Anxiety Quotes

“I can do this… I can start over. I can save my own life and I’m never going to be alone as long as I have stars to wish on and people to still love.”
― Jennifer Elisabeth, Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl

“Maybe we tried to leave as much memories of ourselves with each other because we knew one day we wouldn't be together any more.”
― Makoto Shinkai, 5 Centimeters per Second

“I've wasted a lot of time in my life. I've thought too much about what people will say or what they're gonna think. And sometimes it's over silly things like going to the grocery store or going to the post office. But there have been times when I really stopped myself from doing something special. All because I was scared someone might look at me and decide I wasn't good enough. But you don't have to bother with that nonsense. I wasted all that time so you don't have to.”
― Julie Murphy, Dumplin'

“My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.”
― Michel de Montaigne

“mom says where did anxiety come from?
anxiety is the cousin visiting from out of town
depression felt obliged to bring to the party.
mom, i am the party.
only, i am a party i don't want to be at.”
― Sabrina Benaim, Depression & Other Magic Tricks

“Creating is living doubly. The groping, anxious quest of a Proust, his meticulous collecting of flowers, of wallpapers, and of anxieties, signifies nothing else.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“Creative people, as I see them, are distinguished by the fact that they can live with anxiety, even though a high price may be paid in terms of insecurity, sensitivity, and defenselessness for the gift of the “divine madness,” to borrow the term used by the classical Greeks. They do not run away from non-being, but by encountering and wrestling with it, force it to produce being. They knock on silence for an answering music; they pursue meaninglessness until they can force it to mean.”
― Rollo May, The Courage to Create

“Curiosity and passion are the enemies of anxiety. Even when I fell into anxiety, if I get curious enough about something outside of me it can help pull me out. Music, art, film, nature, conversation, words. Find passion as large as your fear. The way out of your mind is via the world.”
― Matt Haig, The Comfort Book

“You always say such lovely things to me, Red. Do you say them to yourself?”
― Talia Hibbert, Get a Life, Chloe Brown

“Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able, - to dress and entertain, and order things”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wall-Paper

“I hate the phone. It is the worst invention in the history of the world, because if you don’t talk, nothing happens. You can’t get by with simply listening and nodding your head in all the right places. You have to talk. You have no option. It takes away my freedom of nonspeech.”
― Alice Oseman, Solitaire

“He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Let us not wait until the specter of solitude and isolation crawls into the alleys of our lives. Let us not the veiled threat of despair thrust us into oppression through our deficiency in interaction, and expand the frailty and the anxiety of our existence. Let us reach out and talk instead and use an authentic language in an unambiguous wording, and connect the dots, without fear. ("Words had disappeared”)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“I’ve found that it’s of some help to think of one’s moods and feelings about the world as being similar to weather.

Here are some obvious things about the weather:

It's real.
You can't change it by wishing it away.
If it's dark and rainy, it really is dark and rainy, and you can't alter it.
It might be dark and rainy for two weeks in a row.

BUT
it will be sunny one day.
It isn't under one's control when the sun comes out, but come out it will.
One day.

It really is the same with one's moods, I think. The wrong approach is to believe that they are illusions. Depression, anxiety, listlessness - these are all are real as the weather - AND EQUALLY NOT UNDER ONE'S CONTROL.
Not one's fault.

BUT
They will pass: really they will.

In the same way that one really has to accept the weather, one has to accept how one feels about life sometimes, "Today is a really crap day," is a perfectly realistic approach. It's all about finding a kind of mental umbrella. "Hey-ho, it's raining inside; it isn't my fault and there's nothing I can do about it, but sit it out. But the sun may well come out tomorrow, and when it does I shall take full advantage.”
― Stephen Fry

“Let this time in your life cut you open and drain all of the things that are holding you back. I’m going to help you forgive the things that you won’t let yourself forget.”
― Jennifer Elisabeth

“Half of life is lost in charming others.
The other half is lost in going through anxieties caused by others.
Leave this play. You have played enough.”
― Rumi

“Free curiosity has greater power to stimulate learning than rigorous coercion. Nevertheless, the free ranging flux of curiosity is channeled by discipline under Your Law.”
― St. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

“Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin

“I wake up scared and I'm scared all day. I'm scared of being scared. Scared of "losing it". Scared of not being able to function. Scared of being hospitalized. Scared that I am not okay. Scared of what life is and if I am wasting mine. Scared that I have no home - that even the place I call home has no bottom to it and I will just keep falling under and under and under.”
― Melissa Broder, So Sad Today: Personal Essays

“One of the few blessings of living in an age of anxiety is that we are forced to become aware of ourselves.”
― Rollo May, Man's Search for Himself

“Men seek rest in a struggle against difficulties; and when they have conquered these, rest becomes insufferable.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“When we start being too impressed by the results of our work, we slowly come to the erroneous conviction that life is one large scoreboard where someone is listing the points to measure our worth. And before we are fully aware of it, we have sold our soul to the many grade-givers. That means we are not only in the world, but also of the world. Then we become what the world makes us. We are intelligent because someone gives us a high grade. We are helpful because someone says thanks. We are likable because someone likes us. And we are important because someone considers us indispensable. In short, we are worthwhile because we have successes. And the more we allow our accomplishments — the results of our actions — to become the criteria of our self-esteem, the more we are going to walk on our mental and spiritual toes, never sure if we will be able to live up to the expectations which we created by our last successes. In many people’s lives, there is a nearly diabolic chain in which their anxieties grow according to their successes. This dark power has driven many of the greatest artists into self-destruction.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life

“Did you have one of those days today, like a nail in the foot? Did the pterodactyl corpse dropped by the ghost of your mother from the spectral Hindenburg forever circling the Earth come smashing through the lid of your glass coffin? Did the New York strip steak you attacked at dinner suddenly show a mouth filled with needle-sharp teeth, and did it snap off the end of your fork, the last solid-gold fork from the set Anastasia pressed into your hands as they took her away to be shot? Is the slab under your apartment building moaning that it cannot stand the weight on its back a moment longer, and is the building stretching and creaking? Did a good friend betray you today, or did that good friend merely keep silent and fail to come to your aid? Are you holding the razor at your throat this very instant? Take heart, comfort is at hand. This is the hour that stretches. Djan karet. We are the cavalry. We're here. Put away the pills. We'll get you through this bloody night. Next time, it'll be your turn to help us.
"Eidolons" (1988)”
― Harlan Ellison

“The soul is "torn apart in a painful condition as long as it prefers the eternal because of its Truth but does not discard the temporal because of familiarity.”
― St. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

“I'd developed an inability to demonstrate much negative emotion at all. It was another thing that made me seem like a dick - my stomach could be all oiled eels, and you would get nothing from my face and less from my words. It was a constant problem: too much control or no control at all.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“It’s weird how we have to get a little older to realize that people are just people. It should be obvious, but it’s not.”
― Christine Riccio, Again, But Better

“Fear, anxiety, arousal, and pain; all are emotions and sensations. They are neither right, nor are they wrong; good nor bad. They are simply passions, a most important part of life. Feel them, fully experience them, surrender to them, and learn to accept them. As a submissive, you must let go. André Chevalier”
― Nikki Sex, Fate

“No event is depressing. I may feel depressed; if so, I take responsibility.”
― Larry Godwin, Transcending Depression: Quest Without a Compass

“Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye,
And where care lodges, sleep will never lie.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“We live only a few conscious decades, and we fret ourselves enough for several lifetimes.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir