Anxiety Quotes

Of all the heartache I will ever know, only some of it will be real. The rest, I will create.

~ Crystal Woods

I had the chance to make every possible mistake and figure out a way to recover from it. Once you realize there is life after mistakes, you gain a self-confidence that never goes away.

~ Bob Schieffer

Resilient systems fail gracefully. A perfect system is often most fragile.

~ Andrew Zolli

Quite possibly, this depressive illness was the familiar sort that grew from perfectionist expectations.

~ Paul C. Nagel

I still get plenty anxious. The weird thing, and the unpleasant surprise for me, of proceeding well into the middle, perhaps even post-prime of my career is that writing books has not got any easier. And that doesn't seem fair. I mean, I've been doing it so surely I should be getting better at it, at least a little bit blasé... And it seems to be working absolutely the opposite. This book [Big Brother] I had no confidence in the entirety of its composition, and I only decided I liked it when I finished the very final draft. This means I'm in a state of semi-misery for a long time. And I can't blithely seem either that's some little game I'm playing with myself because, you know, you can easily come along and you don't like what's you're writing for good reason. Right? So, yeah, it's very anxious making, I don't think it's so much the becoming a little more successful, I think it's becoming slightly more aware of how much has already been written, and just becoming less self-impressed as the years go by. More impressed with some people who are better than I am, but... It doesn't wow me that I can write a sentence any more. It has to be a really good sentence. And... I think that's what potentially leads to paralysis in late career, is a kind of killing humility.Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington, DC, on June 11, 2013

~ Lionel Shriver

I feels sorrier for him than anybody I knows. I expect he done read more books than any white man in this town. He done read more books and he done worried about more things. He full of books and worrying. He done lost God and turned his back on religion. His troubles come down just to that.

~ Carson Mccullers

While some select sobering situations may be unlaughable, there are few circumstances that humor, subtle or candid, can't improve. Afterall, remembering not to take ourselves or others too seriously can put a lot of things into perspective. Laughter is healing. Laughter creates bonds and forges enduring friendships. A healthy sense of humor can quell almost any overwhelming anxiety, and can quench the fires of fury and fear unlike anything else when appropriate. Even more so when not.Connie Kerbs

~ Connie Kerbs

️Don't say I'm a worrier and this is just who I am!, or I've always been a worrier, I can't help it; instead decide from this day forward to become someone who DOESN'T worry.

~ Miya Yamanouchi

Our reactions to events is directly promotional to their importance in our life.

~ Sukant Ratnakar

The Admiral so regrets failure, he cannot THINK of success.

~ John Taliaferro

We’re programmed to imagine bad things happening to us, as opposed to good things, even if the good are more likely. It’s kind of a protective pessimism: if we worry about the worst happening, it may miss our door.

~ Ruth Dugdall

Enormity of the stakes became the new self-hypnosis.

~ Barbara W. Tuchman

She was young and scared, and hadn't realized there was time to spare.

~ David Halberstam

Traffic was as much an emotional problem as it was a mechanical one.

~ Tom Vanderbilt

They were trying to orchestrate a revolution, which almost by definition generated a sense of collective trauma that defied any semblance of coherence and control. If we wish to rediscover the psychological context of the major players in Philadelphia, we need to abandon our hindsight omniscience and capture their mentality as they negotiated the unknown.

~ Joseph J. Ellis

I rather be a stupid person wanting clarification and answers, in order to be wiser, than be a stupid person that blindly believes the lies they are told, without question.

~ Shannon L. Alder

Worry is a weighty monster with poisoned tentacles. It clutches at us, grabs at our minds, steals our breath, our will. It lurks. It pounces. It colors how we perceive the world.

~ Mary E. Demuth

She always said, 'When I'm home, I've got to get things done, even if there are visitors. Elizabeth knows how to relax in her own house.' And then she would shake her head, as if Elizabeth had remarkable powers.

~ Jane Smiley

My experience is that many things are not as bad as I thought they would be.

~ Mary Doria Russell

Two monks were once travelling together down a wet and muddy road. The rain was torrential, making it almost impossible to walk along the path. As the two men were trudging along, a beautiful girl dressed in silk appeared. She was unable to cross the path and looked distressed. “Let me help you”, said the older monk. He picked her up and carried her over the mud. His younger male companion did not utter a word that night until they reached their lodging temple. Then after hours of restrained conversation, the younger monk exclaimed: “We monks do not touch females; it is too tempting for us and can create a bad outcome”. The older monk looked into the younger monks eyes and said, “I left the girl on the road. Are you still carrying her?” This ancient Zen story illustrates beautifully how so many of us are trapped in the habit of constantly “re-living” the past in our minds, thus dishonouring the present moment. The young monk wasted hours distressing himself with judgment, speculation, anxiety, resentment and ultimately self-perpetuated unhappiness as a direct result of not being mindful.

~ Christopher Dines

Anxiety is a sign that you have made up a story contrary to reality. Love does not fear.

~ Alan Cohen

If I am to love the Lord my God with all my mind, there will not be room in it for carnality, for pride, for anxiety, for the love of myself. How can the mind be filled with the love of the Lord and have space left over for things like that?

~ Elisabeth Elliot

A fierce hatred of embarrassment ruled a surprising amount of the life of Moses Malone, the Hall of Fame basketball center.

~ Joseph Bottum

Temperamentally anxious people can have a hard time staying motivated, period, because their intense focus on their worries distracts them from their goals.

~ Winifred Gallagher

Mix a little time with some space, and suddenly good things fall right into place. No worries, don't doubt it - just build!

~ T.f. Hodge

If you are feeling stressed out, stop and take 10 deep breaths...it really does help! Then focus your mind on one thing and one thing only; things are only overwhelming when you look at them all at once.

~ B. Dave Walters

I like to read and write because it is the ONLY thing that takes my mind off of the real world and my spinning worries. It is a time I can be free of anxiety, worry, and stress. When my life gets hectic I HAVE to read and write or I'll drown.

~ Shandy L. Kurth

A finger beckons.My choice is to turn away.It is a mistake.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

It's a waste of time worrying about something that worry won't fix. It's about as useful as trying to feed your pet rock.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

But all remains unchanged.

~ Franz Kafka

A person experiences anxiety when they realize their insignificance in the cosmic field, which present state of angst can exacerbated by other confusing life questions.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Whenever one speaks of lonely people one takes too much for granted. One thinks people all know what they're dealing with. No, they do not. They've never seen a lonely person, they've simply hated him without knowing him. They've been his neighbours who've used him up, they were the voices in the next room who tempted him. They roused things up against him, getting them to make a din and drown him out. Children ganged up against him when he was a tender child, and at every stage of his growing up he grew hostile to grown-ups . They tracked him to his hiding-place like an animal of chase and throughout his long youth there was no closed season. And when he didn't allow himself to be worn out so that he got away they yelled about what came forth from him and called it ugly and were suspicious of it. And as he didn't stop they grew more obvious and gobbled up his food and breathed up his air and spat into his poverty so that he himself became disgusted at it. They brought him into disrepute as if he were a contagion and threw stones at him to speed his departure. And they were right to follow their age-old instinct: because he really was their enemy. But then when he didn't look up they had second thoughts. They suspected that in all of this they had acted as he had willed them to act; they had strengthened him in his solitude and had helped him separate himself from them for ever.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

The evening I went for a walk. To walk for the sake of walking is something I seldom do.Inside my apartment I'd felt inexplicably anxious. I needed to talk to someone, to be reassured. Or perhaps I needed to confess my sin: I was once again having impure thoughts about saving the world. Or it was neither of these--I was afraid I was dreaming. Indeed, considering the events of the day, it was likely that I was dreaming. I sometimes fly in my dreams, and each time I say to myself, At last--it's happening in reality and not in a dream!In any case, I needed to talk to someone, and I was alone. This is my habitual condition, by choice--or so I tell myself. Mere acquaintanceship leaves me unsatisfied, and few people are willing to accept the burdens and risks of friendship as I conceive of it.

~ Daniel Quinn

It is a promise which eminently deserves our observation that all who are united to Christ and acknowledge Him to be Christ and Mediator will remain to the end safe from all danger, for what is said of the body of the Church belongs to each of its members since they are one in Christ.

~ John Calvin

The shadow of the passions of the moment transversed this grand and gentle spirit occupied with eternal things.

~ Victor Hugo

We periodically return to the throne of God for a transfusion of reality. It helps us recall that the redemption of mankind doesn't depend on us. Sometimes we lose sight of that. A visit back to the throne also reminds us of the One who loves us and that he is in charge. All this helps to remove a self-imposed burden from our backs.

~ Dennis Garvin

Sabbath, in the first instance, is not about worship. It is about work stoppage. It is about withdrawal from the anxiety system of Pharaoh, the refusal to let one’s life be defined by production and consumption and the endless pursuit of private well-being.

~ Walter Brueggemann

In the immediate vicinity, there might well be stability and peace. In the garden, a breeze may be swaying the branches of the plum tree and dust may slowly be gathering on the bookshelves in the living room. But we are aware that such serenity does not do justice to the chaotic and violent fundamentals of existence and hence, after a time, it has a a habit of growing worrisome in its own way.

~ Alain De Botton

First, contrary to popular belief, Buddhists can actually be very anxious people. That’s often why they become Buddhists in the first place. Buddhism was made for the anxious like Christianity was made for the downtrodden or AA for the addicted. Its entire purpose is to foster equanimity, to tame excesses of thought and emotion. The Buddhists have a great term for these excesses. They refer to them as the condition of “monkey mind.” A person in the throes of monkey mind suffers from a consciousness whose constituent parts will not stop bouncing from skull-side to skull-side, which keep flipping and jumping and flinging feces at the walls and swinging from loose neurons like howlers from vines. Buddhist practices are designed explicitly to collar these monkeys of the mind and bring them down to earth—to pacify them. Is it any wonder that Buddhism has had such tremendous success in the bastions of American nervousness, on the West Coast and in the New York metro area?

~ Daniel Smith

You said just now, Don't be so ashamed of yourself, because that's the root of your trouble––with those words, you seem to have reached right into my innermost soul. What I mean is, when I visit people, I always feel that I'm really the lowest of the low, that everybody takes me for a buffoon, so I say to myself, why shouldn't I act the fool, I'm not afraid of what any of you might think, because every single one of you is even worse than me. That's why I'm a buffoon, I'm a buffoon born of shame, great starets, of shame. It's anxiety pure and simple that makes me so unruly.

~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky