227 Thought-provoking Quotes About Depression

People who have never dealt with depression think it's just being sad or being in a bad mood. That's not what depression is for me; it's falling into a state of grayness and numbness.

That is all I want in life: for this pain to seem purposeful.

Through my own struggles with depression, I discovered that knowledge, therapy, medication and education can provide the strength to get through it in one piece.

With depression, one of the most important things you could realize is that you're not alone.

People who drink to drown their sorrow should be told that sorrow knows how to swim.

Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.

The world of manic depression is a world of bad judgment calls.

The other thing is that if you rely solely on medication to manage depression or anxiety, for example, you have done nothing to train the mind, so that when you come off the medication, you are just as vulnerable to a relapse as though you had never taken the medication.

Depression runs in my family on both sides, and I have to be wary.

At times, I feel overwhelmed and my depression leads me into darkness.

When I diagnose my depression now, I think it was partially about saying goodbye to these kids that I always expected to have but already knew that I wouldn't.

That terrible mood of depression of whether it's any good or not is what is known as The Artist's Reward.

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

Depression is rage spread thin.

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

The nearer the dawn the darker the night.

Suffering is but another name for the teaching of experience, which is the parent of instruction and the schoolmaster of life.

Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression. It meets a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts that is something on which to pride yourself but poverty itself is romanticized by fools.

Life begins on the other side of despair.

Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.

Watch out for the joy-stealers: gossip, criticism, complaining, faultfinding, and a negative, judgmental attitude.

I believe that everyone experiences depression to some degree at some time in their lives. And there are probably millions of people who live with a low level of sadness and heaviness day in and day out.

Depression begins with disappointment. When disappointment festers in our soul, it leads to discouragement.

Art saved me; it got me through my depression and self-loathing, back to a place of innocence.

Depression, suffering and anger are all part of being human.

I might look successful and happy being in front of you today, but I once suffered from severe depression and was in total despair.

I speak of a clinical depression that is the background of your entire life, a background of anguish and anxiety, a sense that nothing goes well, that pleasure is unavailable and all your strategies collapse.

Certainly there is such a thing as chemical depression, and for that, obviously, there are issues that psychotherapists are much more expert at speaking to, but I think there is a low-grade depression that actually prevails in our society. And most of us feel it.

It is very hard to explain to people who have never known serious depression or anxiety the sheer continuous intensity of it. There is no off switch.

Depression taught me the importance of compassion and hard work, and that you can overcome enormous obstacles.

I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.

Losing your life is not the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing is to lose your reason for living.

A depressing and difficult passage has prefaced every page I have turned in life.

No storm, not even the one in your life, can last forever. The storm is just passing over.

Depression is, in part, grief for your own life not turning out how it should; grief for your own needs not being met.

Love your future more than your past.

The shadows are as important as the light.

The fundamental delusion -- there is something out there that will make me happy and fulfilled forever.

And once the storm is over, you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in.

We cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever. We must stand up and move on to the next action.

Depression is a kind of constricted consciousness.

Depression is a medical condition. We need to create a world where people are as comfortable seeking care for their minds as they are for their bodies.

Depressed means you need deep rest from the character you've been playing in the world.

Make peace with your past so it won't destroy your present.

Step out of the history that is holding you back. Step into the new story you are willing to create.

I have never felt so much pain in my life. It was tough for me to even get out of bed and I had days when I couldn't walk, let alone write a rhyme.

I need one of those long hugs where you kinda forget whatever else is happening around you for minute.

Nothing changes if nothing changes.

I need a break from my own thoughts.

Numb the dark and you numb the light.

To heal a wound you must stop scratching it.

Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.

Don't attack your problems. Face them, confess them, understand what they are. That is the process.

Nothing has a hold on your mind that you cannot break free of.

I was only able to start changing my life when I realized my depression was not a malfunction. It's a signal. Your depression is a signal. It's telling you something.

Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.

Every thought a person dwells upon, whether he expresses it or not, either damages or improves his life.

Suffering is an indication of ignorance, but in seeking an escape from suffering you are only nourishing ignorance.

Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering.

Despair can never be dissolved through escape, but by observing it.

We must abandon completely the notion of blaming the past for any kind of situation we're in.

Meditation can and will order your thinking and therefore your mind. As we heal the wounded places in our minds, we grow.

The scrutiny that young people face on social media can lead to anxiety, depression, and even suicidal thoughts.

As kids become more depressed and anxious, limiting screen time is not enough. Kids need less homework and fewer tests, longer recesses and lunches, more socioemotional learning, more unstructured, unscheduled time to play.

One swallow does not make a summer, neither does one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.

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

I was so scared to give up depression, fearing that somehow the worst part of me was actually all of me.

The five stages -- denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance -- are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost. They are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief.

Anger is energizing. The opposite of anger is depression, which is anger turned inward.

The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.

Things like depression and obesity are global challenges.

Depression doesn't take away your talents--it just makes them harder to find.

You don't have to control your thoughts; you just have to stop letting them control you.

I am living in a nightmare, from which from time to time I wake in sleep.

No sin is necessarily connected with sorrow of heart, for Jesus Christ our Lord once said, "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death." There was no sin in Him, and consequently none in His deep depression.

Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.

Depression is a prison where you are both the suffering prisoner and the cruel jailer.

I have never been remotely ashamed of having been depressed. Never. What's to be ashamed of? I went through a really rough time and I am quite proud that I got out of that.

Every act of life, from the morning toothbrush to the friend at dinner, became an effort. I hated the night when I couldn't sleep and I hated the day because it went toward night.

Depression is inertia.

What happens to the wide-eyed observer when the window between reality and unreality breaks and the glass begins to fly?

Where there is a lack of rest, there is an abundance of stress.

When I am attached by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.

Because wherever I sat--on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok--I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.

We don't have a great war in our generation, or a great depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a great revolution against the culture. The great depression is our lives. We have a spiritual depression.

There's nothing wrong with you that a little Prozac and a polo mallet can't cure.

There is no normal life that is free of pain. It's the very wrestling with our problems that can be the impetus for our growth.

When people don't know exactly what depression is, they can be judgmental.

Keep yourself busy if you want to avoid depression. For me, inactivity is the enemy.

Depression is the inability to construct a future.

Do not brood over your past mistakes and failures as this will only fill your mind with grief, regret and depression. Do not repeat them in the future.

Depression, for me, has been a couple of different things - but the first time I felt it, I felt helpless, hopeless, and things I had never felt before. I lost myself and my will to live.

I found that with depression, one of the most important things you could realise is that you're not alone.

Mental illness lives all around us every day. I've seen it in other family members, I've seen it in friends, and I've dealt with it myself with my own postpartum depression.

Mental health can be just as important as physical health - and major depression is one of the most commonly diagnosed mental illnesses.

Perhaps the saddest irony of depression is that suicide happens when the patient gets a little better and can again function sufficiently.

A lot of people don't realize that depression is an illness. I don't wish it on anyone, but if they would know how it feels, I swear they would think twice before they just shrug it.

It's really easy to slide into a depression fueled by the pointlessness of existence.

Human bodies are designed for regular physical activity. The sedentary nature of much of modern life probably plays a significant role in the epidemic incidence of depression today. Many studies show that depressed patients who stick to a regimen of aerobic exercise improve as much as those treated with medication.

Concern should drive us into action, not into a depression.

It's often difficult for those who are lucky enough to have never experienced what true depression is to imagine a life of complete hopelessness, emptiness and fear.

I often say that the opposite of depression is not happiness but vitality.

Time spent in nature is the most cost-effective and powerful way to counteract the burnout and sort of depression that we feel when we sit in front of a computer all day.

Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.

As I kept having episodes of depression, I realized that it was not a one-off: that I had, well, not a disease, really - more an illness.

My recovery from manic depression has been an evolution, not a sudden miracle.

Until you've had depression I don't think you're qualified to talk about it.

I suffer from deep depression, so my only release is music.

We live in a society bloated with data yet starved for wisdom. We're connected 24/7, yet anxiety, fear, depression and loneliness is at an all-time high. We must course-correct.

A big part of depression is feeling really lonely, even if you're in a room full of a million people.

I wanted to write a story about my struggles with depression and mental health. It's an issue that needs to be talked about more.

Depression isn't about, 'Woe is me, my life is this, that and the other', it's like having the worst flu all day that you just can't kick.

Being in good physical shape is the best way to combat depression. You just have endorphins running around your body. It is the best anti-depressive that there is.

I've had some dark nights of the soul, of course, but giving in to depression would be a sellout, a defeat.

Depression is so treacherous - it can be so alluring as well as punishing. After all, it's yours and yours alone - no one else can interfere with it.

Every age yearns for a more beautiful world. The deeper the desperation and the depression about the confusing present, the more intense that yearning.

You take the negative, the bitter, the pain, the suffering, the depression, and all of those are ingredients for something far more purposeful than you can imagine.

They say depression is just anger turned inward. Sometimes I turn it outwards, sometimes I turn it inward, but I know it's about self-worth.

Never once, during any of my bouts of depression, had I been inclined or able to pick up a telephone and ask a friend for help. It wasn't in me.

Depression can seem worse than terminal cancer, because most cancer patients feel loved and they have hope and self-esteem.

Depression, as far as I'm concerned, is just a waste of time.

Depression is a leading cause of ill health and disability, and many do not have access to mental health services and face significant social stigma around their disease.

Oh yes, I certainly have low days. I feel that in treating the depression, it's not so much that I've become happier as it is that I can be unhappy in better ways.

There is a very moving and ancient connection between cancer and depression.

Oddly, I believe that emotional proximity we feel to close loved ones makes it hard to be honest with them about feelings of depression.

When you study postpartum depression, there is a very clear understanding that in communities where you see more support, there is less depression.

This is what I am. I have periods of enormous self-destructive depression, where I go completely off my trolley and lose all sight of reality and reason.

I suppose I'm interested in sorrow, which is very different from depression or despair. Sorrow is continuous with the world; it allows for creativity.

For many people who face anxieties, depression, trauma or grief that dominate their lives, a vital source of support may be a counsellor or psychotherapist.

Massage therapy has been shown to relieve depression, especially in people who have chronic fatigue syndrome; other studies also suggest benefit for other populations.

The best way to get out of depression is to work out.

Unfortunately, I think depression and anxiety are really hard to live with. And what people don't need is to feel bad about themselves because they decide to go on medication.

I think most human beings go through some sort of depression in their life. And if they don't, I think that's weird.

When I was suffering with depression, people weren't talking about depression. It had a stigma.

While the line between stress, deep anxiety, and depression often blurs, most entrepreneurs struggle with broad mental health issues at various points in their lives.

We don't know why, but pancreatic cancer has a very interesting physiological link to depression. There seems to be a deep link, and we don't know what it is.

When you're on the verge of depression, a good leveller is to put one foot in front of the other and do some manual labour.

Depression is something that makes you lose your sight.

The thing with depression is you don't realise you have it and even when you do you don't want to realise you have it.

Thinking about death makes you analyse what life is. Anxiety makes you curious, and curiosity leads to understanding. I wouldn't be a writer without depression.

I want to help people with depression understand that there is hope, so that they can get the help they need to live rich, fulfilling lives.

Do I wish I had never endured postpartum depression? Absolutely. But to deny the experience is to deny who I am.

My depression is not something very special. A lot of people go through depression. My divorce is not something very special; a lot of people go through divorce.

We know how to treat depression, we know how to treat mental illness, and we have not had the political will in our country to make it happen.

Just like other illnesses, depression can be treated so that people can live happy, active lives.

Depression can take you into a black hole, so it is terrible.

Depression is like the worst disease you can get. It's devastating.

Many people think that depression is something you just have to live with when you get older, but it's not.

The reason so many intelligent and creative people suffer from depression is that when you take the risk of being fully conscious, you open Pandora's box, and you can't close it again.

We expect well-informed treatment for cancer or heart disease; it matters no less for depression.

Many of depression's symptoms - exhaustion, insomnia, nausea, headaches, weight loss, weight gain - are physical ailments.

Depression is incredibly pervasive and thus important to talk about.

If you look at suicides, most of them are connected to depression. And the mental health system just fails them. It's so sad. We know what to do. We just don't do it.

The more choices we give patients affected by depression, the better we will serve them.

This might be controversial, but sometimes I think that being happy is a decision. I don't mean that in a way to diminish clinical depression. But on a more day-to-day level.

Getting better from depression demands a lifelong commitment. I've made that commitment for my life's sake and for the sake of those who love me.

I've had a tremendous problem with depression in my life. I'd rather not talk about it, because it's over. But depression is real.

Depression has existed as long as mankind itself, and certainly well before psychiatry, antidepressant medication, or the nation of America itself came into being.

Depression is when you have lots of love, but no one's taking.

It does not mean you're broken to have depression and anxiety. I would encourage you to speak out. Don't hold it inside. Talk to friends. Talk to parents. If it's available, go to a therapist.

I think I'm afraid of being happy because whenever I get too happy something bad always happens.

No matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.

Depression isn't just being a bit sad. It's feeling nothing. It's not wanting to be alive anymore.

There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.

I may have looked happy but inside I was hopelessly depressed.

The hardest thing about depression is that it is addictive. It begins to feel uncomfortable not to be depressed. You feel guilty for feeling happy.

Depression is about as close as you get to somewhere between dead and alive, and it's the worst.

Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.

In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

Depression on my left, Loneliness on my right. They don't need to show me thier badges. I know these guys very well.

If you're going through hell, keep going.

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

Depression is like a bruise that never goes away. A bruise in your mind. You just got to be careful not to touch it where it hurts. It's always there, though.

Depression is not sobbing and crying and giving vent, it is plain and simple reduction of feeling.

Instead of seeing depression as a dysfunction, it is a functioning phenomenon. It stops you cold, sets you down, makes you damn miserable.

Living with depression is like trying to keep your balance while you dance with a goat -- it is perfectly sane to prefer a partner with a better sense of balance.

It is in the middle of misery that so much becomes clear. The one who says, 'Nothing good came of this' is not yet listening.

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

Passion is the force that springs an artist from the needling cushion of depression.

Life isn't finding shelter in the storm. It's about learning to dance in the rain.

The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.

There are no windows within the dark house of depression through which to see others, only mirrors.

Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.

Depression is anger slowed down; panic is grief speeded up.

Depression is the flaw in love. To be creatures who love, we must be creatures who can despair at what we lose, and depression is the mechanism of that despair.

Just remember that the darkest night did not turn out all the stars.

Mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from natural experience, the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain.

Grief is depression in proportion to circumstance; depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance.

What uniform can I wear to hide my heavy heart? It is too heavy. It will always show.

In my experience the best way to beat depression is to get involved in something inspiring.

If you suffer from depression, anything that makes you feel has to the most important thing in your life, because it's the only thing that can save you.

Sharing our depressions felt like having survived a war. The experience bonds you to the other person for life.

It's hard to be a friend to someone who's depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest, and best things you will ever do.

There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.

To perceive is to suffer.

The only way to escape the abyss is to look at it, gauge it, sound it out and descend into it.

Human misery must somewhere have a stop; there is no wind that always blows a storm.

We are all spirits. We get depressed. But music makes you want to live. I know my music has saved my life.

In a strange way, I had fallen in love with my depression.

It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul.

The sun stopped shining for me is all. The whole story is: I am sad. I am sad all the time and the sadness is so heavy that I can't get away from it. Not ever.

You say you're 'depressed' - all i see is resilience. You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn't mean you're defective - it just means you're human.

If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath.

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.

"I'm fine. Well, I'm not fine - I'm here."
"Is there something wrong with that?"
"Absolutely."

If I can't feel, if I can't move, if I can't think, and I can't care, then what conceivable point is there in living?

Maybe we all have darkness inside of us and some of us are better at dealing with it than others.

Mental illness is so much more complicated than any pill that any mortal could invent.

You're like a grey sky. You're beautiful, even though you don't want to be.

Depression isn't a war you win. It's a battle you fight every day. You never stop, never get to rest. It's one bloody fray after another.

Depression is melancholy minus its charms.

I will be stronger than my sadness.

I saw the world in black and white instead of the vibrant colours and shades I knew existed.

Anyone who has actually been that sad can tell you that there's nothing beautiful or literary or mysterious about depression.

If you trade your authenticity for safety, you may experience the following: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, addiction, rage, blame, resentment, and inexplicable grief.

The sadness of the world has different ways of getting to people, but it seems to succeed almost every time.

The monsters were never
under my bed.
Because the monsters
were inside my head.

I fear no monsters,
for no monsters I see.
Because all this time
the monster has been me.

Those with a grateful mindset tend to see the message in the mess. And even though life may knock them down, the grateful find reasons, if even small ones, to get up.

Sometimes I wonder if my heart is like a black hole--it's so dense that there's no room for light, but that doesn't mean it can't still suck me in.

She wondered that hope was so much harder then despair.

I wonder if that's how darkness wins, by convincing us to trap it inside ourselves, instead of emptying it out.
I don't want it to win.

I have been waiting for death all my life. I do not mean that I actively wish to die, just that I do not really want to be alive.

Depression is a physical illness.

If you know someone who's depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn't a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather.