"Consolatory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pasted up on the abbey-door, could not be otherwise than an unsightly and intolerable nuisance. Having enough, however, of the fear of the law before his eyes, not to tear the writing down, he was at last forced, as his only consolatory expedient, to paste a large piece of brown ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... I remained for some time absorbed in meditation. My reflections, be sure, were of no consolatory kind. A thousand vague and lachrymatory fancies took possession of my soul—and even the idea of suicide flitted across my brain; but it is a trait in the perversity of human nature to reject the obvious and the ready, for the far-distant ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... departed—and rise before me in this chamber. I wiped my tears and hushed my sobs, fearful lest any sign of violent grief might waken a preternatural voice to comfort me, or elicit from the gloom some haloed face, bending over me with strange pity. This idea, consolatory in theory, I felt would be terrible if realised: with all my might I endeavoured to stifle it—I endeavoured to be firm. Shaking my hair from my eyes, I lifted my head and tried to look boldly round the dark ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... bad figure, and that I liked to be despised, because in this way I was getting more virtuous than my successful rivals; and I have long looked with suspicion on all views which are recommended as peculiarly consolatory to wounded vanity or other personal disappointment. The consolations of egoism are simply a change of attitude or a resort to a new kind of diet which soothes and fattens it. Fed in this way it is apt to become a monstrous spiritual pride, or a chuckling satisfaction that the final balance ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... exclaimed Lady Audley, "except that I am the most miserable of women. Let me think," she cried, silencing Phoebe's consolatory murmurs with an imperious gesture. "Hold your tongue, girl, and let me think of this business, ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... Dickenson, also, I 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 ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... the common doctrine of endless misery with any worthy idea of God is made clear by a process of reasoning whose premises are as undeniable as its logic is irrefragable and its conclusion consolatory. God is infinite justice and goodness. His purpose in the creation, therefore, must be the diffusion and triumph of holiness and blessedness. God is infinite wisdom and power. His design, therefore, must be fulfilled. Nothing can avail to thwart the ultimate realization of all his ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... observed, and whenever Lady 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. ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various
... 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. Let me assure you, you who have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... content, I need not be miserable," was the consolatory reflection with which she took upon herself ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... hearts the little party at the cottage expected the return of the father and his sons. Rose sat at the window watching for them: her mother laid down her knitting, and sighed: and Stafford was silent, for he had exhausted all his consolatory eloquence, and saw and felt ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... doubts and fears which had long afflicted me. I was in a great degree prepared for this event by the evident inquietude of my husband's mind, and his frequent interviews with persons of a mysterious description. Indeed, this crisis seemed rather consolatory than appalling, for I hoped and trusted that the time was now arrived when reason would take place of folly, and experience point out those thorns which strew the ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... precepts, it is likely, which would avail nothing on such a brute, but by practical 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 the circumstances. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... 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
... been watched with keen solicitude, not alone by the people of this country, who raised him from their own ranks to the high office he filled, but by the people of all friendly nations, whose messages of sympathy and hope, while hope was possible, have been most consolatory in this time ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... the 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 rise above fictions. ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... excitement of the last year of her life, and the harassing and agitating scenes with which it closed, she found a fine solace in this fair land and this soft sky, which the sad perhaps can alone experience. Its repose alone afforded a consolatory contrast to the turbulent pleasure of the great world. She looked back upon those glittering and noisy scenes with an aversion which was only modified by her self-congratulation at her escape from their exhausting and contaminating sphere. Here she recurred, but with all ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... and Persepolis, and Agrigentum? What is become, brother 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 ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... 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 ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... fate of Mrs. Kilfoyle's cloak was very different from her forecast. But I do not think that a knowledge of it would have been 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 of at all an implacable temper, and would, ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... strong desire to have them satisfied, and he beat back the army of emancipators with the loud and incessantly repeated cry that they were not come to deliver the human mind, but to root out all its most glorious and consolatory attributes. This immense achievement accomplished,—the great framework of a faith in God and immortality and providential government of the world thus preserved, it was an easy thing by and by for the churchmen to come back, and once more unpack ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... succeeded in life; if the last state of that man were not on the whole worse than the first; and the house in Randolph Crescent a less admirable dwelling than the hamlet where he saw the day and grew to manhood. Here was a consolatory thought for one who was himself ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... genitals are often not syphilitic, and the use of mercury is contraindicated from a predisposition to scrofula or phthisis existing in the individual, it is consolatory to learn from the results of experience, that this medicine is not always necessary, and that a radical cure, by more simple and innocent means, can sometimes be effected. Where, however, the physician is anxious ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... forth in the morning, there sure enough are the blue hills, only now they have changed places with him, and smile across to him, distant as ever, from the old home whence he has come. Such a story might have been very cynically treated; but it is not so done, the whole tone is kindly and consolatory, and the disenchanted man submissively takes the lesson, and understands that things far away are to be loved for their own sake, and that the unattainable is not truly unattainable, when we can make the beauty of it our own. Indeed, throughout all these two volumes, though ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... With this consolatory reflection, he now turned and retraced his steps towards the scene of action. While on his way thither, and soon after passing the rear of the building before described as the head-quarters of the tory leaders, his attention was arrested by the lamentable outcries of ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... discovered in the Bible much that persons to whom it is a mere literature would never find. The water of life was not merely admirable to the eye; she drank it, and knew what a property it possessed for quenching thirst. No doubt the thought of a heaven hereafter was especially consolatory. She was able to endure, and even to be happy because the vision of lengthening sorrow was bounded by a better world beyond. "A very poor, barbarous gospel," thinks the philosopher who rests on his Marcus Antoninus and Epictetus. I do not mean to say, that in the shape in which she ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... there is a joy in grief, when peace 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, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... disposition in the world to believe, I could do no more than believe that the bright-eyed woman believed; so I gave her that much credit, and her customary fee in ready money. It was a pleasure, rather than a disappointment, that Juliet's resting-place was forgotten. However consolatory it may have been to Yorick's Ghost, to hear the feet upon the pavement overhead, and, twenty times a day, the repetition of his name, it is better for Juliet to lie out of the track of tourists, and to have no visitors but such as come to graves in ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... home, liable to be used in their own or adjacent States. These two measures would have completed what I deemed necessary for the entire security of our country. They would have given me, on my retirement from the government of the nation, the consolatory reflection, that having found, when I was called to it, not a single sea-port town in a condition to repel a levy of contribution by a single privateer or pirate, I had left every harbor so prepared by works and gun-boats, as to be in a reasonable state of security against any probable ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... in New 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 ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... not of death but of immortality, originates and preserves religions. In the midst of the delirium of destruction, Robespierre induced the Convention to declare the existence of the Supreme Being and "the consolatory principle of the immortality of the soul," the Incorruptible being dismayed at the idea of having himself one day ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... say, my darling? There was Bixiou, who drew fresh caricatures for us; Leon de Lora, as witty as ever; Claude Vignon, to whom I owe the only consolatory article that has come out about the Montcornet statue. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... and wig. He did not see how he should ever make more money out of them than he would do by such sale. But for the articles which he wrote, he received instant payment, a process which he found to be most consolatory, most comfortable, and, as he said to Trevelyan, as warm to him as ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... "And if it be consolatory to minister to their physical wants, how much more to feed their ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... pierce themselves with the points of sharp instruments. I could not but reflect that theirs is a sorrow without hope: all is gross darkness with them as to futurity; and they wander through life without the consolatory and cheering influence of that gospel which has brought life and immortality ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... 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 homes, ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... its embassies, the agents of the British Government and the equally zealous agents of the French Government were all secretly bidding against each other for the same rifles to be delivered to the Tsar's Ministers, only a smile of recognition was elicited. It may have seemed at once amusing and consolatory to find that all were tarred with the same brush. But when it was discovered that the offer of certain army necessaries was put off for weeks and weeks, although they were to be had under cost price, and was then accepted at a much ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... it is true, arrive at last, happily or unhappily, at a state of repose; but in the represented course of affairs there is no secret and mysterious revelation of a higher order of things; there is no allusion to any consolatory thoughts of heaven, whether in the dignity of human nature successfully maintained in its conflicts with fate, or in the guidance of an over- ruling providence. To such a tranquillizing feeling the so-called ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... arithmetic. Just at that time I was feeling the slowness and insufficiency of my own development, and this news quieted me, and filled me with the hope and trust that I, too, might, through my own endeavour, repair the deficiencies of my bringing-up. As I have grown older I have also found it consolatory to remark how the culture of vigorous, capable men has not seldom been acquired remarkably late in life. And in general I must acknowledge it as part of the groundwork underlying my life and the evolution of my character, ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... 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 conspicuous excellence of the cooking. A ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... thank thee, Jacob; and thank God that thou hast again proved the goodness of thy heart, and given me one more reason to rejoice in thee and in thy love; but thine offer, if accepted, would not add to my happiness; for what feeling can be more consolatory to an old man near into his grave than the reflection that his life, if not distinguished, has ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... was, as Mr. Brock hinted in the little autobiographical sketch which we gave in a former chapter, incarcerated for a certain period, and for certain other debts, in the donjons of Shrewsbury; but he released himself from them by that noble and consolatory method of whitewashing which the law has provided for gentlemen in his oppressed condition; and he had not been a week in London, when he fell in with, and overcame, or put to flight, Captain Wood, alias Brock, and immediately seized upon the remainder ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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
... by the sudden swaying of the boat, or passing by of one of the boatmen—of course, accidentally—and no words could induce the rascals, in their feigned ignorance of my language, to stop; and, looking back at the helpless waif, it was not altogether consolatory to see another boat dart from between some shipping, where it had been waiting, as accidentally, ready to pounce upon any such ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... of honour, with arch quickness of reply, "I said not that you were naturally equipped for such amorous quests. I meant to designate your brother Laurence. 'Tis pity he is to be a clerk. Though one day doubtless he will make a very proper and consolatory ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... inflicting a double portion on some little tough wrong-headed, broad-skirted Dutch urchin, who sulked and swelled and grew dogged and sullen beneath the birch. All this he called "doing his duty by their parents;" and he never inflicted a chastisement without following it by the assurance, so consolatory to the smarting urchin, that "he would remember it and thank him for it the longest day he ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... 1803.—Thomas Walker Haigh and William Gant accompanied us to Joel Yeardley's, where we tarried all night; but the two young men from Barnsley returned home after supper. Joel was from home, but after tea we had a religious opportunity with the rest of the family, in which I had a very long consolatory and encouraging testimony to bear to the deeply-suffering exercised minds from John xvi. 33. Afterwards I had a pretty long time, principally to their son John, who I believe was under a precious visitation from on high. ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... were boys—as though to inquire if I was all right; but it was quiet enough not to wake me if I were asleep. It seemed like the friendly "Ahoy!" from a boat floating on the same dark sea. Jack was lying awake, thinking of me as I was thinking of Olivia. There was something so consolatory in this sympathy that I fell asleep while ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... light and concentrate his gaze upon the words, read and re-read these sentences with an agony of scrutiny such as no critic ever yet directed upon a disputed passage in his favourite classic. But there was no possibility of fastening any consolatory interpretation upon the paragraph. It was ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Night and Dawn and the Penseroso at Florence. The despair is only too well founded. No conscious study could pierce the secret of that just and pathetic transition from the havoc of Hyder Ali to the healing duties of a virtuous government, to the consolatory celebration of the mysteries of justice and humanity, to the warning to the unlawful creditors to silence their inauspicious tongues in presence of the holy work of restoration, to the generous ...
— Burke • John Morley
... think their captivity just. If this be true, much more ought to have been done, but done, in my opinion, in another manner. The punishment of real tyrants is a noble and awful act of justice; and it has with truth been said to be consolatory to the human mind. But if I were to punish a wicked king, I should regard the dignity in avenging the crime. Justice is grave and decorous, and in its punishments rather seems to submit to a necessity than to make a choice. Had Nero, or Agrippina, or Louis the Eleventh, or Charles ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a 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 ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... be that 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 ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... to escape from her. Not to abandon her; of that thought he was incapable; but to escape the duty—repulsive to his imagination—of encouraging her through the various stages of their fraud. From the other side of the Atlantic he would write affectionate, consolatory letters; face to face with her, could he support the show of tenderness, go through an endless series of emotional interviews, always reminding himself that the end in view was hard cash? Not for love's sake; ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... the times I speak of, supper was still a substantial meal, and its hour was approaching. This was consolatory. Three-quarters of an hour, however, still interposed. How was I to ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... This consolatory farewell, Mrs Wickam accompanied with a look of heartfelt anguish; and being left alone with the two children again, and becoming conscious that the wind was blowing mournfully, she indulged in melancholy—that cheapest and most accessible of luxuries—until she was ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Herbert's: he explains it all on biological grounds as the beautiful discriminative action of natural selection. Simple, but not consolatory. Still, look at the other side of the question. Suppose you and everybody else were to give up all superfluities, and confine all your energies to the unlimited production of bare necessaries. Suppose you occupy every acre of land with your corn-fields, or your ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... persons use, under the title of "letters of condolence." It is the wine mixed with gall which they gave our Lord to drink; and as He refused it, so may we. There are, no doubt, persons of a gloomy and a religious temperament combined who delight in such phrases; who quote the least consolatory of the texts of Scripture; who roll our grief as a sweet morsel under their tongues; who really envy the position of chief mourner as one of great dignity and considerable consequence; who consider crape and bombazine as a sort of royal mantle conferring distinction. There are many ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... 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 ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... 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
... the dead, 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 ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... lost!" Herbert said, quoting the historic words in a consolatory way; "but there is time to ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... desisting from his object. "Sure you couldn't tell that that was the way she'd take it. You couldn't tell that at all. If you'd known it beforehand you'd have acted quite different. We all know that. Any one else might have done the same thing that was—that was"—he sought a consolatory phrase—"that was like you." He plunged still further. "I might have done it myself if I hadn't—hadn't been built the other way 'round. Only that won't matter to old man Fay—nor to ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... with a material existence, was compelled to endure its miseries, or was enabled to appreciate its enjoyments. In this he recognised the veracity of that solemn assurance, that happiness is accessible, even on this earth, to all who use their senses with a virtuous discrimination. Nor had this consolatory truth been enforced merely by a barren asseveration. Balsamo had been taught the inestimable value of those senses, and the penalties of such as abused them by their vices. Five incidents, most touching, or most appalling, had reminded him of the exquisite ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... ornaments, and Christina added her gold earrings, and 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 ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to, and shed tears of such shame, disappointment, and wounded pride, as my eyes had never known before. She had called me a little boy, and my letter a heap of nonsense! She was elderly—she was ignorant—she was married! I had been a fool; but that knowledge came too late, and was not consolatory. ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... wish to keep them niggardly to myself alone, nor do I deserve to have the exclusive use of them; so that I have resolved to communicate them to my friends; and because I have none, I believe, more particularly intimate you, I send you the Consolatory Letter written by Plutarch to his Wife, translated by him into French; regretting much that fortune has made it so suitable a present you, and that, having had but one child, and that a daughter, long looked for, after four years of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... It was consolatory that all the dates were prior to the Hillside fire, except that of the bouquet. As to the earrings, we all knew that Griff could not see a pretty girl without talking nonsense to her. Anyway, if they were a wedding present, there was an end of it; and ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to a Painter to draw my Lord Arlington. Timon, a Satire on several Plays, in which he was assisted by the Earl of Rochester; a Consolatory Epistle to Julian Secretary to the Muses; upon the Monument; upon the Installment of the Duke of Newcastle; the Rump-Parliament, a Satire; the Mistress; the Lost Mistress; ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... a great predecessor before him under the appellation of "Mad Montague" had always a consolatory comparison in this way in his favor. In truth, at times he wanted it, for he was what has been termed a genius: but he was likewise so in talent. He was an admirable poet, and had a neatness of expression seldom discoverable ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... controversy with the faith that cries out and clings from the depths of man's need. I only long, if it were possible to me, to help in satisfying the need of those who want a reason for living in the absence of what has been called consolatory belief. But all the while I gather a sort of strength from the certainty that there must be limits or negations in my own moral powers and life experience which may screen from me many possibilities ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... up. How few to-day knew its melodious 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 getting together ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... an argument 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
... reasons forbade fullness, was it wise to print scraps? Why tantalize us? In the letters we should, perhaps, have recaptured the lady we have lost in the essays and stories; but these fragments, though suggestive, are too slight to be consolatory: besides, Miss Coleridge was no coiner of aphorisms and epigrams who could give her meaning in a handful of sentences. Here is the first ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... The Germans won't see us." With that consolatory remark he unlocked the door leading into the ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... Miss Carstyle, the young man decided, was the kind of girl whose surroundings rub off on her; or was it rather that Mrs. Carstyle's idiosyncrasies were of a nature to color every one within reach? Vibart, looking across the table as this consolatory alternative occurred to him, was sure that they had not colored Mr. Carstyle; but that, perhaps, was only because they had bleached him instead. Mr. Carstyle was quite colorless; it would have been impossible to guess his native tint. His wife's ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... about that. Do you suppose he thinks much at all, Mina?" (That is the sort of remark which relatives sometimes regard as consolatory.) "I think Harry Tristram as much of a fool as you do," Duplay added. "If he'd taken it, he could have made a good match anyhow, even if he ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... nothing about Flixman," he said as he offered Kapfer a consolatory cigar. "It's wasting your lungs to talk about such a feller at all; so let's go ahead and finish up this order, Mr. Kapfer, and afterward Elkan would go uptown with you." He motioned Kapfer to a seat ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... the Greek, "it is considerate—it is kind on the part of your highness to suggest such a consolatory belief; but Calanthe would not keep an honorable bridal secret. Yet better were it that she should be dead—that she should have been basely murdered by some ruthless robber, than that she should live dishonored. However, I will not intrude my griefs upon your highness, ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... self-contempt, without any curative self-reproach, dull the intelligence, and degrade the conscience, into sullen incredulity of all sunshine outside the dunghill, or breeze beyond the wafting of its impurity; and at last a philosophy develops itself, partly satiric, partly consolatory, concerned only with the regenerative vigour of manure, and the necessary obscurities of fimetic Providence; showing how everybody's fault is somebody else's, how infection has no law, digestion no will, and ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... said Prudence. "After all they are only harmless owls." Her consolatory words were as much for the benefit of her own nerves as for ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... the ministry, and the bellicose and constitutional fury of their king. All humanity will find repose beneath the laurels of our August Emperor and, after having conquered half of Europe, he will add to his long list of victories the most difficult and most consolatory of all,—the conquest ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... you 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 ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... such times Brotteaux would retire discreetly to the staircase and, sitting on a step, would draw from the pocket of his plum-coloured surtout his little Lucretius and read, by the light of a lantern, some of the author's sternly consolatory maxims: "Sic ubi non erimus.... When we shall have ceased to be, nothing will have power to move us, not even the heavens and earth and sea confounding their shattered fragments...." But, in the act of enjoying his exalted wisdom, Brotteaux would find himself envying ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... which consolatory information I went in. By and by a man entered and took a seat in front of us. "The box is all afire," chuckled he to his neighbor, as if it were a fine joke. By and by several people who had been looking out of the windows ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... consolatory remarks. She was pacing the room like a tigress, her delicate cambric handkerchief grasped between her two hands, and torn and rent by the convulsive action of her fingers. She could have thrown herself from the balcony on to the spikes of the area railings, she could ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... 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 ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... informed that Gallus Terrinius, a senator, with whom he had only a slight acquaintance, had suddenly lost his sight, and under that privation had resolved to starve himself to death, he paid him a visit, and by his consolatory admonitions diverted him from ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... effort to sit still, apparently unmoved, but there was strength in her, and she would not betray her distress. She felt that the latter must be quietly grappled with. It was almost overwhelming, horribly acute, but there was mingled with it a faint consolatory thrill of pride, for it was clear that the man who had loved her had done a splendid thing. He had given all that had been given him—and she knew she would never forget that phrase of his—willingly, and it seemed to her that ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... at my having suggested so disagreeable an idea, he seemed all at once to recover himself, remarking quickly, that he should be old then, too, and that they could both be buried together. This consolatory reflection seemed completely to neutralise the effect of my last attack, and Mowno's countenance resumed its habitual expression of calm and ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... reviving after such hurricanes to feel calm return, and from the opening clouds to receive a consolatory gleam, softly testifying that ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... is not 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, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... still, his hand clasping hers, the other ceasing its rhythmic, consolatory movement. He held her, this woman whom he had loved for so many years, and over her bent head he looked before him at the frivolous and ugly wall-paper, a chaos of festooned chrysanthemums on a bright pink ground. He gazed at the ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... was the only reply to this consolatory remark—and there was an uneasy nestling throughout the ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... left Rome, and still more do I miss them since. Finally, neither my work nor rest, neither my business nor leisure, neither my affairs in the forum or at home, public or private, can any longer do without your most consolatory and affectionate counsel and conversation. The modest reserve which characterizes both of us has often prevented my mentioning these facts; but on this occasion it was rendered necessary by that part of your letter in which you expressed a wish ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... put finger in eye; to weep: commonly applied to women. The more you cry the less you'll p-ss; a consolatory speech used by sailors to their doxies. It is as great a pity to see a woman cry, as to see a goose walk barefoot; another ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... was most excellent. But I, that am under a command not to grieve at the common rate of desolate women, [2014] while I am studying which way to moderate my woe, and if it were possible to augment my love, I can for the present find out none more just to your dear father, nor consolatory to myself, than the preservation of his memory, which I need not gild with such flattering commendations as hired preachers do equally give to the truly and titularly honourable. A naked undressed narrative, speaking the simple truth of him, will deck him with more substantial ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... these 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 more than we ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... no desire to see them depressed, smiled at the comforts which they could so readily procure to themselves, and remembered, that, at the same age, he was equally confident of unmingled prosperity, and equally fertile of consolatory expedients. He forbore to force upon them unwelcome knowledge, which time itself would too soon impress. The princess and her lady retired; the madness of the astronomer hung on their minds, and they desired Imlac to enter upon his office, and delay next morning, the rising ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... her hearers as they listened to her ravings. Alfred was sitting by the bed looking on the wreck of his wife, and when the doctors entered, he arose and briefly saluted them. To their words of condolence he made no reply, for his heart was bitter with grief, and he felt that consolatory language was a mockery, and however well meant and sincere it may have been, it could not relieve the agony he felt at witnessing the destruction of his family's happiness. Oh, let those alone who have felt the burning of the heart when it was wrung with ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... Deputy dropped 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 ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... Elbridge felt a consolatory quality in Putney's resentment, and Putney, already busy with the potentialities of the future, was buoyed up by the strong excitement of what had actually happened rather than finally cast down by what he had missed. He took three cups of the blackest coffee ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... longing eyes toward the Comedie Francaise, and dreamed of playing in Moliere, had her hopes centered in Granet. Granet promised to every actress an engagement at the Rue de Richelieu. I am waiting for the Granet ministry! was the consolatory reflection, interrupted by sighs, of the licentiates in law. Meanwhile those office-seekers danced attendance on Granet, and their smile was worth to the future Excellency ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... claimed to have promulgated the theory of Natural Selection before I had done so;...but as far as it is possible to understand certain recently published passages (Ibid. ["Anat. of Vert."], Volume III., page 798), I have either partly or wholly again fallen into error. It is consolatory to me that others find Prof. Owen's controversial writings as difficult to understand and to reconcile with each other, as I do. As far as the mere enunciation of the principle of Natural Selection is concerned, it is quite immaterial whether or no Prof. Owen preceded me, for both of us, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... and the preface to it by the late Dr. Currie, who then lived in the same place. To find friends to our cause rising up from a quarter where we expected scarcely anything but opposition, was very consolatory and encouraging. As this poem was well written, but cannot now be had, I shall give the introductory part of it, which is particularly beautiful, to the perusal of the ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... woman that must have men about her; she would get her "rights", as she called them, somehow, by fair means or foul. Deb was sufficiently a woman of the world herself to recognise this, and the uselessness of thinking she could alter it. Well, money is a consolatory thing—she knew its value now; and there was that additional comfort, which, of course, she did not own to—the thought of where Mr Ewing would be when Mrs ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... characteristic of it; obviously, therefore, a very different thing from a vague Ou-topia, concretely realisable nowhere. Such abstract counsels of perfection as the descriptions of the ideal city, from Augustine through More or Campanella and Bacon to Morris, have been consolatory to many, to others inspiring. Still, a Utopia is one thing, a plan for our city ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... and success of him on whose account they were alarmed. The wife of Illage determined that moment to repair to her husband, less to share his glory than his love. She set her affairs in order, and, after having taken every necessary step, she embarked with the same merchant who had given her the consolatory news. ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... this good Christian minister was as consolatory, as the circumstances out of which it shone were sad. I never have seen anything more delightfully genuine than the calm dismissal by himself and his household of all they had undergone, as a simple duty that was quietly done ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... 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 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 ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... but the noble and pure of soul. The impure ignoble gaze with eyes, and she is not there. They will prove it to you by logic, by endless Hansard Debatings, by bursts of Parliamentary eloquence. It is not consolatory to behold! For properly, as many men as there are in a Nation who can withal see Heaven's invisible Justice, and know it to be on Earth also omnipotent, so many men are there who stand between a Nation and perdition. So many, and no more. Heavy-laden England, how many ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... was mute. "Ah she was not the worst! I mean that what made it so bad," he continued, "was that they all really liked me. Your mother, I think—as to THAT, the dreadful consolatory 'liking'—even ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... nothing was settled. What a fool I was to dwell so upon an uncertainty, to anchor my hopes upon a dream! I was not at all comfortable that afternoon: the more I thought, the more I walked about my boudoir in a state of high fidget and restlessness. One thing, however, was consolatory—the frost was breaking. Already in London it was a decided thaw, and I went to pay Brilliant ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... chalice, hanaper, beaker, or any word that might have appealed to me at the moment as least contaminate with mean associations. In this string of pictures I believe the gist of the psalm to have consisted; I believe it had no more to say to me; and the result was consolatory. I would go to sleep dwelling with restfulness upon these images; they passed before me, besides, to an appropriate music; for I had already singled out from that rude psalm the one lovely verse which dwells in the ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... marches with a step so firm and buoyant, an eye so awake to all beauty and grandeur, a spirit so elate, that as we read we catch the energy and elation. The reading of the riddle is this: the religion against which Lucretius made his attack was not the soaring idealism of Plato, nor the inspiring and consolatory faith of Christianity, but an outworn mythology in which this world was ruled by capricious and unworthy despots, and the next world was gloomy with terrors and almost unlighted by hopes. Such had become the popular mythology in its later day, and as contrasted with this ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... men and attendants] have suffered no more from the complaint than if they had been attending so many wounded men. This is a fact which, however embarrassing to the medical inquirer, [for our part we cannot see the embarrassment] is highly consolatory in a practical point of view, both to him and to all whose close intercourse with the sick is imperatively required."—(p. 316)—"We are therefore forced to the conclusion, however, at variance with the common laws of contagion, that in this disease,—at least in India, the ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... has it not, been attained? Why, the reduced price of provisions is a matter of universal notoriety, and past all question. Unable to contest the existence of this most consolatory fact, the Opposition papers endeavoured to get up a diversion by frightening the farmers, whom they assured, that the admission of foreign live-stock would lead to a fearful depreciation in the value of British agricultural produce. The graziers ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... more consolatory is the Biblical statement, hard though it first appear to human pride, and how incomparable the prospects it opens out to the mind! It admits that man, almost as soon as created, fell from his state of original purity and Edenic bliss. In virtue of the law of heredity ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... having fulfilled her family's mournful expectations, Lydia stayed for the funeral, and was so deeply absorbed and satisfied by her position in the Kilroy house that she returned home still impressive, consolatory, and ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... a 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 ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... upon her, evidence of which she preferred to keep to herself. Julius March remained silent. And this she resented slightly, for she badly wanted somebody to say something, either vindictive or consolatory. Then, indignation getting the better alike of ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... the capital cities of Europe, and now it appears that Buda-Pest is in the unenviable position of having on an average the highest death-rate of any European town! By some this is attributed to the great excess of infant mortality—consolatory for the grown-up people, as reducing their risk; but the children, who die like flies before they are twelve months old, may say with the epitaph in ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... and the books were never sent, for my mother, who was to have forwarded them, learnt that Mademoiselle Guyon had died. Some of the consolatory remarks which the letter contains may seem very trite, but are there any better ones to offer a person afflicted with cancer? They are, at all events, as good as laudanum. As a matter of fact the Revolution had left ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... 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
... I should give the following answer. I should say, that I should prefer that, which, first of all, would solve the greatest number of difficulties, as far as scriptural texts were concerned, in conformity with the Divine attributes, which, secondly, would afford the most encouraging and consolatory creed, if it were equally well founded with any other; and which, thirdly, either by its own operation, or by the administration of it, would produce the post perfect Christian character. Let us then judge of the religion of the Quakers by ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson |
