Comforting Quotes

“Listen to God with a broken heart. He is not only the doctor who mends it, but also the father who wipes away the tears.”
― Criss Jami

“We only need to be one person.
We only need to feel one existence.
We don't have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“For myself, I find I become less cynical rather than more--remembering my own sins and follies; and realize that men's hearts are not often as bad as their acts, and very seldom as bad as their words.”
― Tolkien J.R.R., The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

“Peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment;

And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high; thou shalt triumph over all thy foes.

Thy friends do stand by thee...'
-Jesus the Christ”
― Joseph Smith Jr., The Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

“It was as if hope had appeared out of nowhere to settle beside her and it wasn't going anywhere, it wasn't going to desert her now.”
― Alice Hoffman

“No matter what God's power may be, the first aspect of God is never that of the absolute Master, the Almighty. It is that of the God who puts himself on our human level and limits himself.”
― Jacques Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity

“Encourage, lift and strenthen one another. For the positive energy spread to one will be felt by us all.”
― Deborah Day

“Thoughts by a graveside are too dark and deep to be sustained for any length of time. Sooner or later the hurt mind turns to the sun for healing, and this is as it should be, for otherwise, what future could any of us hope for, but madness?”
― Miss Read, Village School

“She knew the soothing power of a human touch on aching flesh. Knew the strange bond that formed when two creatures united in mutual need, one hurting, the other healing.”
― Susan Wiggs, At the King's Command

“Worn out with this torture of thought, I rose to my knees. Night was come, and her planets were risen: a safe, still night; too serene for the companionship of fear. We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us: and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence. I had risen to my knees to pray for Mr. Rochester. Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw the mighty Milky Way. Remembering what it was--what countless systems there swept space like a soft trace of light--I felt the might and strength of God. Sure was I of His efficiency to save what He had made: convinced I grew that neither earth should perish, nor one of the souls it treasured. I turned my prayer to thanksgiving: the Source of Life was also the Saviour of spirits. Mr. Rochester was safe: he was God's, and by God would he be guarded.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Never underestimate the lingering effects of a dash of spontaneous comfort.”
― Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls: Life Lessons from Solo Moments on the Road

“Soeur Marie Emelie"

Soeur Marie Emelie
is little and very old:
her eyes are onyx,
and her cheeks vermilion,
her apron wide and kind
and cobalt blue.

She comforts
generations and generations
of children,
who are
"new"
at the convent school.
When they are eight,
they are already up to her shoulder,
they grow up and go into the world,
she remains,
forever,
always incredibly old,
but incredibly never older...
She has an affinity with the hens,
When a hen dies,she sits down on a bench and cries,
she is the only grown-up, whose tears
are not frightening tears.
Children can weep without shame,
at her side...
Soeur Marie Emelie...
her apron as wide and kind
as skies on a summer day
and as clean and blue.”
― Caryll Houselander, The Flowering Tree

“There are much better ways to die than this, Little Fox.'

'Your attempts to comfort are tr-tragic,' Evangeline stuttered.

'You're still alive,' he grumbled. His fingers found her eyelids then, and with feather-soft touches, he brushed away the melting ice.

Maybe he wasn't entirely hopeless. She wondered if he just hadn't had much practice at this. Comforting someone was an intimate thing, and according to the stories, intimacy didn't end well with Jacks. But he clearly knew how to be gentle. She felt herself thaw in increments as his fingers went to her cheeks, sweeping away the frozen tears.”
― Stephanie Garber, Once Upon a Broken Heart

“I like how everything echoes with everything else if you listen hard enough”
― Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Julia and the Shark

“If you are struck by a bus, someone may steal your purse or wallet while you lie injured, but many more will come to your aid, trying to save your precious life. One person will call 911, and another will race down the street to alert a police officer on his or her beat. Someone else will take off his coat, fold it, and place it under your head, so that if these are indeed your last moments of life you will die in the small but real comfort of knowing that someone cared about you.”
― Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II

“Talking with Merritt was like slipping into one of those silk-lined borrowed coats from the Challons. Comfortable, luxurious. She was whip-smart, understanding the details, the unsaid words. She had a way of wrapping people in empathy that extended to everyone from the duke down to the young assistant groundskeeper. It was the kind of charm that made people feel wittier, more attractive, more interesting, in her reflected glow. Keir was doing his level best to resist her lure.
But he was so drawn to her, so damn besotted.
He adored her fancy words... "prevarication"... "resplendent"... her easy smiles... her perfumed wrists and throat. She was like a beautiful gift that begged to be unwrapped. Just being near her made the blood sing in his veins.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Devil in Disguise

“Dead Sea was her comfort game. She decided she'd go back to her apartment and kill zombies for a while.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: A novel

“Eating chocolate doesn't hurt other people. It doesn't destroy lives. If that's all he can pin on you, Autumn, then I'd say he was clutching at straws. All that chocolate is to any of us is a bit of comfort in a harsh world.”
― Carole Matthews, The Chocolate Lovers' Club

“We used to watch films together like that. And he would touch my hair in that exact way, distractedly. I found his distraction comforting. In a way i wanted to live inside it, as if it was a place of it's own, where he had never noticed I had entered.”
― Sally Rooney, Two Stories

“Carl saw Joselito in a big clean room full of light, with private bath and concrete balcony. And nothing to talk about there in the cold empty room, water hyacinths growing in a yellow bowl and the china blue sky and drifting clouds, fear flickering in and out of his eyes. When he smiled the fear flew away in little pieces of light, lurked enigmatically in the high cool corners of the room. And what could I say feeling death around me, and in the little broken images that came before sleep, there in the mind?”
― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch

“But just because the anxiety, the loss, and the struggle tell you that you are not strong or capable or deserving of dreams coming true does not mean it is the narrative you belong to.”
― courtney peppernell, Watering the Soul

“Her lips felt like breathing fresh air. It felt like two people feeling after weeks of being numb. It felt like two people coming home to each other after months of being away. It felt like two people being found after years of being alone.”
― Courtney Peppernell, Watering the Soul

“Tufty, a recently arrived border terrier, jumped up on her lap, licking her face. Leeda pulled him close, suddenly, and held him, sinking her face into his ears, feeling the warmth of his body against hers, feeling guilty that he wasn't Barky but also feeling happy that he was there.
She couldn't imagine holding another person that way. It was love at its simplest.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, Love and Peaches

“It smelled of baking cakes, which sent her back to the kitchen of her childhood, coming home from school to find her mother in the kitchen, making cookies... but it also smelled medicinal, and that made her think of being ill and being looked after when she was tucked in bed. Then there were spices, and a faint hint of Christmas---nutmeg, perhaps, and cloves---but underneath all of those was something else, something insidiously smooth and emollient, like vanilla or eucalyptus. She had a sudden memory of kissing her father's cheek as he bent to say good night, the rasp of his five-o'clock shadow and that smell... She had it now: it was the smell of his cologne, the smell of his business suits, the smell of her parents' bedroom and the big double bed and the terrifying, dark thought of what went on there. But after another moment she relaxed. There were comforting smells in there too: apples and brandy and crisp butter pastry and cinnamon.”
― Anthony Capella, The Food of Love

“I am touched by your beautiful anxiety about life.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Inmost suffering, by its very nature, is highly discomforting and thus it thrusts one out of the comfort zone of shallowness and into a much deeper region of self-reflection.”
― Derya Sefer

“If I am wounded, I have in turn been given the resources needed to heal the wounded person standing next to me.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Marra thumped the pillow and then gave up. 'Fenris?'

'Yes?'

'I don't know how to ask this without giving you completely the wrong idea.'

'All right?'

'Do you remember on the road, when we slept back-to-back?'

He did not answer, but she heard the bed creak, and then the indignant snuffle of Bonedog being nudged out of the way. Her own bed sagged as Fenris sat on the edge of it. Marra scooted up against the wall to give him room.

His back was as solid and warm as she remembered. She sighed and felt something unclench, although whether it was in her jaw or her gut or her soul, she couldn't say.

'You're a saint,' she mumbled, tugging the blanket up around her shoulder.

'You have no idea,' muttered Fenris.”
― T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone

“She took my wings,' he whispered. Tamlin's green eyes flickered and I knew right then, that the faerie was going to die. Death wasn't just hovering in this hall; it was counting down the faerie's remaining heartbeats.

I took one of the faerie's hands in mine. The skin there was almost leathery, and, perhaps more of a reflex than anything, his long fingers wrapped around mine, covering them completely. 'She took my wings,' he said again, his shaking subsiding a bit.

I brushed the long, damp hair from the faerie's half-turned face, revealing a pointed nose and a mouth full of sharp teeth. His dark eyes shifted to mine, beseeching, pleading.

'It will be all right,' I said, and hoped he couldn't smell the lies the way the Suriel was able to. I stroked his limp hair, its texture like liquid night- another I would never be able to paint but would try to, perhaps forever. 'It will be all right.' The faerie closed his eyes, and I tightened my grip on his hand.

Something wet touched my feet, and I didn't need to look down to see that his blood had pooled around me. 'My wings,' the faerie whispered.

'You'll get them back.'

The faerie struggled to open his eyes. 'You swear?'

'Yes,' I breathed. The faerie managed a slight smile and closed his eyes again. My mouth trembled. I wished for something else to say, something more to offer him than my empty promises. The first false vow I'd ever sworn. But Tamlin began speaking, and I glanced up to see him take the faerie's other hand.

'Cauldron save you,' he said, reciting the words of a prayer that was probably older than the mortal realm. 'Mother hold you. Pass through the gates, and smell that immortal land of milk and honey. Fear no evil. Feel no pain.' Tamlin's voice wavered, but he finished. 'Go, and enter eternity.'

The faerie heaved one final sigh, and his hand went limp in mine. I didn't let go, though, and kept stroking his hair, even when Tamlin released him and took a few steps from the table.

I could feel Tamlin's eyes on me, but I wouldn't let go. I didn't know how long it took for a soul to fade from the body. I stood in the puddle of blood until it grew cold, holding the faerie's spindly hand and stroking his hair, wondering if he knew I'd lied when I'd sworn he would get his wings back, wondering if, wherever he had now gone, he had gotten them back.

A clock chimed somewhere in the house, and Tamlin gripped my shoulder. I hadn't realised how cold I'd become until the heat of his hand warmed me through my nightgown. 'He's gone. Let him go.'

I studied the faerie's face- so unearthly, so inhuman. Who could be so cruel to hurt him like that?

'Feyre,' Tamlin said, squeezing my shoulder. I brushed the faerie's hair behind his long, pointed ear, wishing I'd known his name, and let go.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses

“And maybe I was exhausted and broken, but I breathed, 'I killed them.'

I hadn't said the words aloud since it had happened.

Cassian's lips tightened. 'I know.' Not condemnation, not praise. But grim understanding.

My hands slackened as another shuddering sob worked its way through me. 'It should have been me.'

And there it was.

Standing there under the cloudless sky, the winter sun beating on my head, nothing around me save for rock, no shadows in which to hide, nothing to cling to... There it was.

Then darkness swept in, soothing, gentle darkness- no, shade- and a sweat-slicked male body halted before me. Gentle fingers lifted my chin until I looked up... at Rhysand's face.

His wings had wrapped around us, cocooned us, the sunlight casting the membrane in gold and red. Beyond us, outside, in another world, maybe, the sound of steel on steel- Cassian and Azriel sparring- began.

'You will feel that way every day for the rest of your life,' Rhysand said. This close, I could smell the sweat on him the sea-and-citrus sent beneath it. His eyes were soft. I tried to look away, but he held my chin firm. 'And I know this because I have felt that way every day since my mother and sister were slaughtered and I had to bury them myself, and even retribution didn't fix it.' He wiped away the tears on one cheek, then another. 'You can either let it wreck you, let it get you killed like it nearly did with the Weaver, or you can learn to live with it.'

For a long moment, I just stared at the open, calm face- maybe his true face, the one beneath all the masks he wore to keep his people safe. 'I'm sorry- about your family,' I rasped.

'I'm sorry I didn't find a way to spare you from what happened Under the Mountain,' Rhys said with equal quiet. 'From dying. From wanting to die.' I began to shake my head, but he said, 'I have two kinds of nightmares: the one when I'm again Amarantha's whore or my friends are... And the ones where I hear your neck snap and see the light leave your eyes.'

I had no answer to that- to the tenor in his rich, deep voice. So I examined the tattoos on his chest and arms, the glow of his tan skin, so golden now that he was no longer caged inside that mountain.

I stopped my perusal when I got to the vee of muscles that flowed beneath the waist of his leather pants.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury