Self Reassuring Quotes & Sayings

The word 'definition' has come to have a dangerously reassuring sound, owing no doubt to its frequent occurrence in logical and mathematical writings. — Willard Van Orman Quine

I didn't really expect you to have an appropriate response," Renaire says simply, taking a moment to tap ash off the tip of his cigarette. He'd hoped, yes, but never expected, not really. "I came to terms with the fact you're a possessive, self-important asshole with a superiority complex a long time ago."
"Somehow, that's reassuring," Delaurier says. — Luchia Dertien

I've been sent down to the minor leagues six or seven times in my career. You've just got to have that stability. It's huge. It's comforting. And it's reassuring. To be part of something in this world that's constantly changing like baseball, it's awesome to have your hope anchored in something that's so stable. — Matt Diaz

But how reassuring it was for us, you remember, every now and then ("Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall"), to vibrate to the music of the very heartstrings of the Leader of the Free World who, to qualify convincingly as such, had after all to feel a total commitment to the Free World. — William F. Buckley Jr.

My only constant is the black hair tie around my wrist. No mans gonna be there for me like this hair tie has. No ones presence is gonna be as reassuring. — Unknown

Of what use was memory anyway than as a template for one's most reassuring self-deceptions! — Ashim Shanker

I resist the urge to raise my hand and utter the four most reassuring words in the English language: I know a guy. — Sarah Vowell

Bruce Wayne/Batman: A hero can be anyone, even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat on a young boy's shoulders to let him know that the world hadn't ended. — Christopher Nolan

Although the sovereignty of God is universal and absolute, it is not the sovereignty of blind power. It is coupled with infinite wisdom, holiness and love. And this doctrine, when properly understood, is a most comforting and reassuring one. Who would not prefer to have his affairs in the hands of a God of infinite power, wisdom, holiness and love, rather than to have them left to fate, or chance, or irrevocable natural law, or to short-sighted and perverted self? Those who reject God's sovereignty should consider what alternatives they have left. — Loraine Boettner

When they had dismounted, he indulged himself in a shudder of his whole body. "That is more than I undertake to do again!' --this to the admiral, in reproachful tones. "Those two monstrously large beasts! Going right up to them like that and dangling their captains in front of them just as if to say, look what I have got, ha ha! I am all astonishment they did not leap upon me at once. I hope they did not get a clear look at me. If they ever saw me again I am sure they would not let it pass."

"I beg you not to repine upon it," Laurence said. "Temeraire understands well that orders must be obeyed, and will not hold it against you; he knows it was not in your power to deliver us to him."

"Well, but it was," Souci said, not conciliated, and Granby said nothing reassuring at all. Iskierka allow of assurances of her behavior, good, evil, or otherwise. — Naomi Novik

His view of me and my ways were expressed with some degree of force to our family physician who, when at the age of a hundred and fifty-three I came down with the mumps, having summoned the whole family and said that I would burst before morning, was met by a reassuring observation from Adam that he wouldn't believe I was dead even if I had been buried a year. "It is the good who die young, Doctor," he said. "On that principle this young malefactor will live to be the oldest man in the world. — John Kendrick Bangs

It is somehow reassuring to discover that the word travel is derived from travail, denoting the pains of childbirth. — Jessica Mitford

She had lost herself in this old work, her personality dissolving into it, so that she had been set free. The immortality of the soul lies in its dissolution; this was the cryptic comment that so frustrated Olivier and which Julien had only ever grasped as evidence for the history of a particular school of thought. He had known all about its history, but Julia knew what it meant. He found the realization strangely reassuring. — Iain Pears

And I could test myself - my own courage - with it, too, because when the doors at either end of the secret staircase were closed, it was impenetrably dark. I hid in the staircase, shivering with terror, telling the narrative: The little girl was in a dark, dark place but she was very brave ... Sometimes the door at the bottom opened, and a wedge of light sliced up the stairs; a maid, her arms filled with folded laundry, would find me and ask in amazement what I was doing there.
And though I answered lightheartedly that I was playing, the truth is that I was not entirely certain what I was doing there, crouched and frightened in the darkness. Only now, sixty years later, do I see that I was arming myself, rehearsing panic, loss, and helplessness; assessing my own cowardice and courage, and and the same time reassuring myself that the door would always open, that the light would always find its way in. — Lois Lowry

