Consoling Quotes - Page 3

• In Europe, charters of liberty have been granted by power. America has set the example . . . 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

  Freedom, Europe, Practice

  James Madison, David B. Mattern (1997). “James Madison's "Advice to My Country"”, p.20, University of Virginia Press

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• 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

  Courage, Hurt, May

  Marvin J. Ashton (1987). “Be of Good Cheer”, Deseret Book Co

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• At every moment in our lives we need compassion, but what more urgent moment could there be than when we are dying? What more wonderful and consoling gift could you give to dying people than the knowledge that they are being prayed for, and that you are taking on their suffering and purifying their negative karma through your practice for them?

  Sogyal Rinpoche

  Death, Karma, Compassion

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• If it is a terrifying thought that life is at the mercy of the multiplication of these minute bodies [microbes], it is a consoling hope that Science will not always remain powerless before such enemies.

  Louis Pasteur

  Science, Enemy, Body

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• 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

  Depressing, Mean, Expectations

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• 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

  Life, Encouraging, Wise

  Address beforeWisconsin State Agricultural Society, Milwaukee,Wis., 30 Sept. 1859

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• She had always been a reader… but now she was obsessed. Since her discovery of the book hoard downstairs from her job, she’d been caught up in one such collection of people and their doings after the next…The pleasure of this sort of life – bookish, she supposed it might be called, a reading life – had made her isolation into a rich and even subversive thing. She inhabited one consoling or horrifying persona after another…That she was childless and husbandless and poor meant less once she picked up a book. Her mistakes disappeared into it. She lived with an invented force.

  Louise Erdrich

  Jobs, Mistake, Book

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• But the penciled 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

  Book, Hard Work, Smell

  Betty Smith (2009). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”, p.26, Harper Collins

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• He did not dare to console her, knowing that it would have been like consoling a tiger run thru by a spear.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Running, Knowing, Dare

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

  Don DeLillo

  Fiction, Stories, World

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.31, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Ah; but my courage fails me, and my heart is sick within me! —Lord, take pity on the Christian who doubts, on the skeptic who would fain believe, on the galley-slave of life who puts to sea alone, in the darkness of night, beneath a firmament illumined no longer by the consoling beacon-fires of the ancient hope.

  Joris-Karl Huysmans

  Christian, Believe, Heart

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• 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

  Believe, Character, Feelings

  Richard Wright (1957). “Native Son”, p.393, McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

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• Only the very greatest art invigorates without consoling.

  Iris Murdoch

  Art

  Iris Murdoch (1999). “Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature”, p.295, Penguin

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• The domestic lives we live - which may be accidental, or not entirely of our making - help to make possible our writing lives; our imaginations are freed, or stimulated, by the very prospect of companionship, quiet, a predictable and consoling routine.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Writing, Imagination, Routine

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• 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

  Loss, Faces, Different

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• 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

  Believe, Parent, Stories

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• 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

  Humanity, Atheism, Way

  Steven Weinberg (2012). “Lake Views”, p.45, Harvard University Press

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• 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

  Wisdom, Strong, Real

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• 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

  Confused, Caring, People

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• Nothing can be more consoling to the man of God, than the conviction that the Lord who made the world governs the world; and that every event, great and small, prosperous and adverse, is under the absolute disposal of Him who doth all things well, and who regulates all things for the good of his people.

  Jerry Bridges

  Men, People, Events

  Jerry Bridges (2017). “31 Days toward Trusting God”, p.108, NavPress

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• 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

  Prayer, Doe, Way

  Timothy Keller (2014). “Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God”, p.20, Penguin

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• 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

  Art, Opportunity, Men

  Lawrence Wright (2006). “The Looming Tower”, p.107, Vintage

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• His epitaph: This tomb hold Diophantus, Ah, what a marvel! And the tomb tells scientifically the measure of his life. God vouchsafed that he should be a boy for the sixth part of his life; when a twelfth was added, his cheeks acquired a beard; He kindled for him the light of marriage after a seventh, and in the fifth year after his marriage He granted him a son. Alas! late-begotten and miserable child, when he had reached the measure of half his father's life, the chill grave took him. After consoling his grief by this science of numbers for four years, he reached the end of his life.

  Diophantus

  Life, Children, Father

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• We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society.

  Alain de Botton

  Letting Go, Struggle, Secular Society

  "Katie Antoniou interviews Alain de Botton on his new book 'Religion for Atheists'". Interview with Katie Antoniou, www.run-riot.com. January 24, 2012.

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• We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling.

  Henri Poincare

  Truth, Often Is, Wonder

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