Comfort

Comfort is a sense of physical or psychological ease, often characterized as a lack of hardship.

Quotes

It's grand, and you canna expect to be baith grand and comfortable.
- J. M. Barrie, Little Minister (1891), Chapter 10.

COMFORT, n. A state of mind produced by contemplation of a neighbor's uneasiness.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

What! said Obstinate, and leave our Friends, and our Comforts behind us! Yes, said Christian, because that all, which you shall forsake, is not worthy to be compared with a little of that that I am seeking to enjoy.
- John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), § 1.1

One's physical comforts and wants, therefore, should be ordered according to the demands of health and strength, not according to the calls of pleasure. And if we will only bear in mind the superiority and dignity of our nature, we shall realize how wrong it is to abandon ourselves to excess and to live in luxury and voluptuousness, and how right it is to live in thrift, self-denial, simplicity, and sobriety.
- Cicero, On Duties, 1.106.

A scholar who loves comfort is not worthy of the name.
- Confucius, Analects, 14.3.

I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.
- G. K. Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse (1911) Book I : The Vision of the King.

Whoever prefers the material comforts of life over intellectual wealth is like the owner of a palace who moves into the servants’ quarters and leaves the sumptuous rooms empty.
- Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Aphorisms, D. Scrase and W. Mieder, trans. (Riverside, California: 1994), p. 53.

In those lower activities, which have no higher aim than to make us more comfortable and more cowardly, in actions of cunning, actions that steal and lie, actions that divorce the speculative from the practical faculty, and put a ban on reason and sentiment, there is nothing else but drawback and negation.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Goethe; or, the Writer,” Representative Men (1892), pp. 271-272.

[Steven Spielberg's films] are comforting, they always give you answers and I don't think they're very clever answers. … The success of most Hollywood films these days is down to fact that they're comforting. They tie things up in nice little bows and give you answers, even if the answers are stupid, you go home and you don't have to think about it. … The great filmmakers make you go home and think about it.
- Terry Gilliam Interview to TCM comparing the work of Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick (2009).

What the English call “comfortable” is something endless and inexhaustible. Every condition of comfort reveals in turn its discomfort, and these discoveries go on for ever. Hence the new want is not so much a want of those who have it directly, but is created by those who hope to make profit from it.
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, S. Dyde, trans. (1896), § 191.

Is there no balm in Gilead?
- Jeremiah, VIII, 22. "Is there no treacle in Gilead?" Version from the "Treacle Bible" (1568). Spelled also "truacle" or "tryacle" in the Great Bible (1541), Bishops' Bible (1561).

Where would there be leather enough to cover the entire world? With just the leather of my sandals, it is as if the whole world were covered. Likewise, I am unable to restrain external phenomena, but I shall restrain my own mind. What need is there to restrain anything else?
- Santideva, A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, V. Wallace and B. Wallace, trans. (1997), § 5.13.

And He that doth the ravens feed,
Yea, providently caters for the sparrow,
Be comfort to my age!
- William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c.1599-1600), Act II, scene 3, line 43.

That comfort comes too late;
'Tis like a pardon after execution;
That gentle physic, given in time, had cur'd me;
But now I am past all comforts here, but Prayers.
- William Shakespeare, Henry VIII (c. 1613), Act IV, scene 2, line 119.

Comfort is tedious when it lasts too long.
- Elizabeth Drew Stoddard, Two Men (New York: Bunce and Huntington, 1865), Ch. XXII, p. 174.

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meager life than the poor.
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854), p. 13.

Material comforts ... are small, but the soul clings to them: it considers them every day and from very close; in the end they hide the rest of the world from it.
- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, H. Mansfield, trans. (Chicago: 2000), p. 509.

Mothers obtain it from their children, and men from their dogs.
- Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers (1857), Chapter 44.

The evolutionary urge drives man to seek for intenser forms of fulfillment, since his basic urge is for more life, more consciousness, and this contentment has an air of stagnation that the healthy mind rejects. (This recognition lies at the centre of my own 'outsider theory': that there are human beings to whom comfort means nothing, but whose happiness consists in following an obscure inner-drive, an 'appetite for reality'.)
- Colin Wilson in Tree By Tolkien, p. 32 (1974).

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 124.

They have most satisfaction in themselves, and consequently the sweetest relish of their creature comforts.
- Matthew Henry, Commentaries, Psalm XXXVII.

From out the throng and stress of lies,
From out the painful noise of sighs,
One voice of comfort seems to rise:
"It is the meaner part that dies."
- William Morris, Comfort.

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