Depressing quotes

A collection of quotes on the topic of sad quotes, depressing, depression, depressive.

Best depressing quotes

Agatha Christie photo

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer
William Shakespeare photo

“To be or not to be, that is the question.”

Source: Hamlet, Act III, scene i.

Pythagoras photo

“No man is free who cannot control himself.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher
Charlie Kaufman photo
Frederick Douglass photo

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Variant: Without a struggle, there can be no progress.

Christopher Reeve photo

“Once you choose hope, anything's possible.”

Christopher Reeve (1952–2004) actor, director, producer, screenwriter
Florbela Espanca photo

“To live is to not know that one is living”

Florbela Espanca (1894–1930) Portuguese poet

Diary (20 April, 1930), quoted in Afinado desconcerto (2002), p. 262
Context: Sometimes I start looking at the mirror and examining myself, feature by feature: eyes, mouth, shape of the forehead, eyelids curve, the face line... And this vulgar and hideous-looking, grotesque and miserable amalgam, would it know how to do verses? Oh, no! There is something else … but what? After all, why think? To live is to not know that one is living... Why don't I forget that I am living... to live?

Gautama Buddha photo

“The mind is everything. What you think you become.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism
Nelson Mandela photo

“It always seems impossible until it's done.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist
Mark Twain photo

“The secret to getting ahead is getting started.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Depressing quotes

Francis of Assisi photo
Henry Rollins photo

“It's sad when someone you know becomes someone you knew.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Variant: It is sad when someone you know becomes someone you knew.

Viktor E. Frankl photo

“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.”

Source: Quoted in Man's Search for Meaning and attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche.

Emil M. Cioran photo

“It's not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.”

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

Gertrude Stein photo

“Whenever you get there, there is no there there.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays
Laurie Halse Anderson photo
Вивиан Грин photo
Anaïs Nin photo

“The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Frequently attributed to Nin, but without cited source in her work (possibly due to a quotation in Living on Purpose: Straight Answers to Universal Questions (2000) by Dan Millman that attributed the quote to Nin without source).
In March 2013, a former Director of Public Relations at John F. Kennedy University in Orinda, Elizabeth Appell, claimed she had authored the quote in 1979 for an inspirational header on a class schedule: http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2013/03/who-wrote-risk-is-the-mystery-solved/
Disputed
Variant: The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Leonard Cohen photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Source: Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, with Annotations - 1841-1844

Thomas Aquinas photo

“To love is to will the good of the other.”

II-II, q. 26, art. 6
Summa Theologica (1265–1274)

Joanne K. Rowling photo

“Depression is the most unpleasant thing I have ever experienced. … It is that absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be cheerful again. The absence of hope.”

Joanne K. Rowling (1965) British novelist, author of the Harry Potter series

2000s
Context: Depression is the most unpleasant thing I have ever experienced. … It is that absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be cheerful again. The absence of hope. That very deadened feeling, which is so very different from feeling sad. Sad hurts but it's a healthy feeling. It's a necessary thing to feel. Depression is very different.

As quoted in "J. K. Rowling : The Interview," by Ann Treneman in The Times (30 June 2000) http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2000/0600-times-treneman.html

Aristotle photo

“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy
Jonathan Safran Foer photo
Aristotle photo
Robin S. Sharma photo
Dr. Seuss photo

“All alone! Whether you like it or not, alone is something you'll be quite a lot!”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Source: Oh, the Places You'll Go! and The Lorax

Peter Higgs photo

“It’s about understanding! Understanding the world!”

Peter Higgs (1929) British physicist

Explaining what led him to study theoretical physics, as quoted by Ian Sample, in The god of small things http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/nov/17/sciencenews.particlephysics, The Guardian, Saturday 17 November 2007.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo
Zora Neale Hurston photo

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”

Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Ch. 3, p. 21.

David Levithan photo
Sylvia Plath photo

“I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Collected Poems

Fannie Flagg photo

“being a successful person is not necessarily defined by what you have achieved, but by what you have overcome.”

Fannie Flagg (1944) American actress, comedian and author

Source: The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion

Nick Cave photo

“It's a wonderful life if you can find it.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Source: Complete Lyrics

Cassandra Clare photo

“Sometimes there is not always a cure.”

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Fannie Flagg photo

“You know, a heart can be broken, but it keeps on beating, just the same.”

Variant: You know, a heart can be broken, but it still keeps a-beating just the same.
Source: Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Ned Vizzini photo
Sylvia Plath photo

“I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.”

"Elm" http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/elm.html
Source: Ariel (1965)
Context: p>I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.</p

Siri Hustvedt photo

“Pain is always emotional. Fear and depression keep constant company with chronic hurting.”

Siri Hustvedt (1955) novelist, essayist, poet

Source: The Shaking Woman, or A History of My Nerves

George Eliot photo
Helen Keller photo
Theodor W. Adorno photo

“There is no right life in the wrong one.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

Source: Minima Moralia: Reflections from a Damaged Life

Matka Tereza photo

“The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

Interview by Edward W. Desmond in TIME magazine (4 December 1989)
1980s

T. H. White photo
Albert Camus photo
Judy Garland photo
Elizabeth Wurtzel photo

“Woke up this morning afraid I was gonna live.”

Source: Prozac Nation

Sylvia Plath photo
Cecelia Ahern photo

“Seeming and being are not one and the same.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: P.S. I Love You

Wayne W. Dyer photo
Stephen King photo
Stephen Fry photo
Elizabeth Wurtzel photo
Susan Sontag photo

“Depression is melancholy minus its charms.”

Source: Illness as Metaphor

Andrew Solomon photo
Katherine Paterson photo
Victor Hugo photo
Laurell K. Hamilton photo
Miriam Toews photo

“Perhaps depression is caused by asking oneself too many unanswerable questions.”

Miriam Toews (1964) Canadian writer known for novels set in the Mennonite community

Source: Swing Low

Jeffrey Eugenides photo
William James photo

“Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.”

"Is Life Worth Living?"
Variant: Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
Source: 1890s, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

Mark Twain photo

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Not by Twain, but from Edward Abbey's A Voice Crying In The Wilderness (1989).
Misattributed

Edward St. Aubyn photo

“Everything was usual. That was depression: being stuck, clinging to an out-of-date version of oneself.”

Edward St. Aubyn (1960) British writer

Source: The Patrick Melrose Novels

Cesare Pavese photo

“No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Gloria Estefan photo

“When you are happy it is harder to write”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

songs
Gayle King XM satellite radio program (October 23, 2006)
2007, 2008

Chinmayananda Saraswati photo

“Know what to Do. And do it Yourself.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Sydney Smith photo

“Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Vol. I, ch. 10
Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

David Lynch photo

“I like the saying "The world is as you are."”

The Circle, p. 21
Catching the Big Fish (2006)
Context: I like the saying "The world is as you are." And I think films are as you are. That's why, although the frames of a film are always the same — the same number, in the same sequence, with the same sounds — every screening is different. The difference is sometimes subtle but it's there. It depends on the audience. There is a circle that goes from the audience to the film and back. Each person is looking and thinking and feeling and coming up with his or her own sense of things. And it's probably different from what I fell in love with.
So you don’t know how it's going to hit people. But if you thought about how it's going to hit people, or if it's going to hurt someone, or if it's going to do this or do that, then you would have to stop making films. You just do these things that you fall in love with, and you never know what's going to happen.

H.P. Lovecraft photo

“To the scientist there is the joy in pursuing truth which nearly counteracts the depressing revelations of truth.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to "The Keicomolo"—Kleiner, Cole, and Moe (October 1916), in Selected Letters I, 1911-1924 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 26-27
Non-Fiction, Letters
Context: Frankly, I cannot conceive how any thoughtful man can really be happy. There is really nothing in the universe to live for, and unless one can dismiss thought and speculation from his mid, he is liable to be engulfed by the very immensity of creation. It is vastly better that he should amuse himself with religion, or any other convenient palliative to reality which comes to hand. … There is much relief from the burden of life to be derived from many sources. To the man of high animal spirits, there is the mere pleasure of being alive; the Joi de vivre, as our Gallick friends term it. To the credulous there is religion and its paradisal dreams. To the moralist, there is a certain satisfaction in right conduct. To the scientist there is the joy in pursuing truth which nearly counteracts the depressing revelations of truth. To the person of cultivated taste, there are the fine arts. To the man of humour, there is the sardonic delight of spying out pretensions and incongruities of life. To the poet there is the ability and privilege to fashion a little Arcadia in his fancy, wherein he may withdraw from the sordid reality of mankind at large. In short, the world abounds with simple delusions which we may call "happiness", if we be but able to entertain them.

Laozi photo
Elizabeth Wurtzel photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Elizabeth Wurtzel photo
Norman Vincent Peale photo

“People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. When they believe in themselves they have the first secret of success.”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

Positive Thinking Every Day : An Inspiration for Each Day of the Year (1993), "April 13"
Earlier variant: People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. And those who have learned to have a realistic, nonegotistical belief in themselves, who possess a deep and sound self-confidence, are assets to mankind, too, for they transmit their dynamic quality to those lacking it.
‪You Can If You Think You Can‬ (1987), p. 84

Isaac Asimov photo

“It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly”

Variant: It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.
Source: Foundation

Elizabeth Wurtzel photo
John Irving photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Kay Redfield Jamison photo

“Somehow, like so many people who get depressed, we felt our depressions were more complicated and existentially based than they actually were.”

Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Andrew Solomon photo
Mark Z. Danielewski photo
Wayne W. Dyer photo

“Peace is the result of retraining your mind to process life as it is, rather than as you think it should be.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

Source: There's a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem

Sören Kierkegaard photo

“As a confirmed melancholic, I can testify that the best and maybe only antidote for melancholia is action. However, like most melancholics, I suffer also from sloth.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990), Ch. 4 : Life and Death and All That p.43

Chuck Palahniuk photo
William Styron photo

“The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be borne.”

Source: Darkness Visible (1990), III
Context: This general unawareness of what depression is really like was apparent most recently in the matter of Primo Levi, the remarkable Italian writer and survivor of Auschwitz who, at the age of sixty-seven, hurled himself down a stairwell in Turin in 1987. Since my own involvement with the illness, I had been more than ordinarily interested in Levi’s death, and so, late in 1988, when I read an account in The New York Times about a symposium on the writer and his work held at New York University, I was fascinated but, finally, appalled. For, according to the article, many of the participants, worldly writers and scholars, seemed mystified by Levi’s suicide, mystified and disappointed. It was as if this man whom they had all so greatly admired, and who had endured so much at the hands of the Nazis — a man of exemplary resilience and courage — had by his suicide demonstrated a frailty, a crumbling of character they were loath to accept. In the face of a terrible absolute — self-destruction — their reaction was helplessness and (the reader could not avoid it) a touch of shame.
My annoyance over all this was so intense that I was prompted to write a short piece for the op-ed page of the Times. The argument I put forth was fairly straightforward: the pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be borne. The prevention of many suicides will continue to be hindered until there is a general awareness of the nature of this pain. Through the healing process of time — and through medical intervention or hospitalization in many cases — most people survive depression, which may be its only blessing; but to the tragic legion who are compelled to destroy themselves there should be no more reproof attached than to the victims of terminal cancer.