"The hope on picking up a book: that it will tell us what we know but haven't had time to think."

I've been to every single book I know
To soothe the thoughts that plague me so:

Seneca
Plato
Augustine
DFW
Bellamy
More
Machiavelli
Sidney
Spenser
Auden
Frost
Shakespeare
Pascal
de Botton
Donne
Petrarch
Dante

no dice.

"No leader should ever suppose he can invariably take the safe course, since all choices involve risks.  In the nature of things, you can never try to escape one danger without encountering another; but prudence consists in knowing how to recognize the nature of the different dangers and in accepting the least bad as good."
--The Prince, Chapter 21