Occasional moments of depression and persistent negative moods can feel like a heavy burden. It seems like a dark shadow has slowly but steadily crept over your entire life, influencing each area in a negative way. And even though you may feel as if you are facing your struggle entirely alone, there are many other individuals confronted with similar problems. Acknowledging the symptoms and developing a better understanding of the potential root causes are essential steps to start the journey of recovery. To help you in your healing process, we’ve collected the following inspirational depression quotes from individuals who were confronted with similar challenges. Be sure to also have a look at our positive quotes to lift you up and life is beautiful quotes.
Depression is a multifaceted phenomenon that comes with many different symptoms. In many cases, people describe feelings of inner emptiness, grief, loneliness, but also anxiety, and hopelessness.
“Whether we have it all or we have nothing, we are all faced with the same obstacles: sadness, loss, illness, dying and death. If we are to strive as human beings to gain more wisdom, more kindness, and more compassion, we must have the intention to grow as a lotus and open each petal one by one.”
Goldie Hawn
Feeling a little sad every once in a while does not automatically mean that someone is suffering from depression. Quite the contrary, in the daily roller coaster we call life, it is natural to experience a wide range of emotions from positive to negative ones.
Have a look at our collection of inspirational depression quotes to lift you up
These varying feelings are a part of life and help us to appreciate and cherish the good times in life even more. At the same time, a depression is a lot more serious. It can be described as lasting feelings of deep-seated pessimism, emptiness, and anxiety.
101 Uplifting Depression Quotes to Cheer You up
The truly helpful aspect of reading inspirational quotes about depression is that they were written by individuals who themselves had to face similar struggles. For this reason, their insightful depression and anxiety quotes can prove to be a helpful guide for navigating the states of intense pessimism or anxiety.
Here’s our collection of inspirational quotes for depression:
1.
“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.”
Stephen Fry
2.
“Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”
John Keats
3.
“Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.”
Clive Barker
4.
“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all, you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going. Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
5.
“I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.”
Og Mandino
6.
“There are moments when I wish I could roll back the clock and take all the sadness away, but I have the feeling that if I did, the joy would be gone as well.”
Nicholas Sparks
7.
“In times of pain, when the future is too terrifying to contemplate and the past too painful to remember, I have learned to pay attention to right now. The precise moment I was in was always the only safe place for me.”
Julia Cameron
8.
“Keep yourself busy if you want to avoid depression. For me, inactivity is the enemy.”
Matt Lucas
9.
“When you are depressed, you need the love of other people, and yet depression fosters actions that destroy that love. Depressed people often stick pins into their own life rafts. The conscious mind can intervene. One is not helpless.”
Andrew Solomon
10.
“My scars remind me that I did indeed survive my deepest wounds. That in itself is an accomplishment. And they bring to mind something else, too. They remind me that the damage life has inflicted on me has, in many places, left me stronger and more resilient. What hurt me in the past has actually made me better equipped to face the present.”
Steve Goodier
11.
“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.”
David Mitchell
12.
“Listen to the people who love you. Believe that they are worth living for even when you don’t believe it. Seek out the memories depression takes away and project them into the future. Be brave; be strong; take your pills. Exercise because it’s good for you even if every step weighs a thousand pounds. Eat when food itself disgusts you. Reason with yourself when you have lost your reason.”
Andrew Solomon
13.
“Some days are just bad days, that’s all. You have to experience sadness to know happiness, and I remind myself that not every day is going to be a good day, that’s just the way it is!”
Dita Von Teese
14.
“Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.”
Viktor E. Frankl
15.
“What makes night within us may leave stars.”
Victor Hugo
16.
“Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.”
Thich Nhat Hanh
17.
“Even if happiness forgets you a little bit, never completely forget about it.”
Jacques Prevert
18.
“A pearl is a beautiful thing that is produced by an injured life. It is the tear from the injury of the oyster. The treasure of our being in this world is also produced by an injured life. If we had not been wounded, if we had not been injured, then we will not produce the pearl.”
Stephan Hoeller
19.
“We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.”
Martin Luther King
20.
“Suffering has been stronger than all other teachings and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.”
Charles Dickens
21.
“He knows not his own strength who hath not met adversity.”
William Samuel Johnson
22.
“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
Helen Keller
23.
“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.”
Steve Maraboli
24.
“A positive attitude gives you power over your circumstances instead of your circumstances having power over you.”
Joyce Meyer
25.
“Tough times never last, but tough people do.”
Robert H. Schuller
26.
“I didn’t want to wake up. I was having a much better time asleep. And that’s really sad. It was almost like a reverse nightmare, like when you wake up from a nightmare you’re so relieved. I woke up into a nightmare.”
Ned Vizzini
27.
“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
28.
“I’ve learned that everything happens for a reason, every event has a why and all adversity teaches us a lesson… Never regret your past. Accept it as the teacher that it is.”
Robin Sharma
29.
“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on.”
Robert Frost
30.
“The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.”
Victor Hugo
31.
“Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.”
Dodie Smith
32.
“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.”
Greenville Kleisser
33.
“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”
Richard Bach
34.
“Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.”
Michael Jordan
35.
“Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.”
Kahlil Gibran
36.
“You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.”
Margaret Thatcher
37.
“There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.”
Laurell K. Hamilton
38.
“It is only in our darkest hours that we may discover the true strength of the brilliant light within ourselves that can never, ever, be dimmed.”
Doe Zantamata
39.
“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
40.
“It’s not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them, I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.”
Stephen Fry
41.
“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
42.
“If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath.”
Amit Ray
43.
A big part of being a well-adjusted person is accepting that you can’t be good at everything.”
Kelly Williams Brown
44.
“Once you choose hope, anything is possible.”
Christopher Reeve
45.
“I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment, and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew. I had to experience despair, I had to sink to the greatest mental depths, to thoughts of suicide, in order to experience grace.”
Hermann Hesse
46.
“In times of great stress or adversity, it’s always best to keep busy, to plow your anger and your energy into something positive.”
Lee Iacocca
47.
“There is some kind of sweet innocence in being human- in not having to be just happy or just sad- in the nature of being able to be both broken and whole, at the same time.”
C. Joybell
48.
“You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
T.H. White
49.
“Sadness flies away on the wings of time.”
Jean de La Fontaine
50.
“Every adversity, every failure, and every heartache carries with it the seed of an equivalent or a greater benefit.”
Napoleon Hill
51.
“Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way.”
Leroy Satchel Paige
52.
“When you’re lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you’ve just wandered off the path, that you’ll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it’s time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don’t even know from which direction the sun rises anymore.”
Elizabeth Gilbert
53.
“We must understand that sadness is an ocean, and sometimes we drown, while other days we are forced to swim.”
R.M. Drake
54.
“Sometimes I just think depression’s one way of coping with the world. Like, some people get drunk, some people do drugs, some people get depressed. Because there’s so much stuff out there that you have to do something to deal with it.”
Ned Vizzini
55.
“The best way to get rid of the pain is to feel the pain. And when you feel the pain and go beyond it, you’ll see there’s a very intense love that is wanting to awaken itself.”
Deepak Chopra
56.
“Depression is the most unpleasant thing I have ever experienced. . . . It is that absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be cheerful again. The absence of hope. That very deadened feeling, which is so very different from feeling sad. Sad hurts but it’s a healthy feeling. It is a necessary thing to feel. Depression is very different.”
J.K. Rowling
57.
“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
58.
“Tears are words that need to be written.”
Paulo Coelho
59.
“You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.”
Jonathan Safran Foer
60.
“I learned there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead, others come from behind. But I’ve bought a big bat. I’m all ready, you see. Now my troubles are going to have trouble with me.”
Dr. Seuss
61.
“We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.”
Kenji Miyazawa
62.
“Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.”
William Hazlitt
63.
“Man is fond of counting his troubles but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up, as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
64.
“Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.”
Sigmund Freud
65.
“Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.”
William James
66.
“Rocks in my pathI keep them all. With them I shall build my castle.”
Nemo Nox
67.
“It is important not to suppress your feelings altogether when you are depressed. It is equally important to avoid terrible arguments or expressions of outrage. You should steer clear of emotionally damaging behavior.”
Andrew Solomon
68.
“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.”
Cynthia Occelli
69.
“Maybe we all have darkness inside of us and some of us are better at dealing with it than others.”
Jasmine Warga
70.
“Beware trying to iron out all your quirks, perceived flaws, and doubts. It’s often these things that help you find strength, compassion, empathy for others and heart.”
Rasheed Ogunlaru
71.
“Strength doesn’t come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldn’t.”
Rikki Rogers
72.
“Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world.”
Albert Camus
73.
“But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
74.
“Experiencing sadness and anger can make you feel more creative, and by being creative you can get beyond your pain or negativity.”
Yoko Ono
75.
“Pain is a pesky part of being human, I’ve learned it feels like a stab wound to the heart, something I wish we could all do without, in our lives here. Pain is a sudden hurt that can’t be escaped. But then I have also learned that because of pain, I can feel the beauty, tenderness, and freedom of healing.”
C. JoyBell C.
76.
“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it, there are many dark places; but still, there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
77.
“If you don’t like something change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.”
Mary Engelbreit
78.
“There is a time in life when you expect the world to be always full of new things. And then comes a day when you realize that is not how it will be at all. You see that life will become a thing made of holes. Absences. Losses. Things that were there and are no longer. And you realize, too, that you have to grow around and between the gaps, […]”
Helen Macdonald
79.
“Without the dark, we’d never see the stars.”
Stephenie Meyer
80.
“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
81.
“Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley
82.
“Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, ‘This is the real me,’ and when you have found that attitude, follow it.”
William James
83.
“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
84.
“Even from a dark night, songs of beauty can be born.”
Mary Anne Radmacher
85.
“Have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them — every day begin the task anew.”
Saint Francis de Sales
86.
“When life is sweet, say thank you and celebrate. And when life is bitter, say thank you and grow.”
Shauna Niequist
87.
“There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
Albert Einstein
88.
“We are not to blame for our illness, but we are responsible for our health.”
Victoria Maxwell
89.
“It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.”
Isaac Asimov
90.
“There are far, far better things ahead than anything we leave behind.”
C. S. Lewis
91.
“Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”
St. Francis of Assisi
92.
“When one door closes, another opens. But we often look so regretfully upon the closed door that we don’t see the one that has opened for us.”
Alexander Graham Bell
93.
“Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”
Alexander Pope
94.
“The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can change his life by changing his attitude of mind.”
William James
95.
“The greatest degree of inner tranquility comes from the development of love and compassion. The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being.”
Tenzin Gyatso
96.
“Action is the antidote to despair.”
Joan Baez
97.
“The word ‘happy’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.”
Carl Jung
98.
“There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
99.
“The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.”
Epicetus
100.
“Sadness gives depth. Happiness gives height. Sadness gives roots. Happiness gives branches. Happiness is like a tree going into the sky, and sadness is like the roots going down into the womb of the earth. Both are needed, and the higher a tree goes, the deeper it goes, simultaneously. The bigger the tree, the bigger will be its roots. In fact, it is always in proportion. That’s its balance.”
Osho
101.
“Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.”
Madeleine L’Engle
I hope you enjoyed this collection of uplifting and positive depression quotes.
Stay victorious!
