depression Quotes

“Like most people who’ve never experienced it, your view of depression is optimistically misguided.”

“‘Now I am depressed myself,’ I said. ‘That’s why I never think about these things. I never think and yet when I begin to talk I say the things I have found out in my mind without thinking.‘”

And the more I drink the more I feel it. That’s why I drink too. I try to find sympathy and feeling in drink.... I drink so that I may suffer twice as much!

I bear the dungeon within me; within me is winter, ice, and despair; I have darkness in my soul.

“If happiness is determined by our thoughts it is necessary to drive off the thoughts which make for depression and discouragement.”

“With Nick, however, Colin had the freedom to be his true self. Nick, who had known him since childhood, was probably the only person on the planet who didn’t give a damn about his money, and more important, the only one who was there during what they both referred to as ‘the war years.’ For beneath the wide grin and the charismatic personality, Colin struggled with a severe anxiety disorder and crippling depression, and Nick was one of the few people allowed to witness this side of him.”

Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you?

“In quick order, they both fell into the mire. The name of the marshy slough was Despond. Here, they wallowed for a time until they were totally covered with the slime and mud. Because of the burden on his back, Christian began to sink.”

“This miry slough is a place that can’t be repaired. It is a low-lying place where the scum and filth that come with the conviction of sin drain and collect as the traveling sinner becomes aware of his lost condition. It is the fears, doubts, and discouraging apprehensions about oneself that arise in his soul.”

“If at least I had solved my problems! Oh, I had not settled one of them, and how many they were! But I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared.”

“The villainy of mankind presented itself before his imagination in all its deformity, and his mind was filled with gloomy ideas.”

“You don’t like anything. You are the most depressed person I’ve ever met, and excuse me for saying this, but you are no fun to be around and I think you need professional help.”

All he knew was that his working days were miserable and he had a succession of lousy holidays.

“I’m sure I was a huge disappointment. I’m not pretty or smart or athletic. I’m just like them - an ordinary drone dressed in secrets and lies.”

“I am not crying now. I am not anything.”

“I open up a paper clip and scratch it across the inside of my left wrist. Pitiful. If a suicide attempt is a cry for help, then what is this? A whimper, a peep? I draw little windowcracks of blood, etching line after line until it stops hurting. It looks like I arm-wrestled a rosebush.”

“If everyone could just wear new clothes every day, I reckon depression wouldn’t exist anymore.”

“‘I’m broken, and no one can fix it. I’ve tried. I’m still trying. I can’t love anyone because it’s not fair to anyone who loves me back.’”

“Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash? Have you ever been blue? Or thought your train moving while sitting still? Maybe I was just crazy. Maybe it was the 60’s. Or maybe I was just a girl… interrupted.”

“Evelyn was a miserable and resentful wife before she met Mrs. Threadgoode at the Rose Terrance Nursing Home. Before their meeting, she often thought about committing suicide because she was so unhappy and depressed with the way her life was going.”

“The fact is, I was sick, but not in an easily explained flu kind of way. It’s my experience that people are a lot more sympathetic if they can see you hurting, and for the millionth time in my life I wish for measles or smallpox or some other recognizable disease just to make it simple for me and also for them.”

“‘Are you feeling okay?’ I try not to sound like the blaming girlfriend. Why won’t you spend time with me? Why won’t you call me back? Don’t you like me anymore?”

“He was inside the nightmare.”

“During the depression,” said the cowboy to me, “I used to hop freights at least once a month. In those days you’d see hundreds of men riding a flatcar or in a boxcar, and they weren’t just bums, they were all kinds of men out of work and going from one place to another and some of them just wandering.”

Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. . . What’s selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching.

“Patients with complex PTSD often come to doctors with vague complaints - intractable insomnia, unrelenting aches and pains, or stubborn depressive symptoms - so the link between their trauma and the present situation is not clearly identifiable.”

“Asagai: Then isn’t there something wrong in a house—in a world—where all dreams, good or bad, must depend on the death of a man? Beneatha: AND YOU CANNOT ANSWER IT! Asagai: I LIVE THE ANSWER!”

People pontificate, “Suicide is selfishness.” Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call in a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reason: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one’s audience with one’s mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize.

“naturally, we are all caught in downmoods, it’s a matter of chemical imbalance and an existence which, at times, seems to forbid any real chance at happiness.”

“I used to fell a lot of guilt about having depression but then I realized that’s a lot like feeling guilty for having brown hair.”

