"Consolatory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... permit me to proffer the consolatory thought with which one of our wittiest caricaturists closes his satiric observations: "Man is not perfect!" It is sufficient, therefore, that our institutions have no more disadvantages than advantages in order to be reckoned excellent; ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... in words, but his sympathetic silence conveyed a great deal, and was more eloquent and consolatory ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... reason is afloat, my faith cannot long remain in suspense, and I believe in God as firmly as in any other truth whatever; in short, a thousand motives draw me to the consolatory side, and add the weight of hope to the equilibrium ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... in which the tendencies of human nature can be all and fully developed.' Nor is this all. We shall not only be able to unravel the intricate web of past affairs, but shall also find a clue for the guidance of future statesmen in the art of political prediction. Nay more, this clue 'will open a consolatory prospect into futurity, in which at a remote distance we shall observe the human species seated upon an eminence won by infinite toil, where all the germs are unfolded which nature has implanted within it, and its destination on this ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... to re- pudiate, as their national ensign, that immortal tricolor, the flag of the Revolution and the Empire, under which they have, won the glory which of all glories has hitherto been dearest to them, and which is as- sociated with the most romantic, the most heroic, the epic, the consolatory, period of their history, - this luckless manifesto, I say, appears to give the measure of the political wisdom of the excellent Henry V. It is the most factitious proposal ever addressed to an eminently ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... the least, I perceive, nor can be made to understand at all, how indispensable your Letters are to me. How you are, and have for a long time been, the one of all the sons of Adam who, I felt, completely understood what I was saying; and answered with a truly human voice,—inexpressibly consolatory to a poor man, in his lonesome pilgrimage, towards the evening of the day! So many voices are not human; but more or less bovine, porcine, canine; and one's soul dies away in sorrow in the sound of them, and is reduced to a dialogue with the "Silences," which is of a very abstruse nature!—Well, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... said a few consolatory words and jumped down from the wheel. She was torn both ways. Bella's plight was piteous, but to make her father rise in his present state of health and attend such a case, hours long, in the chill, ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... this consolatory remark, the party cantered up to the open space in front of the gate of the fort, just above which a man was seen leaning quietly over the wooden walls of the place with a gun resting on ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... gradations in the quantity of the mass of the nucleus, are all considerations more than equivalent, both as to number and variety, to the vague fears entertained in early ages of the general conflagration of the world by 'flaming swords', and stars with 'fiery streaming hair'. As the consolatory considerations which may be derived from the calculus of probabilities address themselves to reason and to p 111 meditative understanding only, and not to the imagination or to a desponding condition of mind, modern science has been accused, and not entirely without reason, of not ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... think of his father in the same way he used to think of him when the poor man was alive. His breathing image was no longer in his power. This consideration, closely affecting his own identity, filled his breast with a mournful and angry desire for action. In this his instinct was unerring. Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions. Only in the conduct of our action can we find the sense of mastery over the Fates. For his action, the mine was obviously the only field. It was imperative ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... one must wait till they are out of print before the Dublin booksellers shall have heard of them. Now here is really a very long letter, and what is more, written with a pen of my own mending—more consolatory to me than to you. Mr. Macnish's inscription {65} ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... probably have crowned the ancient tree, with the consolatory observation to the haggard line of long-expectant heirs of the Centenarian, that they live to see the blessedness of coming of a strong stock. The shafts of his ridicule would mainly have been aimed at the disputants. For ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... would have dwelt longer upon such a dinner-party than I, with no consolatory bone to gnaw in private, find myself inclined to do. To me it is depressing and a little cruel to be compelled to betray the inadequacy of the personal element at Alicia's banquets, especially in connection with ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... assaults of the demon to her confessor; she prayed to heaven for succor. Never, at any period of her life, did she fulfil her religious duties with such fervor. The despair of not loving her husband flung her violently at the foot of the altar, where divine and consolatory voices urged her to patience. She was patient, she was gentle, and she continued to live on, hoping always for the happiness ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... overlooks not the meanest creature in existence. Nor is this all; for the Word of God assures the believer that 'all things work together for good to them that love God, who are the called according to his purpose.' Nothing that imagination could conceive, is more truly consolatory than this, to be assured that all things, however painful at the time, not excepting the failure of our favorite schemes, the disappointment of our fondest hopes, the loss of our dearest comforts, shall ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... enlightened nation, against its ancient institutions? Could such small drops have produced an overflowing, if the vessel had not already been filled to the very brim? These explanations are incredible, and if they were credible, would be anything but consolatory. If it were really true that the English people had taken a sudden aversion to a representative system which they had always loved and admired, because a single division in Parliament had gone against ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... appeared so great to Bill that for some time no idea occurred to him which could, under the circumstances, be considered as consolatory. But Ned felt the sympathy conveyed in the strong grasp of his shoulder, and in the muttered "Well, well, now!" to which ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... prove that "heretics are justly to be constrained by the sword,"[412] almost at the very moment when they were begging the Bernese to intercede with their ally, King Henry the Second, of France, in behalf of the poor Protestants languishing in the dungeons of Lyons, or writing consolatory letters to Peloquin and De Marsac, destined to suffer death in the flames not many days before the execution of the Spanish physician ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... spaces waiting to be filled in, and through his mind was passing and repassing the same question that occupied the thoughts of his mother and sisters. What could be the explanation of the whistle heard by Molly? The want of this alone sufficed to overthrow the most ingenious of consolatory explanations. All four looked at it from different points of view, and to each the signal-whistle calling Christian into the garden was an insurmountable barrier ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... found here; having been wounded, as I before told you. He did all he could to keep my spirits up, but, as you may suppose, I felt still very far from being comfortable. Nor were the various objects that met my eye of a consolatory nature: men lying, some dead, others at their last gasp, while the agonizing groans of those who were undergoing operations at the hands of the hospital assistants, added to the horror of the scene. I may now say that I have seen, on a small scale, every ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... tears of joy or pity. Dearly she loved all those mortal creatures whom she was soon about to leave; but she sat in sunshine even within the shadow of death; and the "voice that called her home" had so long been whispering in her ear, that its accents had become dear to her, and consolatory every word that was heard in the silence, as ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... not condemn the detention of the slaves in bondage under the circumstances which are yet existing,' says an advocate; by which consolatory avowal we are taught that the criminality of man-stealing depends upon circumstances, and not upon the fact that it is a daring violation of the rights of man and the ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... up a chair and seating me in it with a fatherly air which, under the circumstances, was more discouraging than consolatory. "We have simply heard of a new witness, or rather a fact has come to light which has turned our inquiries ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... might have brought me a clod of Palestine earth to put in my grave.' The fire died out of her spectacles, she sighed, and took a consolatory pinch of snuff. ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... in prices. A horseback-ride on dangerous mule-trail. Fall of oxen over precipice. The mountain flowers, oaks, and rivulets. Visit to Kanaka mother. A beauty from the isles. Hawaiian superstition. An unfortunate request for the baby as a present. Consolatory promise to give the next one. Indian visitors. Head-dresses. "Very tight and very short shirts". Indian mode of life. Their huts, food, cooking, utensils, manner of eating. Sabine-like invasion leaves to tribe ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... Christian also—receive it, Darby, and in the proper spirit too; it is a tract written by the Rev. Vesuvius M'Slug, entitled 'Spiritual Food for Babes of Grace;' I have myself found it graciously consolatory and refreshing, and I hope that you also ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... difficulties to the translator. Cole has simply transliterated it, "The Consolatory Terradecad." Spalatin paraphrased it "Ein trostlichs Buchlein," etc. The Berlin Edition ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... Ally Babby," was his friend's consolatory remark as they left the house and returned to their hammocks; "it can't damage your good looks, an' 'll prove a mighty source ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... cudgelling and scourging to the due pitch. Pacific Friedrich Wilhelm perceived that he himself would have to do that disagreeable feat:—the growl of him, on coming to such resolution, must have been consolatory to these poor Heidelbergers, when they applied!—His plan is very simple, as the plans of genius are; but a plan leading direct to the end desired, and probably the only one that would have done so, in ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... accented note of the bar. If performed thus, it would give a most aggressive character to the passage, implying that some one had previously denied the assertion. This would be entirely at variance with the consolatory and peaceful message that is contained in the text and shadowed ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... thoughtless wife, and here thoughtless means selfish, assumes that the problem of providing is "up to" the husband and takes no care to aid him in its solution. If the suggestion of her being a burden to him ever does cross her mind, she is ready to excuse herself by consolatory sayings such as "Two can live cheaper than one," the truth of which, though universal when every wife was a producer of such things as clothing that are now bought is now the case only in agricultural ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... cheerfully as before. George and myself were weighed down by restraint, and Altascar was gravely quiet. To break the silence, and by way of a consolatory essay, I hinted to him that there might be further intervention or appeal, but the proffered oil and wine were returned with a careless shrug of the shoulders and a sententious "QUE BUENO?