as a temporary salve. — Tony Dungy

MARCH 1 Envision Your Dreams I counsel you to buy from me ... salve to put on your eyes, so you can see. REVELATION 3:18 DO YOU LOOK UPON your life with eyes of faith? Think of it this way: when we close our eyes, we should see more than we do when we have our eyes open. See your whole family serving God. See yourself rising to new levels of effectiveness. See yourself stronger, healthier, and living a more abundant life. See God using you in — Joel Osteen

He can't help me. Not in the way that I need to be helped. I don't want a salve or whatever form of support my mother received. I've seen one family destroyed. I don't plan on repeating that trend. — Alessandra Torre

Books had been invented to salve human loneliness, and they were friends without peer, friends who never sneered or flinched or laughed behind a man's back. Books revealed their treasures to all who took the effort to seek. — Mary Jo Putney

Patience is my virtue, but only in Math, Daddy, - Ashley — Ryanne Salve

Awe is the salve that will heal our eyes. — Rumi

Ronan looked pained; polite was not his style. But he said, "Salve." To Blue, he said, "That actually means be well." "Super — Maggie Stiefvater

Wherarewe?" Thorne muttered.
"Oh, you're awake already," said Cinder, returning with salve and gauze. "I was hoping you'd stay knocked out awhile longer. The peace and quiet was a pleasant change. — Marissa Meyer

All the salve in the world can't cure what gets broken in somebody's soul -Mama — Sharon M. Draper

An aphrodisiac will disappear,
delusional, like permanence or wealth -
a shimmering, as if love were a ghost -
and yet my passion for you seethes and sears
without an end. Late April leaves can't crave
caress of dew, sunlight's sweet splash, more than
I pine for your embrace, us turned to one;
when harsh reversals scar, the thought of you will salve
like summer wind in autumn; deep red blood
surging along with mine, staid genes worked hot
from your electric charms, as all my moods
succumb to your sweet fire, and perfect wit.
Now you are all I live for - loving you -
in fleeting world of lies, you are the truth. — Lauren Lipton

He chanced a look at her and saw the flare of something in her eyes. A salve to the emptiness that sometimes threatened to suffocate him. — Melina Marchetta

What I want back is what I was Before the bed, before the knife, Before the brooch-pin and the salve Fixed me in this parenthesis; Horses fluent in the wind, A place, a time gone out of mind. — Sylvia Plath

Sleep is pain's easiest salve — John Donne

Don't take it so hard, Joel," Johnson cut in. "After all, prayer is
not the monopoly of one." (Chapter 18) — Ryanne Salve

Within the Scripture there is a balm for every wound, a salve for every sore. — Charles Spurgeon

When things like this happen - when what was meant to help results in harm, when a salve brings pain instead of healing - it is clear how wrong even choices intended to be right can become. — Ally Condie

I must be ever so careful to remember that my pain is a precious salve that when used in the service of others can heal a thousand wounds and more. And I must likewise remember that if I do not use it as such, I have done nothing more than wound myself yet again. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

The young people who join extremist groups are clearly suffering from massive deficiencies in religious knowledge and are often politically gullible (when they are not attempting to salve pangs of conscience by cutting themselves off from a life of delinquency). — Tariq Ramadan

Photography at first was asked to do nothing but embalm our best smiles for the benefit of our friends and our best clothes for the amusement of posterity. Neither thing lasts, and photography came as a welcome salve to keep those precious, if slightly ridiculous, things a little longer in the world. — George Santayana

My prophetic task would be twofold: to stand up to him, and to stand by him. To awaken his conscience, and to salve the pain this would cause him. — Erik Larson

Starring Russell Crowe as the Patron of the First Ark, 'Noah' had affronted some Christian literalists with its giant rock men, its weird visions, and the occasionally dark motives of its protagonist. But the film corralled enough religious leaders, including Pope Francis (with whom Crowe snagged an audience), to salve canonical objections. — Richard Corliss

Finn was meant to find that journal. To find me. To be a salve, and perhaps even heal, a heart I'd worried was destined to ache forever. — Jessica Hawkins

I've been fully instructed. I'm to hold you if you cry and rub some salve into your butt so it doesn't sting anymore. I am not to play with your boobs."
Jack sent his brother a stern look.
"Or anything else," Lucas concluded with a gulp. "I can pat your back and try really hard not to get an erection. — Sophie Oak

Blessed be those souls who are glad! They are a salve for sorrow and fatigue. A sun in days of darkness, a joy in sorrow, a ray of heaven shining through the uncertainness of earth. — Candace Wheeler

In many shamanic societies, people who complain of being disheartened ... or depressed would be asked, ... When did you stop dancing? ... This is because dancing is a universal healing salve. — Gabrielle Roth

For all her culture's attention to the physical, it seemingly has little to salve the creatural anguish of losing someone else's body, their touch, their heat, their oceanic heart ... she doesn't want another body, she wants the body she loved, the forceps scar across his cheek that she traced with her hand, his penis, its elegant sweep to the side, the preternaturally soft skin. One wants what one has loved, not the idea of love. — Michelle Latiolais

In the many trials of life, when we feel abandoned and when sorrow, sin, disappointment, failure, and weakness make us less than we should ever be, there can come the healing salve of the unreserved love in the grace of God. It is a love that lifts and blesses. It is a love that sustains a new beginning on a higher level and thereby continues "from grace to grace." — James E. Faust

Creativity is salve for the soul — Phillip Gary Smith

Little praying is a kind of make believe, a salve for the conscience, a farce and a delusion. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Virtually all women will always carry the scars and a deep sense of loss and grief from the betrayal. Whether a woman has stayed, left, or been left, it must be remembered that time is the salve on this journey towards forgiveness and healing, because it is also a process of grieving. — Meryn G. Callander

History has shown that money is a salve unto itself for any malady of the troubled mind. — James Daniel Ross

But again that sense of peace descended, that spell of perfect happiness, and I was traveling back through the years to the little French church of my childhood as the hymns began. Through my tears I saw the shining altar. I saw the icon of the Virgin, a gleaming square of gold above the flowers; I heard the Aves whispered as if they were a charm. Under the arches of Notre Dame de Paris I heard the priests singing Salve Regina. — Anne Rice

Sometimes we cannot see and don't want to see because we are blinded. We need eye salve to put on our eyes. We cry out for revival, and yet God says, "I want to open your eyes so you can see what is before you. Revival has a face and a name. It lies bleeding on the roadside." If we want to see revival, we need to begin with the one in front of us. — Heidi Baker

When he finished cleaning my open wounds, he found a jar of salve and began rubbing it into the rough parts of my skin. I sort of got lost in the feel of his hands massaging mine. — Richelle Mead

Sometimes we can offer a cure, sometimes only a salve, sometimes not even that. But whatever we can offer, our interventions, and the risks and sacrifices they entail, are justified only if they serve the larger aims of a person's life. When we forget that, the suffering we inflict can be barbaric. When we remember it the good we do can be breathtaking. — Atul Gawande

Religion is a salve for confusion and misdirection. — Robert F. Kennedy

There is no balm of Gilead, No salve, no soothing ointment To stay the pain of one who's had In love a disappointment
Unless it be that healing lotion Of fixing on a new devotion. — Richard Armour

She had read enough about teenagers to understand you couldn't confront them directly. You couldn't even agree with them. The best strategy was to feign indifference to whatever wrong direction they were headed in, then plop in little facts, like Alka-Seltzers, round innocuous comments, let those sink in, take slow, antidotal effect . . . — Melissa Pritchard

The ocean has always been a salve to my soul. — Jimmy Buffett

What I can play is blues. She was never that into blues. I can salve with Lightning and Cotton, BB and Clapton and Stevie Ray. I can blast Son Seals singing Dear Son until the coyotes in the creek raise up a sympathetic sky ripping interpretation of the harmonica solo. Piercing howls and yelps. Sounds like it's killing them and also like they love it. Which when you get right down to it is the blues. — Peter Heller

Quietness rose within Aquila, easing his wild unrest as the salve was cooling the smart of his gashed side. But that was always the way with Brother Ninnias
the quietness, the sense of sanctuary, were things that he carried with him. — Rosemary Sutcliff

Most people who say they oppose abortion do just enough to salve the conscience but not enough to stop the killing. — Scott Klusendorf

Prayer is a salve for every sore, even the sorest, a remedy for every malady, even the most grievous. — Matthew Henry

Always being myself and my salve, which is life. I'm not lonely, if that's what it seems like. Always writing things down. — Chris Campanioni

To salve the pains of consciousness, some people anesthetize themselves with sunny thoughts. But not everyone can follow their lead, above all not those who sneer at the sun and everything upon which it beats down. Their only respite is in the balm of bleakness. Disdainful of the solicitations of hope, they look for sanctuary in desolate places - a scattering of ruins in a barren locale or a rubble of words in a book where someone whispers in a dry voice, I too am here. — Thomas Ligotti

Grug scowled. "You're a sick people. You're richer, healthier, and have more luxuries than trillions of beings across the Cosmos, and yet you find yourselves perennially unhappy. To salve this unhappiness, you acquire endless material possessions and numb your minds with tawdry entertainments. But in the end they only echo back to you how empty your existence is. The truth is, though you make appearances to the contrary, your sole purpose is tending and caring for yourselves. — Matthew Kressel

Everywhere means nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends. And the same thing must hold true of men who seek intimate acquaintance with no single author, but visit them all in a hasty and hurried manner. 3. Food does no good and is not assimilated into the body if it leaves the stomach as soon as it is eaten; nothing hinders a cure so much as frequent change of medicine; no wound will heal when one salve is tried after another; a plant which is often moved can never grow strong. There is nothing so efficacious that it can be helpful while it is being shifted about. And in reading of many books is distraction. — Seneca.

There is no greater salve for the soul than family and friends. — L.F.Young

I believe that all people allow the act of victimization to take lead in their lives without realizing or trying to stop it. You hear of another person's problems, automatically feel the need to salve their pain, so you make it your own. After a while, it no longer matters if the problem was yours to begin with. You absorb their pain into your body, your blood stream, your soul. It becomes yours. — Leigh Hershkovich

First, make sure you get into a relationship for the right reasons. (I'm using the word "right" here as a relative term. I mean "right" relative to the larger purpose you hold in your life.) As I have indicated before, most people still enter relationships for the "wrong" reasons - to end loneliness, fill a gap, bring themselves love, or someone to love - and those are some of the better reasons. Others do so to salve their ego, end their depressions, improve their sex life, recover from a previous relationship, or, believe it or not, to relieve boredom. None of these reasons will work, and unless something dramatic changes along the way, neither will the relationship. — Neale Donald Walsch

The humor is the sort born of ironic necessity; they use it to salve the wounds in insensitity. — Leah Hager Cohen

Not everyone can stand up and be a hero, Princess. Some prefer to surrender to the inevitable and salve their consciences with the gift of survival. — Tad Williams

Amah would not have approved of her meekly standing aside, twisting her hands as if she had no more resources than those girls who hung themselves without first exacting any retribution from their heartless lovers.
He would not get away with it.
She walked, like an automaton, to her horse. Her fingers dug out the jar of salve, but left behind the pilules that must be taken while one used the salve. He was already mounted when she approached him.
A quartet of birds trilled raucously as she presented the jar to him. Perhaps they were trying to warn him. Or her.
'Here, a parting gift,' she said softly. — Sherry Thomas

Holiness isn't a list of things to do or not do, though - it's a state of being. Holiness is what happens when the broken pieces of our hearts, the brokenness of our lives and the things we do to try to salve that brokenness, are continually turned over to God and left on the altar. The big Christianese word is sanctification. Sanctification is the hope of humanity. It's the golden ice-cream for the meal of grace. — Aaron Mark Reimer

Well Ashley, my dear, there is time for everything," was Armand's wise counsel to his daughter. "In time, Justin will warm up to you. Just be patient." (Chapter 2) — Ryanne Salve

Gregg Cunningham once said, "There are more people working full-time to kill babies than there are working full-time to save them. That's because killing babies is very profitable while saving them is very costly. So costly, that large numbers of Americans who say they oppose abortion are not lifting a finger to stop it. And those that do lift a finger to stop it do just enough to salve the conscience but not enough to stop the killing."8 — Scott Klusendorf

It often happens that when a soul under duress is required to attend to a separate difficulty, one that does not concern him in the least, then this second problem works upon the first as a kind of salve. — Eleanor Catton

I looked after that Dudley family for too long, over six years. His daddy would take him to the garage and whip him with a rubber hose-pipe trying to beat the girl out a that boy until I couldn't stand it no more ... I wish to God I'd told John Green Dudley he ain't going to hell. That he ain't no sideshow freak cause he like boys. I wish to God I'd filled his ears with good things like I'm trying to do with Mae Mobley. Instead, I just sat in the kitchen, waiting to put the salve on them hose-pipe welts. — Kathryn Stockett

Patience is sorrow's salve. — Winston Churchill

But now I was home. In my home, home home, once and for all. I had had various apartments before in quite a few cities over the course of my life, but this was the first one I owned, and it felt good. A roof over my head and a place to be private, to cry, to laugh, to gorge, to hope, to dream, to wallow, and to pray for things was a salve to my soul. — Padma Lakshmi

Don't mistake a desperate desire to salve your conscience for bravery, — Catherine Jones Payne

We've tried calling sin "errors" or mistakes" or "poor judgment," but sin itself has stayed the same. No matter how we try to salve our conscience, we've known all along that men are still sinners; and the results of sin are still disease, disappointment, disillusionment, despair, and death. — Billy Graham

Can I pretend to be as cold as Augustus? I now know why he did not flinch in hanging my wife. And I am beginning to understand why Golds rule. They can do what I cannot.
Though I am alone, I know I will soon find others. They want me to soak in the guilt for now. They want me lonely, mournful, so that when I meet the others, the winners, I will be relieved. The murders will bind us, and I'll find the company of the winners a salve to my guilt. I do not love my fellow students, but I will think I do. I will want their comfort, their reassurances that I am not evil. And they will want the same. This is meant to make us a family - one with cruel secrets.
I am right. — Pierce Brown

Catherine [of Siena] compares justice combined with mercy with a precious pearl. Justice without mercy would be dark, cruel, more like injustice than justice. But mercy without justice would be like salve on a sore which should be cleansed with the red-hot iron; if the salve is applied before the wound is cleansed it only makes it smart, and does not heal it — Sigrid Undset

Holy Spirit, the life that gives life: You are the cause of all movement. You are the breath of all creatures. You are the salve that purifies our souls. You are the ointment that heals our wounds. You are the fire that warms our hearts. You are the light that guides our feet. Let all the world praise you. — Hildegard Of Bingen

People ask me all the time why I write. I do realize that one day I will have to answer this question, most likely in front of a large crowd. But how do you tell the truth when you struggle just to write it? How do you admit that the words are just salve to the things you are too afraid to say? — Kacey Vanderkarr

When one's eyes are anointed with the salve of prema, spiritual love then we could see Vrindavan. — Radhanath Swami

Once, a great handful of a girl out west told him - I never did love you. [ ... ]How mean of her to salve her spit curled conscience by trying to take away their past! In the kitchen he had started to use those very words on Lou - they sprang readily to mind, as wounding words do - but he stopped himself. — Annie Dillard

I wonder what freezes
the flurry of hurt on her cold-
flushed cheeks, if his touch is
a salve or the shattering. — Beth Morey

NW is full of split selves, people alienated from the very things they thought defined them. Their nostalgia
for old movies, old songs, buses they don't ride anymore
is less a salve than a form of pain. — Christian Lorentzen

Grieving is like being set afire. Except when you try to put out the flames they disappear; when you try to salve your wounds you find your skin unblemished. You take a breath, thinking the worst has passed, and then grief bursts into flame anew. It rages, it roars, it smolders, all at its own unfathomable whim. You can't shake it; you have no choice but to burn. — Marshall Thornton

We long to connect, all of us. We long to be noticed, to be cared for, to matter. Generosity is the invisible salve on our wound of loneliness, one that benefits both sides, over and over again. — Seth Godin

She could walk through a lightning storm without being touched; grab a bolt of lightning in the palm of her hand; use the heat of lightning to start the kindling going under her medicine pot. She turned the moon into salve, the stars into swaddling cloth, and healed the wounds of every creature walking up on two or down on four. — Gloria Naylor

Unpopularity is a excellent salve to the conscience; it is delicious to be misunderstood. — Stella Benson

Wine is a much better salve than anything the medical profession has ever prescribed. Even the Bible condones it! — Jonathan Evison