“We are more apt to feel depressed by the perpetually smiling individual than the one who is honestly sad.”

—  Rollo May

Paulus : Reminiscences of a Friendship (1973)
Context: We are more apt to feel depressed by the perpetually smiling individual than the one who is honestly sad. If we admit our depression openly and freely, those around us get from it an experience of freedom rather than the depression itself.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "We are more apt to feel depressed by the perpetually smiling individual than the one who is honestly sad." by Rollo May?
Rollo May photo
Rollo May 135
US psychiatrist 1909–1994

Related quotes

Barbara Kingsolver photo

“There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, 'There now, hang on, you'll get over it.' Sadness is more or less like a head cold- with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Bean Trees

Source: The Bean Trees

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

Barbara Kingsolver photo

“Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Bean Trees

Source: The Bean Trees

José Ortega Y Gasset photo

“As one advances in life, one realises more and more that the majority of men — and of women — are incapable of any other effort than that strictly imposed on them as a reaction to external compulsion. And for that reason, the few individuals we have come across who are capable of a spontaneous and joyous effort stand out isolated, monumentalised, so to speak, in our experience. These are the select men, the nobles, the only ones who are active and not merely reactive, for whom life is a perpetual striving, an incessant course of training. Training = askesis.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

These are the ascetics.
Chap. VII: Noble Life And Common Life, Or Effort And Inertia
The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

Christine de Pizan photo

“For what would I be otherwise but sport,
In love with one who does not care for me?
I will hide pain in smiles, sooner than be
The common talk. It is a bitter art
To sing a happy song with a sad heart.”

Christine de Pizan De triste cuer chanter joyeusement

Car en mon cuer porte couvertement
Le dueil qui soit qui plus me puet desplaire,
Et si me fault, pour les gens faire taire,
Rire en plorant et très amerement
De triste cuer chanter joyeusement.
Rondeau "De triste cuer chanter joyeusement", line 8; Maurice Roy (ed.) Œuvres Poétiques de Christine de Pisan (1886) vol. 1, p. 154, as translated by http://www.brindin.com/pfpistri.htm by Sheenagh Pugh.

Warren Farrell photo

“The reporting of depression is often associated with the dependency of women on men. But it is dependency on men successful enough to allow a woman the time to think about more than survival. Which is why, when we think about women who report depression, we think of middle-class women, not working-class women. The working-class woman is too worried about survival to report depression. Depression is a diagnosis that tends to increase among those with the luxury of worrying about something other than survival. The more a person is in Stage II, the more that person can afford to focus on depression.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 177.

Christina Rossetti photo

“Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.”

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) English poet

Remember, l. 13-14.
Source: Pre-Raphaelite Poetry: An Anthology

Anne Brontë photo

“Smiles and tears are so alike with me, they are neither of them confined to any particular feelings: I often cry when I am happy, and smile when I am sad.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XV : An Encounter and its Consequences; Gilbert Markham

Theobald Wolfe Tone photo

“[T]hey and the Catholics had but one common interest and one common enemy; that the depression and slavery of Ireland was produced and perpetuated by the divisions existing between them; and that consequently to assert the independence of their country, and their own individual liberties it was necessary to forget all former feuds, to consolidate the entire strength of the whole nation, and form for the first time but one people.”

Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763–1798) Irish politician

His objective was to convince the Dissenters to join with their fellow countrymen.
Attributed, An Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland by a Northern Whig. (September, 1791)

Related topics