Feeling down? Are you tired of people telling you to cheer up? Well, we have 100 depression quotes you can ruminate over without judgement.
View in gallery
Sometimes it feels good to wallow in our depression. Whether it’s temporary, or something we suffer with each day. When we know that others feel a similar way, we feel less alone.
And loneliness is a big factor in why people suffer from acute depression. But even if you live day in and day out with depression, it helps to know you’re not alone in your struggle.
So, if you find yourself feeling down. Or if you struggle with depression throughout life, take some time and read this list of 100 depression quotes.
And remember, you’re not alone in this.
Jump to the appropriate depression quotes:
20 Depression Quotes
View in gallery
When you struggle with depression, it can be difficult to push through the monotony of life. Many people try to mask this depression by keeping a busy schedule. Or hiding behind humor.
But the truth is, depression is all too common.
Here, we have 20 depression quotes that will help you feel seen.
1. 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. – Stephen Fry
2. 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. – Aristotle
3. 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 – Elizabeth Wurtzel
4. 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. – Sylvia Plath
5. I think the saddest people always try their hardest to make people happy because they know what it’s like to feel absolutely worthless, and they don’t want anyone else to feel like that. – Robin Williams
6. The thing about depression is that, if you’re not the one who’s actually suffering from it, there’s very little you can do to be proactive. If someone in your family is depressed, all you can really do is send them to a shrink, get them their meds, be gentle, and wait. – Sarah Silverman
7. 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. – Søren Kierkegaard
8. Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: It is easier to say ‘My tooth is aching’ than to say ‘My heart is broken. – . C.S. Lewis
9. And sometimes when you’re on, you’re really fucking on. And your friends, they sing along, and they love you. But the lows are so extreme that the good seems fucking cheap. And it teases you for weeks in its absence. – Rilo Kiley
10. Even when I try to stir myself up, I just get irritated because I can’t make anything come out. And in the middle of the night I lie here thinking about all this. If I don’t get back on track somehow, I’m dead, that’s the sense I get. There isn’t a single strong emotion inside me. – Banana Yoshimoto
11. 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. – Susan Polis Schutz
12. That’s what I do: I make coffee and occasionally succumb to suicidal nihilism. But you shouldn’t worry — poetry is still first. Cigarettes and alcohol follow. – Anne Sexton
13. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul. – Pablo Neruda
14. You begin to forget what it means to live. You forget things, you forget that you used to feel all right, you forget what it means to feel alright. Because you feel like shit all the time, and you can’t remember what it was like before. People take the feeling of ‘full’ for granted. – Marya Hornbacher
15. Depression presents itself as a realism regarding the rottenness of the world in general. And the rottenness of your life in particular. But the realism is merely a mask for depression’s actual essence. Which is an overwhelming estrangement for humanity. – Jonathan Franzen
16. I don’t want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn. And nothingness washing over me like a sluggish wave. Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. I have done something wrong. Something so huge I can’t even see it. Something that’s drowning me. I am inadequate and stupid. Without worth. I might as well be dead. – Margaret Atwood
17. 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. – Matt Haig
18. 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
19. 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. – Shaun David Hutchinson
20. Anyone who has actually been that sad can tell you that there’s nothing beautiful or literary or mysterious about depression. – Jasmine Warga
15 Inspirational Quotes for Depression
View in gallery
When you’re struggling with depression, it gets difficult to find inspiration in life. Everything begins to look bleak. And even hopeless.
So, we have 15 inspirational quotes for depression to help inspire you to keep fighting.
1. There is hope, even when your brain tells you there isn’t. – John Green
2. Even if happiness forgets you a little bit, never completely forget about it. – Jacques Prevert
3. If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person. – Fred Rogers
4. No matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back. – Albert Camus
5. Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I’m not going to make it, but you laugh inside – remembering all the times you’ve felt that way. – Charles Bukowski
6. Courage does not always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow. – Mary Anne Radmacher
7. Your presence can give happiness. I hope you remember that. – Kim Seokjin
8. Never, never underestimate the power of desire. If you want to live badly enough, you can live. The great question, at least for me, was: How do I decide I want to live? – Marya Hornbacher
9. Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. – Leonard Cohen
10. Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase. – Martin Luther King Jr.
11. Do not wait until the conditions are perfect to begin. Beginning makes the conditions perfect. – Alan Cohen
12. Don’t be afraid if things seem difficult in the beginning. That’s only the initial impression. The important thing is not to retreat; you have to master yourself. – Olga Korbut
13. Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. – Confucius
14. If we live our lives on the superficial level, life becomes depressing. But when we connect with each other from the heart, then that makes life beautiful and authentic. – Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
15. When you’re feeling anxious, remember that you’re still you. You are not anxiety. Whenever you feel otherwise, remember that’s the anxiety talking. You are still you and hold the power in every moment. – Deanne Repich
15 Short Depression Quotes
View in gallery
Sometimes all you need are a few concise words to express your inner thoughts.
And these 15 short depression quotes are perfect for a quick read.
1. Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression. – Dodie Smith
2. I’ll never forget how the depression and loneliness felt good and bad at the same time. Still does. – Henry Rollins
3. 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. – Nina LaCour
4. I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top. – John Keats
5. There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds. – Laurell K. Hamilton
6. Sometimes, all you can do is lie in bed and hope to fall asleep before you fall apart. – William C. Hannan
7. When people don’t know exactly what depression is, they can be judgmental – Marion Cotillard
8. I saw the world in black and white instead of the vibrant colors and shades I knew existed. – Katie McGarry
9. 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? – Kay Redfield Jamison
10. When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune. – Albert Camus
11. Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. – Theodore Roosevelt
12. The best way out is always through. – Robert Frost
13. If all you can do is crawl, start crawling. – Rumi
14. You will never understand the hell I feel inside my head. – Priyanshu Singh
15. 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. – Pete Wentz
10 Heartbroken Depression Quotes
View in gallery
When you experience heartbreak, the aftermath never truly leaves. You’re left aching for something that no longer exists. And oftentimes, depression follows.
Related Reading: Best Forgiveness Quotes
Even though moving on is possible, the loss will linger for some time.
So, if you need to revel in the pain, we have 10 heartbroken depression quotes before you put the pieces back together.
1. And I felt like my heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably broken that there could be no real joy again. That at best there might eventually be a little contentment. Everyone wanted me to get help and rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on. And I tried to, I wanted to. But I just had to lie in the mud with my arms wrapped around myself, eyes closed, grieving. Until I didn’t have to anymore. – Anne Lamott
2. Stab the body and it heals, but injure the heart and the wound lasts a lifetime. – Mineko Iwasaki
3. Don’t leave me, even for an hour, because then the little drops of anguish will all run together, the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift into me, choking my lost heart. – Pablo Neruda
4. Hearts can break. Yes, hearts can break. Sometimes I think it would be better if we died when they did, but we don’t. – Stephen King
5. Do you know what hurts so very much? It’s love. Love is the strongest force in the world, and when it is blocked that means pain. There are two things we can do when this happens. We can kill that love so that it stops hurting. But then of course part of us dies, too. – Corrie ten Boom
6. Tears come from the heart and not from the brain. – Leonardo da Vinci
7. Heavy hearts, like heavy clouds in the sky, are best relieved by the letting of a little water. – Christopher Morely
8. 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. – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
9. I am not a broken heart. I am not collarbones. Or drunken letters never sent. I am not the way I leave or left or didn’t know how to handle anything, at any time. And I am not your fault. – Charlotte Eriksson
10. Moving on isn’t about not loving someone anymore and forgetting them. It’s about having the strength to say I still love you, but you’re not worth this pain. – Ritu Ghatourey
10 Sad Quotes About Life
View in gallery
Life can be exhausting. Even for those neurotypical folks.
But if you suffer from depression, or mental illness, your day to day life can feel impossible to endure.
And these 10 depression quotes about life will illuminate the struggle people with depression struggle with each day.
1. Understanding the difference between healthy striving and perfectionism is critical to laying down the shield and picking up your life. Research shows that perfectionism hampers success. In fact, it’s often the path to depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis. – Brené Brown
2. The sadness of the world has different ways of getting to people, but it seems to succeed almost every time. – Louis-Ferdinand Céline
3. I am living in a nightmare, from which from time to time I wake in sleep. – Ursula K. Le Guin
4. I felt exhausted, and worried, and friendless and hopeless and everything-else-less. – Philip Pullman
5. Anxiety’s like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you very far. – Jodi Picoult
6. Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of ‘the overcoming’ of it. – Helen Keller
7. Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn’t stop for anybody. – Stephen Chbosky
8. As the light begins to intensify, so does my misery, and I wonder how it is possible to hurt so much when nothing is wrong. – Tabitha Suzuma
9. Grief is the price we pay for love. – Queen Elizabeth II
10. I found that with depression, one of the most important things you could realize is that you’re not alone. – Dwayne Johnson
10 Deep Depression Quotes
View in gallery
When you know someone suffering from depression, you might not be able to truly understand what they’re going through.
Related reading: 80 Thought Provoking Questions
However, if you want to have a better understanding of the impact depression can have on a person, take a look at these 10 deep depression quotes.
1. Nothing was slowly clotting my arteries. Nothing slowly numbing my soul. Caught by nothing, saying nothing, nothingness becomes me. When I am nothing they will say surprised in the way that they are forever surprised, “but there was nothing the matter with her. – Jeanette Winterson
2. 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
3. Talk to me about sadness. I talk about it too much in my own head but I never mind others talking about it either; I occasionally feel like I tremendously need others to talk about it as well. – Anne Sexton
4. If you don’t think your anxiety, depression, sadness and stress impact your physical health, think again. All of these emotions trigger chemical reactions in your body, which can lead to inflammation and a weakened immune system. Learn how to cope, sweet friend. There will always be dark days. – Kris Carr
5. It’s depression. You can’t put it into words. You get stuck and time passes by. I’m stood there on the edge of a cliff, can’t go back and can’t go forward. Days go by. I’m still in the same place. Everyone else’s life goes on, but you’re stuck. You try and try and try and I don’t know how, but you came out of it eventually. – Kell Brook
6. Every human walks around with a certain kind of sadness. They may not wear it on their sleeves, but it’s there if you look deep. – Taraji P. Henson
7. You don’t think in depression that you’ve put on a gray veil and are seeing the world through the haze of a bad mood. You think that the veil has been taken away, the veil of happiness, and that now you’re seeing truly. – Andrew Solomon
8. Some days, 24 hours is too much to stay put in, so I take the day hour by hour, moment by moment. I break the task, the challenge, the fear into small, bite-size pieces. I can handle a piece of fear, depression, anger, pain, sadness, loneliness, illness. – Regina Brett
9. I’m broken from the inside. The depression that has slowly eaten away at me has finally consumed me, and I couldn’t beat it. – Kim Jonghyun
10. Depression can seem worse than terminal cancer, because most cancer patients feel loved and they have hope and self-esteem. – David D. Burns
10 Feeling Alone Quotes
View in gallery
Many of us feel alone sometimes. Even when we’re surrounded by other people.
But we’re never alone in feeling alone.
These 10 feeling alone quotes are a testament to the struggle of recognizing that you aren’t alone. And instead are surrounded by people that love you.
1. When the people you love are gone, you’re alone. – Keanu Reeves
2. We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone. – Orson Welles
3. I’m completely alone at a table of friends. I feel nothing for them. I feel nothing. Nothing. – Conor Oberst
4. I finally faced the fact that it isn’t a crime not having friends. Being alone means you have fewer problems. – Whitney Houston
5. I don’t want to be alone, I want to be left alone. – Audrey Hepburn
6. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. – Henry David Thoreau
7. Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying. – Arthur C. Clarke
8. The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared. – Lois Lowry
9. When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives. – George R.R. Martin
10. If one’s different, one’s bound to be lonely. – Aldous Huxley
10 Feeling Lost Quotes
View in gallery
Are you feeling directionless in life? Not sure where to turn?
Or maybe you’ve been so caught up in the monotony of life you feel caught in a rut.
Even parts of life that were once healthy can become weighty. Eventually that leads to a loss of identity. And that’s no way to live.
When you lose sight of yourself and your goals, it’s easy to feel lost.
So, we have 10 quotes that help describe feeling lost.
1. Just because someone stumbles and loses their path, doesn’t mean they’re lost forever. – Charles Xavier
2. I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy. – Franz Kafka
3. When you’re feeling lost, take heart. It’s just your brain gathering the information it needs to make good decisions. – Josh Kaufman
4. New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings. – Lao Tzu
5. Do you know who you are? Don’t ask. Act. Action will delineate and define you. – Thomas Jefferson
6. Feeling lost? Take a dream and convert it into small goals, then start taking the steps to hit those goals. – Dave Ramsey
7. Feeling lost? Good! Now you get to walk new paths that lead to much better places. – Robin S. Sharma
8. The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere. – Michel de Montaigne
9. Everyone goes astray, but the least imprudent are they who repent the soonest. – Voltaire
10. Be brave and take risks. You don’t have to have it all figured out to move forward. – Roy T. Bennett
Overcoming Depression – When to Seek Help
View in gallery
Of course, there’s little harm in ruminating in your depression or trauma on occasion. But if it’s difficult for you to pull yourself out of that dark place, you should communicate that to friends, family, or a medical professional.
While our friends and family can help by giving advice. Or even help you accomplish certain goals in order to reduce your workload. But what really helps people overcome depression is a reputable therapist.
Having someone to talk to is crucial. And knowing that person will be unbiased and is trained to help will make the process a lot easier.
However, if the thought of finding a therapist overwhelms you, ask a loved one to help you make an appointment. And although it might be difficult to ask, think of it as ripping off a bandage.
And remember that when you’re struggling with depression, your best effort will look different each day.
One day, you might be able to accomplish all your goals. Then the next, getting out of bed might seem impossible. But no one should expect the same performance everyday. We’re humans, not robots.
So, be kind to yourself. And ask for help when you need it. Whether you ask a friend, a therapist, or scream into the void of the internet. Reaching out in any capacity can greatly improve your condition.
Depression Quotes: Wrapping Up
Does reading about depression help you keep pushing forward? And what’s your favorite depression quote from our list?
Let us know in the comments!
Or, drop an uplifting word or two for our other readers.