“Life passes. Then comes the depression. That feeling that you’ll never be right again. The fear that these outbreaks will become more familiar, or worse, never go away. You’re so tired from fighting that you start to listen to all the little lies your brain tells you. The ones that say you’re a drain on your family. The ones that say that if you were stronger or better this wouldn’t be happening to you.”

“Whenever I start to doubt if I’m worth the eternal trouble of medication and therapy, I remember those people who let the fog win. And I push myself to stay healthy. I remind myself that I’m not fighting against me … I’m fighting against a chemical imbalance.”

“Last month, as Victor drove me home so I could rest, I told him that sometimes I felt like his life would be easier without me. He paused a moment in thought and then said, ‘It might be easier. But it wouldn’t be better.‘”

“I’m just broken. But in a way that makes me … me. My drugs don’t define me. I’m not psychotic. I’m not dangerous. The drugs I take are just a pinch of salt. A little seasoning in life, if you will.”

“Lots of people think that they’re a failure if their first or eighth cure for depression or anxiety doesn’t work the way they wanted. But an illness is an illness. It’s not your fault if the medication or therapy you’re given to treat your mental illness doesn’t work perfectly, or it worked for a while but then stopped working. You aren’t a math problem. You’re a person.”

“I don’t want to die. Really, I don’t. It’s not a lie. I’m not suicidal. I just feel like sometimes I can’t keep myself from hurting me. It’s like there’s someone else inside of me who needs to physically peel those bad thoughts out of my head and there’s no other way to get in there. The physical pain distracts me from the mental pain.”

“I have seen the bright contrast from dark to light and back again. I am privileged to be able to recognize that the sound of laughter is a blessing and a song, and to realize that the bright hours spent with my family and friends are extraordinary treasures to be saved, because … those moments are a promise that life is worth fighting for.”

“I hope one day I live in a world where the personal fight for mental stability is viewed with pride and public cheers instead of shame. I hope it for you too.”

“Brighter days are coming. Clearer sight will arrive. And you will arrive too. No, it might not be forever. These bright moments might be for a few days at a time, but hold on for those days. Those days are worth the dark.”

“If everything is perfect and I’m miserable, then is this as good as it gets? The answer is no. it gets better. You get better.”

“I can’t think of another type of illness where the sufferer is made to feel guilty and question their self-care when their medications need to be changed.”

“When you come out of the grips of a depression there is an incredible relief, but not one you feel allowed to celebrate. Instead, the feeling of victory is replaced with anxiety that it will happen again, and with shame and vulnerability when you see how your illness affected your family, your work, everything left untouched while you struggled to survive. We come back to life thinner, paler, weaker … but as survivors.”

“I hope to one day see a sea of people all wearing silver ribbons as a sign that they understand the secret battle, and as a celebration of the victories made each day as we individually pull ourselves up out of our foxholes to see our scars heal, and to remember what the sun looks like.”

“I’ve struggled with many forms of mental illness since I was a kid, but clinical depression is a semi-regular visitor and anxiety disorder is my long-term abusive boyfriend.”

“I can tell you that ‘Just cheer up’ is almost universally looked at as the most unhelpful depression cure ever. It’s pretty much the equivalent of telling someone who just had their legs amputated to ‘just walk it off.’ ”

“In her month and a half of turbulent motherhood, Bebe did not once seek help from a psychologist or a doctor... she had no idea where to turn... She did not know how to find the social workers who might have helped her... she did not know how to file for welfare.”

“She was ‘nervous,’ she suffered ‘little spells’—such were the sheltering expressions used by those close to her. Not that the truth concerning ‘poor Bonnie’s afflictions’ was in the least a secret; everyone knew she had been an on-and-off psychiatric patient the last half-dozen years.”

“My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression.”

“Everything everybody does is so ... not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. ”

“Conflict with and hostile criticism from loved ones increase our self-doubts and create a sense of helplessness, classic triggers for depression. We need validation from our loved ones. Researchers say that marital distress raises the risk for depression tenfold!”

“No matter how depressed you are or how much pain you’re in, you have to return to your routine, daily life.”

“It’s brilliant, being depressed; you can behave as badly as you like.”

“Even though summers were made mostly of sun and heat, summers for me were about storms that came and went. And left me feeling alone.”

“Sarcasm and jokes were often the bottle in which clinical depressives sent out their most plangent screams for someone to care and help them.”

“I’m not leaving, bub. Because you’re going to wallow.”

“Not weak, not strong. Different...”

“Mum seemed more and more often to sit gazing out of the window, oblivious to us.”

“I know I’ll be alright when we get out.”

“She was getting more and more headaches, and spending more time in our room.”

“Zainullah’s angry now. Zahra’s withdrawn. She used to be so bright and bubbly. But I think it’s making Hassan get some sense. Everyone gets nightmares.”

“Any problem that arose was too much for Mom now.”

“With a few bad experiences, [high sensitive children] are more likely than others to become shy, fearful, or depressed.”

“With a few bad experiences, [high sensitive children] are more likely than others to become shy, fearful, or depressed.”

“You may grow frustrated and depressed, never realizing that the source of it is your alienation from your own creative potential.”

“Depression comes in bouts. Like boxing. Dad is in the blue corner.”

“Depression is being colorblind and constantly told how colorful the world is.”

“THE WORLD IS increasingly designed to depress us. Happiness isn’t very good for the economy. If we were happy with what we had, why would we need more? How do you sell an anti-ageing moisturiser? You make someone worry about ageing. How do you get people to vote for a political party? You make them worry about immigration. How do you get them to buy insurance? By making them worry about everything. How do you get them to have plastic surgery? By highlighting their physical flaws. How do you get them to watch a TV show? By making them worry about missing out. How do you get them to buy a new smartphone? By making them feel like they are being left behind. To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act. To be happy with your own non-upgraded existence. To be comfortable with our messy, human selves, would not be good for business.”

“They just feel sorry for me, he thought.”

“Depressed” is a word that often describes somebody who is feeling sad and gloomy, but in this case it describes a secret button, hidden in a crow statue, that is feeling just fine, thank you.”

“Marigold started going weird again on her birthday. Star remembered that birthdays were often bad times so we’d tried really hard.”

“What can I say ? I’m a rose in the snow—the bright spot in your dark, seems-like-it’s-always-depressed life.”

“Geez, if I could get through to you, kiddo, that depression is not sobbing and crying and giving vent, it is plain and simple reduction of feeling. Reduction, see? Of all feeling. People who keep stiff upper lips find that it’s damn hard to smile.”

“It has been said that depression is a failure to imagine a plausible desirable future for oneself, and, not just in Marin, but in the whole region, in the Bay Area, and in many other places too, places both near and far, the apocalypse appeared to have arrived and yet it was not apocalyptic, which is to say that while the changes were jarring they were not the end, and life went on, and people found things to do and ways to be and people to be with, and plausible desirable futures began to emerge, unimaginable previously, but not unimaginable now, and the result was something not unlike relief.”

“depression is silent you never hear it coming and suddenly it’s the loudest voice in your head”

“Good morning, Pooh Bear,” said Eeyore gloomily. “If it is a good morning,” he said. “Which I doubt,” said he.

“You’re not eating anything,” said Marilla sharply, eying her as if it were a serious shortcoming. Anne sighed. “I can’t. I’m in the depths of despair.”

Poor Jo, these were dark days to her, for something like despair came over her when she thought of spending all her life in that quiet house, devoted to humdrum cares, a few small pleasures, and the duty that never seemed to grow any easier.

Dantès said, “I wish to die,” and had chosen the manner of his death, and fearful of changing his mind, he had taken an oath to die. “When my morning and evening meals are brought,” thought he, “I will cast them out of the window, and they will think that I have eaten them.”

I was greatly dejected and distressed, but in an incoherent wholesale sort of way. As to forming any plan for the future, I could as soon have formed an elephant. When I opened the shutters and looked out at the wet wild morning, all of a leaden hue; when I walked from room to room; when I sat down again shivering, before the fire, waiting for my laundress to appear; I thought how miserable I was, but hardly knew why, or how long I had been so, or on what day of the week I made the reflection, or even who I was that made it.

Now Gregor’s sister also had to help his mother with the cooking; although that was not so much bother as no-one ate very much. Gregor often heard how one of them would unsuccessfully urge another to eat, and receive no more answer than “no thanks, I’ve had enough” or something similar.

“I’d like to eat something”, said Gregor anxiously, “but not anything like they’re eating. They do feed themselves. And here I am, dying!”

“It’s not unhappiness, or low spirits, but much worse. As though everything that was good in me was all hidden away, and nothing was left but the most loathsome. Come, how am I to tell you?”

“There’s no one I should less dislike seeing than you,” said Vronsky. “Excuse me; and there’s nothing in life for me to like.”