—Your courts are ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... occasion was when they were crossing an old churchyard, and Redlaw stopped among the graves, utterly at a loss how to connect them with any tender, softening, or consolatory thought. ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... to, if Egerton hadn't said that," answered Harry to the last speakers, whose tone seemed somewhat consolatory ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... a little consolatory, at a time when the whole rage of an oligarchical tyranny, though impotent against the English as a nation, meanly exhausts itself on the few helpless individuals within its power. Embarrassments accumulate and if Mr. Pitt's agents did not most obligingly write letters, and these letters happen ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... deadly creatures; the pigs, whose fat it seems does not accept the venom into its tissues with the same effect, escape unhurt for the most part—so much for the anti-venomous virtue of adipose matter—a consolatory consideration for such of us as are inclined to take on flesh ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... prey to remorse, if guilty he were, the King commanded him to withdraw, and then shut himself up in his closet to prepare a consolatory message to the English Court. According to the written statement, which was also published in the newspapers, Madame had been carried off by an attack of bilious colic. Five or six bribed physicians certified to that effect, and a lying set of depositions, made for mere form's sake, bore ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... and that the honours due only to excellence are paid to antiquity, is a complaint likely to be always continued by those, who, being able to add nothing to truth, hope for eminence from the heresies of paradox; or those, who, being forced by disappointment upon consolatory expedients, are willing to hope from posterity what the present age refuses, and flatter themselves that the regard, which is yet denied by envy, will be at ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... consolatory remarks, accompanied with a significant shrug, he resumed his labors at ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... a remarkable and most consolatory circumstance, that these just and enlightened views on the subject of religion, and its beneficial influence on society, are now entertained by all the deepest thinkers and most brilliant writers in France. There is not an intellect which rises to a certain level now in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... was silenced; and the meal was continued and finished principally to the tune of the brother-in-law's not very consolatory conversation. He entirely ignored the two young English painters, turning a blind eyeglass to their salutations, and continuing his remarks as if he were alone in the bosom of his family; and with ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... communicate to you a Misfortune which frequently happens, and therefore deserves a consolatory Discourse on the Subject. I was within this Half-Year in the Possession of as much Beauty and as many Lovers as any young Lady in England. But my Admirers have left me, and I cannot complain of their Behaviour. I have within that Time ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Trotty. 'I know what I mean. That's more than enough for me.' And with this consolatory rumination, ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... or writer, at all events—could enjoy a more consolatory vision. The powerlessness of the word is the burden of writers, and "Who hath believed our report?" cry all the prophets in successive lamentation. They so naturally suppose that, when truth and reason have spoken, truth and reason will prevail, but, as the ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... war, been so great, that selection and rejection were impossible. Whole battalions were composed of deserters or of prisoners. It was hardly to be hoped that thirty years of repose and industry would repair the ruin produced by seven years of havoc. One consolatory circumstance, indeed, there was. No debt had been incurred. The burdens of the war had been terrible, almost insupportable; but no arrear was left to embarrass the finances in time ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with their black consequences—forgetful meanwhile of those strains of moral pathos, those sublime heart-touches, which these poets (in them chiefly showing themselves poets) are perpetually darting across the otherwise appalling gloom of their subject—consolatory remembrancers, when their pictures of guilty mankind have made us even to despair for our species, that there is such a thing as virtue and moral dignity in the world, that her unquenchable spark is not utterly out—refreshing admonitions, to which we turn ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... as it may, these are the two thoughts that, involuntarily and spontaneously and immediately, sprang in this man's heart when his purged eyes saw the King on His throne. He did not leap up with gladness at the vision. Its consolatory and its strengthening aspects were not the first that impinged upon his eye, or upon his consciousness, but the first thing was an instinctive recoil, 'Woe is me; I am undone.' Now, brethren, I venture to think that one main difference between shallow ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... extent of a man's travels has in it something consolatory. That he should have left friends and enemies in many different and distant quarters gives a sort of earthly dignity to his existence. And I think the better of myself for the belief that I have left some in California interested in me and my successes. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... us in its ancient tongue—I felt a shuddering impression that this strange building, with its shrunken lights, this surviving withered remnant of medieval Judaism, was of a piece with my vision. Those darkened dusty Christian saints, with their loftier arches and their larger candles, needed the consolatory scorn with which they might point to a more shrivelled death-in-life than ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... that developed into a wrangle, in the midst of which Henry, flinging a consolatory speech to Marsh, escaped from the house. "You'll get all the keen ones to-night," he said. "That'll be some ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... August Bonaparte wished to open negotiations with the Pasha of Acre, nicknamed the Butcher. He offered Djezzar his friendship, sought his in return, and gave him the most consolatory assurances of the safety of his dominions. He promised to support him against the Grand Seignior, at the very moment when he was assuring the Egyptians that he would support the Grand Seignior against the beys. But Djezzar, confiding ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... secret! He looked around. All these daintinesses and prettinesses had a meaning. They signified the magical little beauties of life—things which asserted a range of spiritual truths, none the less real and consolatory because vice and crime and ugliness and misery and war co-existed in ghastly fact on other facets of the planet Earth. The sweetness here expressed was as essential to the world's spiritual life as the sweet elements of foodstuffs to its physical life. To the ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... known her whole case to Mr. Gregson, whose opinion of it has been very consolatory to me; he says indeed it is a case perfectly out of the reach of all physical aid, but at the same time not at all dangerous. Constant pain is a sad grievance, whatever part is affected, and she is hardly ever free from an aching head, as well as an uneasy side, but patience is an anodyne of God's ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... Ashbridge was present her husband made a point of addressing a few remarks to Michael, but there their intercourse ended. Michael found opportunity to explain to Aunt Barbara what had happened, suggesting as a consolatory simile the domestic difficulties of the seals at the Zoological Gardens, and was pleased to find her recognise the aptness of this description. But heaviest of all on the spirits of the whole party sat the anxiety about Lady Ashbridge. There ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... round its gates, and demand admission into its sanctuary. 'The Tree of Liberty' will be planted in the midst, and its branches will extend to the ends of the earth, while the friends of freedom meet and fraternize and amalgamate under its consolatory shade. There our infants shall be taught to lisp in tender accents the revolutionary hymn, there with wreaths of myrtle, and oak, and poplar, and vine, and olive and cypress, and ivy, with violets and roses ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... Toby, of Nineveh and Babylon, of Cyzicum and Mytilene? The fairest towns that ever the sun rose upon" (and all, with the curious exception of Mytilene, enumerated by Burton) "are now no more." And then the famous consolatory letter from Servius Sulpicius to Cicero on the death of Tullia is laid under contribution—Burton's rendering of the Latin being followed almost word for word. "Returning out of Asia," declaims Mr. Shandy, "when I sailed from Aegina towards Megara" (when can ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... time forget it all in the passionate excitement of the chase. But, in truth, the possession of such a power—weak and transient though it be—is one of the great alleviations of the lot of man. Religion, with its powerful motives and its wide range of consolatory and soothing thoughts and images, has much power in this sphere when it does not take a morbid form and intensify instead of alleviating sorrow; and the steady exercise of the will gives us some real and increasing, though imperfect, control over the current of our feelings ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... those who must needs draw a melancholy moral from the most consolatory phenomena. And so Charlotte Smith, ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... tossing and fretting, despite the consolatory influence of the champagne, and the rude but kindly attentions of my ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... High Priest of souls. About three o'clock in the morning, Satan began to shoot his fiery darts, by putting into her mind to doubt whether she was chosen to eternal life, and Christ died for her. Her friends readily pointed out to her those consolatory passages of Scripture which comfort the fainting heart, and treat of the Redeemer who taketh away the sins of ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... incarcerate a man for months, while he is debarred from pronouncing definitively on his guilt or innocence? There is an incongruity in all this, of which savages might be ashamed. We trust that the time is approaching when a better system will be established. Consolatory is it to consider, that in various countries of Europe, as well as in America, the subject of prison discipline, and of criminal jurisprudence, occupies the attention of philanthropists and statesmen to a degree never before witnessed, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... longer letter to his friends at Fenside, giving a full account of his adventures. He did not forget either to write to Mrs Aggett, describing her husband's peaceful death, feeling that a knowledge of this would be far more consolatory to the widow, than should she suppose that he had been lost during the horrors of a shipwreck, which otherwise she would very naturally have concluded to have been the case. He was greatly puzzled whenever he thought the matter over, to account for Ashurst's manner. ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... mess of the thing and an ass of yourself, Billy," was Gordon's comprehensive if not consolatory summary of the matter, "and as Canker has been rapped for one thing or another by camp, division and brigade commanders, one after another, he feels that he's got to prove that he isn't the only fool in the business. You'd better employ good counsel and prepare ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... Hope-Scott said, would be a loss to friendship, and on smaller opportunities, they corresponded in terms of the old affection. Quis desiderio is Mr. Gladstone's docket on one of Hope's letters, and in another (1858) Hope communicates in words of tender feeling the loss of his wife, and the consolatory teachings of the faith that she, like himself, had embraced; and he recalls to Mr. Gladstone that the root of their friendship which struck the deepest was fed by a common ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... all her scanty purse, that both her husband and father might be joined in the prayers of the Church—trying with all her might to put confidence in Hugh Sorel's Loretto relic, and the Indulgence he had bought, and trusting with more consolatory thoughts to the ever stronger dawnings of good she had watched in her ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... (without offence to the men be it spoken) are more delicate than they, and much more mobile. Wherefore, seeing how prone we are thereto by nature, and considering also our gentleness and tenderness, how soothing and consolatory they are to the men with whom we consort, and that thus this madness of wrath is fraught with grievous annoy and peril; therefore, that with stouter heart we may defend ourselves against it, I purpose by my story to shew you, ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... wonderful patience served to preach to others more movingly than words could have done. Three days before her death she foresaw, that in the third day she should be released from the prison of her body; and on it, surrounded by a heavenly light, and ravished by consolatory visions, she surrendered her pure soul into the hands of her Creator, in the eighty-fourth year of her age. The Greeks keep her festival on the 4th, the Roman Martyrology mentions her on the 5th of January.[1] The ancient beautiful life of S. Syncletica is quoted in the old lives of the fathers ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... he makes rivulets meander through his lands to fructify the earth; he washes his residence with noble rivers, that yield him fish in abundance. Ah! suffer me to thank thee, Author of so many benefits: do not deprive me of my charming sensations. I shall not find my illusions so sweet, so consolatory in a severe destiny—in a rigid necessity—in a blind inanimate matter—in a nature destitute of intelligence, devoid ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... rival you in my regard, so that all your affectionate jealousy on that account is without foundation. She is, to be sure, a very pretty, a very sensible, a very affectionate girl, and I think there are few persons to whose consolatory friendship I could have recourse more freely in what are called the real evils of life. But then these so seldom come in one's way, and one wants a friend who will sympathise with distresses of sentiment, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... York the Russian prophetess sowed far and wide the seeds of her new faith, whose consolatory doctrine attracted many who were saddened by the phenomenon of death, while at the same time it brought her ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... he is not. I left him with the Governor only a few minutes ago, and the Senator was never better in his life—nor safer!" In spite of his best endeavor to be consolatory and matter-of-fact he was not able to keep a certain significance out ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... his reading-glass in its drawer and slammed it shut. It made no difference, he assured himself, one way or the other. And in the consolatory moments of a sudden new triumph Never-Fail Blake let his thoughts wander pleasantly back over that long life which (and of this he was now comfortably conscious) his next official move was ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... sides hold places and pensions at once.] I agree with the noble viscount that they have not [I hope] much success. I am convinced that there is no danger to be apprehended from their attempts: but it is truly important and consolatory [to us placemen, I suppose] to know, that if ever there should arise a serious alarm, there is but one spirit, one sense, [and that sense I presume is not common sense] and one determination in this house "—which undoubtedly is to hold all ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... jostling and ugliness of life, and they record their unfitness at considerable length. The bold and awful poetry of Job's complaint produces too many flimsy imitators; for there is always something consolatory in grandeur, but the symphony transposed for the piano becomes hysterically sad. This literature of woe, as Whitman calls it, this Maladie de Rene, as we like to call it in Europe, is in many ways a most humiliating and sickly phenomenon. Young gentlemen ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... question of Evil, Mr Helps has said many acute and consolatory things, from among which we have culled the following sentences:—'The man who is satisfied with any given state of things that we are likely to see on earth, must have a creeping imagination: on the other hand, he who is oppressed by the evils around him so as to stand gaping ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... from the age of fifty-one to that of sixty-three the inherent vigour of his constitution, and his invincible desire to live, were unabated. From all his pains and sorrows he took refuge, as so many have done before him, in the one unfailing Nepenthe, the consolatory self-forgetfulness of literature. It was in the Tower that the main bulk of ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... flutter over their young, without a shock or a change, without a cessation of their pleasures or a diminution of their powers through ages! What must be the vigilance which watches over their perpetual possession of existence and enjoyment; or what conclusion can be more just, natural, or consolatory than that, "if not a sparrow falls to the ground without the knowledge and supervision of Providence," a not less vigilant care, and a not less profuse and exalted beneficence will be the providential principle of the government of man, and the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... have passed unperceived. He expected to find some servant just gone in; but the sunshine filtering through the usual cracks enabled him to see lying on the low divan something bulky which had the appearance of two women clasped in each other's arms. Tearful and consolatory murmurs issued mysteriously from that appearance. General D'Hubert pulled open the nearest pair of shutters violently. One of the women then jumped up. It was his sister. She stood for a moment with her hair hanging down and her arms raised straight up above her head, and then flung herself ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... his Holiness we intend this consolatory declaration of our own weakness, and of the tyrannous temper of his grand enemy. That prince has known both the one and the other from the beginning. The artists of the French Revolution had given their very first essays and sketches of robbery and desolation against his territories, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... any application in this homily," said the Easy Chair, "or only an application disastrous to your imaginable postulate that Christmas is a beneficent and consolatory ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... departed, Thorndyke and Jervis would have gone too; but noting my bereaved condition, and being withal compassionate and tender of heart, they were persuaded to stay awhile and bear me company in a consolatory pipe. ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... never erred,' said Lady Emilia, 'see my offence in so fair a light? What may I not then hope from infinite mercy? I do hope; it would be criminal to doubt, when such consolatory promises appear in almost every page of holy writ. With pleasure I go where I am called, for I leave my child safe in the Divine Protection, and her own virtue; I leave her, I hope, to a happy life, and a far more happy death; when joys immortal will bless her through all eternity. I have now, ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... house. Although suffering under a natural feeling of annoyance at discovering that he was not foremost in Claudia's heart, as he had led himself to suppose, he was yet keenly alive to the fact that the interview had its consolatory aspect. In the first place, there is a fiction that a lady who respects herself does not fall in love with a man whom she suspects to be in love with somebody else; and Haddington's mind, though of no mean order in some ways, was not of a sort to ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... thee. Though his clutch Be heavy, Time doth still afford That fine consolatory touch— It hardly seems to go for ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... pay their rents, and feed in comfort. They were not, as they are now, free from new coats and old prejudices, nor improved by the intellectual march of politics and poverty. When either a man or a nation starves, it is a luxury to starve in an enlightened manner; and nothing is more consolatory to a person acquainted with public rights and constitutional privileges, than to understand those liberal principles upon which he fasts and ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... round and walking away. The Major stood for a while transfixed to the place, and, cold as was the weather, was bathed in perspiration. A keen sense of having "put his foot into it" almost crushed him for a time. Then he assured himself that, after all, the Duke "could not eat him," and with that consolatory reflection he crept back to the house and ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... One consolatory reflection upon her conduct had occurred to her at the first moment of the final rupture, and when now she recalled all the past, she remembered that one reflection. "I have inevitably made that man wretched," she thought; "but I don't want to profit by ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... see you very soon again," he said, as he shook hands for good night. He would probably have said this in any case, such consolatory assurances being instinctive with him, but for a wonder he meant it. He had looked forward to this meeting with reluctance and had only made the call because even his complacent conscience had assured him that to omit it would be inexcusable. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... Of humane consolatory Anecdotes, in this kind, our Opposition Kaltenborn gives several; of the rhadamanthine desolating or destructive kind, though such also could not be wanting, if your Assize is to be good for anything, he gives us none. And so far as I can learn, the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... which no human voice broke the silence. In the midst of greatest perils there is something consolatory in the sound of a man's voice—something which makes the danger appear less; and as if struck by this idea, some one asked Benito to continue the narrative of ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... ancestral pasteurs which at last drew him back, or on, to the affirmation of an unformulated faith of his own. At any rate, before most other savants would say that they had souls of their own he became, by opening a summer school of science with prayer, nearly as consolatory to the unscientific who wished to believe they had souls, as Mr. John Fiske himself, though Mr. Fiske, as the arch-apostle of Darwinism, had arrived at nearly the same point by ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... addition of a spice of mysterious melancholy. She might have made up her mind that she had lost him as what she had hoped, but that it was better than desolation to try and keep him as a friend. It was as if she wished him to see now how she tried. She was subdued and consolatory, she waited upon him, moved away a screen that intercepted the fire, remarked that he looked very tired, and rang for some tea. She made no inquiry about his affairs, never asked if he had been busy and prosperous; ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... situation now recoiled strongly upon me; and the sight of the wretch sitting stiffened in quiet agony, (for it was no better,) affected me with a faint sickness. I felt that an effort was necessary, and, with some difficulty, addressed a few cheering and consolatory phrases to the miserable creature I had undertaken to support. My words might not—but I fear my tone was too much in unison with his feelings, such as they were. His answer was a few inarticulate mutterings, between which, the spasmodic twitching of his fingers became more ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various
... repenting of their night attack; insomuch that it was reported they sacrificed two of their priests for deceiving them to their hurt. In this action one only of our allies was killed, and two Spaniards wounded; but our situation was far from consolatory. Besides being dreadfully hard harassed by fatigue, we had lost fifty-five of our soldiers from wounds, sickness, and severity of the weather, and several were sick. Our general and Father Olmedo were both ill of fevers: And we ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... dwelleth in the breast of the sad.... Morose as I am in judging of poetry, I could find nothing inelegant in the whole piece. I hope you will in your next (since you are such a master of the plaintive) send me some verses consolatory to a hermit; for my sequestered situation sometimes stamps a firm belief on my mind that I am actually an anchorite. In return for your welcome poetical effusion, I have nothing at present but a chorus of the Jepthes of Buchanan, written soon ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... and lay hid In the deep forests of Aricia's vale; And with her wailings and her mournful sighs, The rites impeded in Diana's fane. How oft the nymphs who dwelt in lakes and groves, Kind admonitions gave her not to mourn, And sooth'd her with consolatory words! How oft the son of Theseus weeping, said; "Cease thus to grieve, nor think your fate alone "Is hard. Look round awhile on others' woes; "More mild your own you'll bear. Would that not mine "Were such as might assuage your woe; ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... the fact that his attitude toward her had been one of sympathy and friendliness rather than of disapproval, that his insight seemed to have fathomed her case, apprehended it in all but the details, was even more disturbing—yet vaguely consoling. The consolatory element in the situation was somehow connected with the lady, his friend from Silliston, to whom he had introduced her and whose image now came before her the more vividly, perhaps, in contrast with that of Mrs. Brocklehurst. Mrs. Maturin—could Janet have so expressed her thought! had appeared ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... happened, the fate of Mrs. Kilfoyle's cloak was very different from her forecast. But I do not think that a knowledge of it would have teen consolatory to her by any means. If she had heard of it, she would probably have said, "The cross of Christ upon us. God be good to the misfort'nit crathur." For she was not at all of an implacable temper, and would, under the circumstances, have condoned even the injury that obliged ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... subsided, the tom-toms were no longer beaten, the trumpets ceased braying, and the cymbals clashing. Then I could hear the guards talking to each other outside. The few words I could comprehend out of this jargon were not very consolatory. I made out clearly that they proposed to shoot all their prisoners the next day, and that, besides those already in camp, they expected a number more from other estates which were to be attacked. There appeared only a possibility that our ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... reclaim them from guilt, it was his business to save them from remorse. He had at his command an immense dispensary of anodynes for wounded consciences. In the books of casuistry which had been written by his brethren, and printed with the approbation of his superiors, were to be found doctrines consolatory to transgressors of every class. There the bankrupt was taught how he might, without sin, secrete his goods from his creditors. The servant was taught how he might, without sin, run off with his master's plate. The pandar was assured that a Christian man might innocently earn his living ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... essential prop to lend support to man's conviction of the reality of a life beyond the grave. A web of moral precept and the allurement of hope had been so woven around them that no force was able to strip away this body of consolatory beliefs; and they have persisted for all time, although the reasoning by which they were originally built up has been demolished ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... arrangements are extremely pretty and tasteful. Most consolatory." And he gave her half ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw |
