On darker days, it's helpful to have mantras (or meditation apps) that can bring you up from a spell of low mood. Fortunately, the following editor-approved depression and anxiety quotes might ease just a little bit of the burden you're facing. But, trust us, we (and the writers on the slides to follow) know it's hard.
Learning how to deal with anxiety or fight depression takes daily effort, particularly if outside factors exacerbate your anxiety or depression (or both). However, with a slight change of perspective, these sayings could quiet your mind or remind you that what you're feeling is normal and not permanent.
These quotes can be used for yourself, shared on social media, sent to a friend, or used on a letterboard as a more permanent reminder that managing your thoughts can help manage your mood. So pick your favorites and keep them handy the next time you need a little mental boost.
Remember, if your anxiety or depression feels unmanageable, it's important to first turn to family, friends, or professionals for help: The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's National Helpline—1-800-662-HELP (4357)—is available 24/7, 365 days a year for treatment referral and information, if you need it.
“We must have pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.”
—David Mamet
“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.”
—Virginia Woolf
“Depression is the soul’s way of telling you to change something in your life, not to cut your own bangs.”
—John Fugelsang
“You are flesh and blood! And you deserve to be loved and you deserve what you are given. And oh, how much!”
—Florence & the Machine, “Third Eye”
“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”
—Anne Lamott
“Sadness is more or less like a head cold – with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees
“Sometimes I feel sad for no reason, but then I remember: A few reasons.”
—Aparna Nancherla
“I’ve never really thought of myself as depressed so much as paralyzed by hope.”
—Maria Bamford
“Give your stress wings and let it fly.”
—Terri Guillemets
“The things we fear the most have already happened to us.”
—Robin Williams
“No one knows that you cry, but you don’t tell anyone that you might not be the golden one. And you’re tied together with a smile, but you’re becoming undone.”
—Taylor Swift, “Tied Together With a Smile”
“You’ll never find a rainbow if you’re looking down.”
—Charlie Chaplin
"Maybe there's a way out of the cage where you live. Maybe one of these days you can let the light in. Show me how big your brave is."
– Sara Bareilles, “Brave”
"You're like a grey sky. You're beautiful, even though you don't want to be."
– Jasmine Warga, My Heart and Other Black Holes
"Worrying is carrying tomorrow's load with today's strength—carrying two days at once. It is moving into tomorrow ahead of time. Worrying doesn't empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength."
– Corrie Ten Boom
“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear.”
—C.S. Lewis
“A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight.”
– Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation
“You’ve gotta swim and swim when it hurts. The whole world is watching. You haven’t come this far to fall off the earth.”
—Andrew McMahon, “Swim”
“A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety.”
—Aesop
“Today, it’s like there’s rock bottom, 50 feet of crap, then me.”
—Rachel, Friends
"Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine."
– Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
"Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad."
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"You must hold your quiet center, where you do what only you can do."
– Ha Jin, "A Center"
"Anxiety's like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you very far."
– Jodi Picoult, Sing You Home
"Sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness, to put a hand on its brow of the flower and retell it in words and in touch it is lovely until it flowers again from within."
– Galway Kinnell, "Saint Francis and the Sow"
"You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn't mean you're defective—it just means you're human."
– David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
"'Hope' is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all. "
– Emily Dickinson, "'Hope' is the thing with feathers – (314)"
"Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems."
– Epictetus
"Dance until your bones clatter. What a prize you are. What a lucky sack of stars."
– Gabrielle Calvocoressi, "At Last the New Arriving"
"If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath."
– Amit Ray, Om Chanting and Meditation
"Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom."
– Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin
"Life is 10 percent what you experience and 90 percent how you respond to it."
– Dorothy M. Neddermeyer