Good humor is a tonic for mind and body. It is the best antidote for anxiety and depression. It is a business asset. It attracts and keeps friends. It lightens human burdens. It is the direct route to serenity and contentment.
—Grenville Kleiser (1868–1935) Canadian Author
You are innately designed to use your personal power. When you don’t, you experience a sense of helplessness, paralysis, and depression—which is your clue that something is not working as it could. You, like all of us, deserve everything that is wonderful and exciting in life. And those feelings emerge only when you get in touch with your powerful self.
—Susan Jeffers (1938–2012) American Psychologist, Self-Help Author
The only way to escape the abyss is to look at it, gauge it, sound it out and descend into it.
—Cesare Pavese (1908–50) Italian Novelist, Poet, Critic, Translator
For me being depressed means you can spend all day in bed, and still not get a good night’s rest.
—Unknown
Depression is inertia.
—Wayne Dyer (1940–2015) American Self-Help Author
Depression is the inability to construct a future.
—Rollo May (1909–94) American Philosopher
Don’t say, “I am depressed”. If you want to say, “It is depressed,” that’s all right. If you want to say that depression is there, that’s fine; if you want to say gloominess is there, that’s fine. But not: I am gloomy. You’re defining yourself in terms of the feeling. That’s your illusion; that’s your mistake. There is a depression there right now, but let it be, leave it alone. It will pass. Everything passes, everything. Your depressions and your thrills have nothing to do with happiness. Those are swings of the pendulum. If you seek kicks or thrills, get ready for depression. Do you want your drug? Get ready for the hangover. One end of the pendulum swings over to the other.
—Anthony de Mello (1931–87) Indian-born American Theologian
The world leans on us. When we sag, the whole world seems to droop.
—Eric Hoffer (1902–83) American Philosopher, Author
That’s the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it’s impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key.
—Elizabeth Wurtzel (1967–2020) American Writer, Journalist
There exists, at the bottom of all abasement and misfortune, a last extreme which rebels and joins battle with the forces of law and respectability in a desperate struggle, waged partly by cunning and partly by violence, at once sick and ferocious, in which it attacks the prevailing social order with the pin-pricks of vice and the hammer-blows of crime.
—Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist
In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant. My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known—no wonder, then, that I return the love.
—Soren Kierkegaard (1813–55) Danish Philosopher, Theologian
This is my “depressed stance.” When you’re depressed, it makes a lot of difference how you stand. The worst thing you can do is straighten up and hold your head high because then you’ll start to feel better. If you’re going to get any joy out of being depressed, you’ve got to stand like this.
—Charles M. Schulz (1922–2000) American Cartoonist, Writer, Artist
In all things it is better to hope than to despair.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
That terrible mood of depression of whether it’s any good or not is what is known as The Artist’s Reward.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversations these days. One has a sense that a catastrophe has occurred in the psychic landscape.
—Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian Singer, Songwriter, Poet, Novelist
The average man gets his living by such depressing devices that boredom becomes a sort of natural state to him.
—H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) American Journalist, Literary Critic
Obviously, the real issue has nothing to do with fear itself, but, rather, how we hold the fear. For some, the fear is totally irrelevant. For others, it creates a state of paralysis. The former hold their fear from a position of power (choice, energy, and action), and the latter hold it from a position of pain (helplessness, depression, and paralysis).
—Susan Jeffers (1938–2012) American Psychologist, Self-Help Author
Life always gives us exactly the teacher we need at every moment. This includes every mosquito, every misfortune, every red light, every traffic jam, every obnoxious supervisor (or employee), every illness, every loss, every moment of joy or depression, every addiction, every piece of garbage, every breath. Every moment is the guru.
—Joko Beck (1917–2011) American Zen Teacher
He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan.
—Alain de Botton (b.1969) Swiss-born British Philosopher, Author
Human existence must be a kind of error…it may be said of it, ‘it is bad today and every day it will get worse, until the worst of all happens’.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
Depression is melancholy minus its charms—the animation, the fits.
—Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American Writer, Philosopher
Depression is rage spread thin.
—George Santayana (1863–1952) Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher
Mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from normal experience, the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain … it is entirely natural that the victim begins to think ceaselessly of oblivion.
—William Styron (1925–2006) American Novelist, Essayist
Depression moods lead, almost invariably, to accidents. But, when they occur, our mood changes again, since the accident shows we can draw the world in our wake, and that we still retain some degree of power even when our spirits are low. A series of accidents creates a positively light-hearted state, out of consideration for this strange power.
—Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French Sociologist, Philosopher
I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.
—John Keats (1795–1821) English Poet
Grief is depression in proportion to circumstance; depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance. It is tumbleweed distress that thrives on thin air, growing despite its detachment from the nourishing earth. It can be described only in metaphor and allegory.
—Andrew Solomon (b.1963) American Psychologist, Novelist
Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.
—Dodie Smith (1896–1990) American Author, Playwright
You know what I love, sweetheart? The thoughts that used to send us into deep depression—these same thoughts, once understood, send us into laughter.
—Byron Katie (b.1942) American Speaker, Author
You largely constructed your depression. It wasn’t given to you. Therefore, you can deconstruct it.
—Albert Ellis (1913–2007) American Psychologist
Depression is anger without enthusiasm.
—Anonymous
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