Reassuring a jealous woman that you don't want her man creates the bigger beast of resentment because that tells her that what she has isn't desirable and to her, where the opinions of others correlates to her self-worth, is unforgivable. — Donna Lynn Hope

Did you get it back?"
"Of coarse, the very next day. And even if I hadn't-because there have been things I've been asked to give up for good ... Well, over the years here I've learned that sometimes a great loss is also a great gain." Under the slowly swirling freckles, Doc's face looked infinitely sad. Somehow I didn't find that reassuring. — Polly Shulman

Jacques." She hesitated, wanting to touch him, needing to touch him, but afraid of being lost in the sexual lure she couldn't seem to resist. "How do I know if I'm the one thinking for myself when you're always with me, always sharing my mind?"
"You will have to figure that out for yourself, Shea." His black eyes moved lovingly over her face. "You know me better than anyone, and I have never tried to hide anything from you. If you brand me a monster, even I will believe you." His smile was gentle and reassuring. — Christine Feehan

The secret to thriving is the knowledge that we are never simply victims of our bodies. It's very reassuring to know that we all have within us the ability to heal from anything and go on to live joy-filled lives. — Christiane Northrup

I feel the audience has a right to know if some of the money they're spending is going to a certain cause, and reassuring them the money is going to where it's supposed to be going. — Ian Anderson

This is modern liberalism in action: an unregulated virtue-exchange in which representatives of one class of humanity ritually forgive the sins of another class, all of it convened and facilitated by a vast army of well-graduated American professionals, their reassuring expertise propped up by bogus social science, while the unfortunate objects of their high and noble compassion sink slowly back into a preindustrial state. — Thomas Frank

Now that Dad was gone I was starting to see how mortality was bound up in things like that cold, arc-lit sky. How the world is full of signs and wonders that come, and go, and if you are lucky you might see them. Once, twice. Perhaps never again. The albums on my mother's shelves are full of family photographs. But also other things. A starling with a crooked beak. A day of hoarfrost and smoke. A cherry tree thick with blossom. Thunderclouds, lightning strikes, comets and eclipses: celestial events terrifying in their blind distances but reassuring you, too, that the world is for ever, though you are only a blink in its course. — Helen Macdonald

How're the cats?" he asked, smiling a little. He did miss Angel Marie. Hell, he missed them all.
"Feral," Benny sniffed. "And horny. Every time one of us walks in, they all start humping our shoes."
"They're fixed," Shane mumbled, but the conversation was oddly reassuring. It sounded normal, and like home.
"Tell that to the big fuzzy brown one ... ."
"Orlando Bloom?"
"Yeah, whatever. Last time I was there that damned animal violated my knitting."
Shane lost a battle with a laugh and then whined because it hurt his ribs.
"Violated?"
[ ... ]
"Let's just say that wool is no longer virgin," she quipped dryly, and Shane's chest shook. — Amy Lane

Una's death struck Samuel like a silent earthquake. He said no brave and reassuring words, he simply sat alone and rocked himself. — John Steinbeck

I never thought I'd get married," I told Boy as he poured for us. Scotch spilled into the squat glasses with reassuring lapping noises. "I should have left well enough alone." "You don't need to explain. — Paula McLain

Oddly, though, lists are reassuring. We become aware of this if we scrupulously follow a recipe, which is essentially a list of ingredients and actions; but if we give this 'list' too much importance, we leave no room for the imagination. — Jean-Claude Ellena

The first time he had hit her, he had been so wracked with remorse, she had actually felt sorry for him. Consumed by guilt and self-loathing, he had sobbed in her arms like a child, swearing it would never happen again and begging for her forgiveness. Her stomach turned over now at the thought of how she had comforted him, assuring him that she trusted him and promising that she would never leave. She saw now with sickening clarity that she had been setting a precedent - giving him permission to do it again; reassuring him that she would tolerate anything.

If only she had walked out there and then. — Cleary James

Stressed souls need the reassuring rhythm of self-nurturing rituals. — Sarah Ban Breathnach

We must come to the Bible with the purpose of self-exposure consciously in mind. I suspect not many people make more than a token stab in that direction. It's extremely hard work. It makes Bible study alternately convicting and reassuring, painful and soothing, puzzling and calming, and sometimes dull - but not for long if our purpose is to see ourselves better. — Larry Crabb

You're different than you used to be. A few months ago you wouldn't have followed me onto this porch." The compliment, if it was that, brought tears to her eyes. "I - I'm sorry for treating you so badly. I'm ashamed now of how I snubbed you - acted afraid of you - " "It's common enough." The admission startled her - made her feel grieved and defensive and tender toward him all at once. She longed to lay a reassuring hand on his sleeve but checked herself. There was no self-pity in his manner, only truth telling, and she sensed he didn't want her sympathy, just her friendship. And her forgiveness. "A half blood belongs to no one, red or white," he said. "You belong to God," she said softly. — Laura Frantz

At a certain point, an eating disorder ceases to be "about" any one thing. It stops being about your family, or your culture. Very simply, it becomes an addiction not only emotionally but also chemically. And it becomes a crusade. If you are honest with yourself, you stop believing that anyone could "make" you do such a thing - who, your parents? They want you to starve to death? Not likely. Your environment? It couldn't careless. You are also doing it for yourself. It is a shortcut to something many women without an eating disorder have gotten: respect and power. It is a visual temper tantrum. You are making an ineffective statement about this and that, a grotesque, self-defeating mockery of cultural standards of beauty, societal misogyny. It is a blow to your parents, at whom you are pissed.
And it is so very seductive. It is so reassuring, so all-consuming, so entertaining.
At first. — Marya Hornbacher

I feel a reassuring oneness with other people when I find that even my most intimate, anguished, socially inadmissible emotions and desires are known to others ... Kindred souls - indeed, my selves otherwise costumed - turn up in books in the most unexpected places. Discovering them is one of the great rewards of a liberal education. If I quote liberally, it is not to show off book learning, which at my stage of life can only invite ridicule, but rather to bathe in this kinship of strangers. — Yi-Fu Tuan

My twin, Go. I've said this phrase so many times, it has become a reassuring mantra instead of actual words: Mytwingo. We were born in the '70s, back when twins were rare, a bit magical: cousins of the unicorn, siblings of the elves. We even have a dash of twin telepathy. Go is truly the one person in the entire world I am totally myself with. I don't feel the need to explain my actions to her. I don't clarify, I don't doubt, I don't worry. I don't tell her everything, not anymore, but I tell her more than anyone else, by far. I tell her as much as I can. We spent nine months back to back, covering each other. It became a lifelong habit. It never mattered to me that she was a girl, strange for a deeply self-conscious kid. What can I say? She was always just cool. — Gillian Flynn

It's very difficult to judge yourself. Extreme self-doubt is only attractive when it's fictionalized. Which is why people love the movies. They are so reassuring. — Claire Danes

On going to funerals: "You don't have to say anything. By showing up you are reassuring them that they are not alone. Just being there is enough. — Kunal Nayyar

Heavenly Bastard in the Sky, these cockroaches were sadomasochists, looking for the most painful way to die. Once I swallowed one absent-mindedly drinking my tea. Traumatised, I rang the local chemist. The voice on the line was gently reassuring: cockroaches were not poisonous, ingesting one would cause me no harm. Though, the chemist added, in terms of protein they were not as nutritious as snails. — Xiaolu Guo

Everyone is walking around with these self doubts, so there's something reassuring about that. And self-doubt in one or a few areas doesn't mean that you have generally low self-esteem. And you have the power to get yourself out of feeling that way. — Amy Cuddy

My wishing star glowed slightly and winked back at me. I could almost hear its voice, tinkling like wind chimes and church bells, reassuring me that everything would return to normal. — Erica Sehyun Song

Until you found your way out of the woods, it was reassuring to find other people lost in them with you. — Jonathan Tropper

The problem is that we cannot recognize that what we say about out thoughts and actions is, at best, incoherent; we can and do recognize this after the fact. But once having admitted to ourselves our own subterfuges we are confronted by newer forms, which again we only recognize after the fact. We can never at the moment itself be honest with ourselves, never really understand when we are acting out what we are truly all about. It is only in retrospect that we can explain ourselves, and this retrospective view is hardly reassuring because it does so little to alter our behavior in the future — Israel Rosenfield

All the color had been leached from Winterfell until only grey and white remained. The Stark colors. Theon did not know whether he ought to find that ominous or reassuring. Even the sky was grey. The eyes of the bride were brown. Big and brown and full of fear. — George R R Martin

The whiteness celebrated in Paris is Burning is not just any old brand of whiteness but rather that brutal imperial ruling-class capitalist patriarchal whiteness that presents itself -its way of life- as the only meaningful life there is. What could be more reassuring to a white public fearful that marginalized disenfranchised black folks might rise any day now make revolutionary black liberation struggle a reality than a documentary affirming that colonized, victimized, exploited black folks, are all too willing to be complicit in perpetuating the fantasy that ruling-class white culture is the quintessential site of unrestricted joy, freedom, power and pleasure. — Bell Hooks

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. — Carl Sagan

Step by step, you make your way forward. That's why practices such as daily writing exercises or keeping a daily blog can be so helpful. You see yourself do the work, which shows you that you can do the work. Progress is reassuring and inspiring; panic and then despair set in when you find yourself getting nothing done day after day. One of the painful ironies of work life is that the anxiety of procrastination often makes people even less likely to buckle down in the future. — Gretchen Rubin

Perhaps my sense of reality is not very highly developed, perhaps I lack a sound and reassuring instinct for the solid facts of our earthly existence; I can't always tell memories from dreams, and often I mistake dreams, coming to life again in colours, smells, sudden associations, with the eerie secret certainty of a past life from which time and space divide me no differently and no better than a light sleep in the early hours. — Annemarie Schwarzenbach

In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when I'm as good as you has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish.The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway the teachers
or should I say, nurses?
will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin themselves will do it for us. — C.S. Lewis

I've never wanted an Oscar, although they are reassuring to an actor who doesn't know how really great he is. — Bob Hope

To believe you're being psychically attacked gives you an understanding of your illness that no Western doctor can provide; this can be reassuring when you've exhausted the Western doctor tool kit, and the doctors are sending you to acupuncturists for pain relief. — Heidi Julavits

A hero can be anyone, even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat on a young boy's shoulders to let him know the world hadn't ended. — Christopher Nolan

The intellectual finds it reassuring to say that the businessman gets his money by luck; or monopoly, or exploitation, or dishonesty, or what have you. As a matter of fact, the truly dishonest man will last longer in college -teaching or the ministry than he will in the business world. — Benjamin A. Rogge

Saying someone is religious is heard in most of America as a compliment, a reassuring affirmation that someone will be moral, ethical, and after a few glasses of wine, a freak in the bedroom. — Bill Maher

Indeed, the one thing these prophecies had in common was that, ultimately, all were reassuring. Unfortunately, though, the plague was not. — Albert Camus

Forward, intending to give the boy a reassuring pat on the shoulder or mutter some word of apology. He never saw the wolf, where it was or how it came at him. One moment he was walking toward Snow and the next he was flat on his back on the hard rocky ground, the book spinning away from him as he fell, the breath going out of him at the sudden impact, his mouth full of dirt and blood and rotting leaves. As he tried to get up, his back spasmed painfully. He must have wrenched it in the fall. He ground his teeth in frustration, grabbed a root, and pulled himself back to a sitting position. "Help me," he said to the boy, reaching up a hand. And suddenly the wolf was between them. He did not growl. The damned thing never made a sound. He only looked at him — George R R Martin

He took a deep breath. I don't know what I'm supposed to do here. I don't know if I'm supposed to distract you. If I'm supposed to make you laugh, or if I'm supposed to be reassuring you. I have no idea what to do, so all I'm doing is just being here. — Tijan

The beach at Meschers was crawling with wankers in shorts and bimbos in thongs. It was reassuring. — Michel Houellebecq

Every civilisation has had its irrational but reassuring myth. Previous civilisations have used their culture to sing about it and tell stories about it. Ours has used its mathematics to prove it. — David Fleming

I find Jesus my confidant and companion, brother and savior; our relationship is intimate, vulnerable, demanding yet comfortable and reassuring. — Malcolm Boyd

That had been an odd meeting, but reassuring. She need no longer fear the earl-at lest not for his hostility to her father. What danger he might be to her heart was another matter entirely. — Eve Edwards

Belief is reassuring. People who live in the world of belief feel safe. On the contrary, faith is forever placing us on the razor's edge. — Jacques Ellul