Assuage Quotes

“How, then, does the written word work? What part of a reader absorbs it - or should that be a double question: what part of a reader absorbs what part of a text?
I think that underneath, or alongside, a reader's conscious response to a text, whatever is needy in him is taking in whatever the text offers to assuage that need.”
― Diana Athill, Somewhere Towards the End

“Guilt doesn't assuage the guilty.”
― Raven Kennedy

“You smiled at me. I felt like a new life sprang out of me. I hugged you immediately. I held you like that for some time and cried my heart out. I let the tears melt the guilt in my heart. I felt like the power that can absolve my sins was hidden only in your smile. You hugged me warmly in your tender arms. Might be the pure hearts forgive and cleanse the hearts of the sinners in no time. You were emanating new life into me. That day, I was alive because of you. That day, I was born again fresh.”
― Bharani Kumar Buyakar, Once Again Beautiful And Pure: A Tale of Strength and Redemption

“Did you know Anthony was a slave?" Letty asked one night in hall. Unlike Victoire, she was determined to raise the issue at every opportunity; indeed, she was obsessed with Anthony's death in a way that felt uncomfortably, performatively righteous. "Or would have been. His master didn't want him freed when abolition took effect, so he was going to take him to America, and he only got to stay at Oxford because Babel paid for his freedom. Paid. Can you believe it?"

Robin glanced to Victoire, but her face had not changed one bit.

"Letty," she said very calmly, "I am trying to eat.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“He didn't mention the family to Mrs. Piper or Professor Lovell. He didn't want to dwell on the things they represented - the fact that for all of his professed allegiance to revolution, for his commitment to equality and to helping those who were without, he had no experience of true poverty at all. He'd seen hard times in Canton, but he had never not known where his next meal might come from or where he would sleep at night. He had never looked at his family and wondered what it might take to keep them alive. For all his identification with the poor orphan Oliver Twist, for all his bitter self-pity, the fact remained that since the day he had set foot in England, he had not once gone to sleep hungry.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel