“One advantage of remorse is that it sets the stage for consolation.”

“Circumstance and settings are of no importance. One day this sense of emptiness and remorse submerges you. Then, like a tide, it ebbs and disappears. But in the end it returns in force, and she couldn’t shake it off. Nor could I?”

Patrick Modiano (1945) French writer

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

Don DeLillo (1936) American novelist, playwright and essayist

“One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music.”

Stephen Sondheim (1930) American composer and lyricist

“The only thing that can console one for being poor is extravagance. The only thing that can console one for being rich is economy.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“The Princes of this house of abandoned their capital. Not like soldiers of Honor who cede to the circumstances and set backs of the war, but like the perjured, who are persued by their own remorse.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

“Once the stage is set, the presence of an outstanding leader is indispensable. Without him there will be no movement.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

“We console ourselves with several friends for not having found one real one.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

“When we are set free from the bondage of pleasing others, when we are free from currying others'approval-then no one will be able to make us miserable or dissatisfied. And then, if we know we have pleased God, contentment will be our consolation.”

Kay Arthur (1933) International Bible teacher/four-time ECPA Christian Book Award winning author

“The consolation of imaginary things is not imaginary consolation.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher