“I look to stories for consolation,the kind of small consolation that one needs to want to wake up everyday;as template for life;for news on how others live;for reminders that life's mysteries have no key”

“For those who need consolation no means of consolation is so effective as the assertion that in their case no consolation is possible: it implies so great a degree of distinction that they at once hold up their heads again.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“How could I choose someone who would force me to give up my own small reach for meaning? I chose myself, and without consolation.”

Sue Monk Kidd (1948) Novelist

“Art is to console those who are broken by life.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

“But my dreaming self refuses to be consoled. It continues to wander, aimless, homeless, alone. It cannot be convinced of its safety by any evidence drawn from my waking life.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

“It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

“All my life I struggled to stretch my mind to the breaking point, until it began to creak, in order to create a great thought which might be able to give a new meaning to life, a new meaning to death, and to console mankind.”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

“I have very strongly this feeling… that our everyday life is at one and the same time banal, overfamiliar, platitudinous and yet mysterious and extraordinary.”

Bryan Magee (1930–2019) British politician

“Here's my life, why not, it is one, if you like, if you must, I don't say no, this evening. There has to be one, it seems, once there is speech, no need of a story, a story is not compulsory, just a life, that's the mistake I made, one of the mistakes, to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough.”

Samuel Beckett book Texts for Nothing

“To know how just a cause we have for grieving is already a consolation.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism