Quotes and Sayings About Depression
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Psychoanalysts believe that the only "normal" people are those who cause not trouble to either themselves or anyone else.
-- A. J. P. Taylor -
Some authors have conceptualized depression as a "depletion syndrome" because of the prominence of fatigability; they postulate that the patient exhausts his available energy during the period prior to the onset of the depression and that the depressed state represents a kind of hibernation, during which the patient gradually builds up a new story of energy.
-- Aaron T. BeckSource : Aaron T. Beck (1967). “Depression: Clinical, Experimental, and Theoretical Aspects”, p.36, University of Pennsylvania Press
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In this sad world of ours sorrow comes to all and it often comes with bitter agony. Perfect relief is not possible except with time. You cannot now believe that you will ever feel better. But this is not true. You are sure to be happy again. Knowing this, truly believing it will make you less miserable now. I have had enough experience to make this statement.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be better, I cannot tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible. I must die or be better, it appears to me.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
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It is a negative sort of achievement, she thinks, to have spent a life warding something off.
-- Adam HaslettSource : Adam Haslett (2002). “You are Not a Stranger Here”, Bantam Dell Publishing Group
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Each sporadic burst of work, each minor success and disappointment, each moment of calm and relaxation, seemed merely a temporary halt on my steady descent through layer after layer of depression, like an elevator stopping for a moment on the way down to the basement.
-- Al Alvarez -
We're in the money, the skies are sunny; old man depression, you are through, you done us wrong!
-- Al Dubin -
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Philip Larkin used to cheer himself up by looking in the mirror and saying the line from Rebecca, 'I am Mrs de Winter now!
-- Alan Bennett -
I'd been depressed before, of course. But I'm talking about really depressed. Not just feeling a bit down or sad, a depression that has something to do with biorhythms. I'm talking about the kind of depressed that floats in upon you like a fog. You can feel it coming and you can see where it is going to take you but you are powerless, utterly powerless to stop it. I know now.
-- Alan Cumming -
People don't just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness.
-- Albert EllisSource : "The Prince of Reason". Interview with Robert Epstein, www.psychologytoday.com. June 9, 2016.
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You largely constructed your depression. It wasn't given to you. Therefore, you can deconstruct it.
-- Albert Ellis -
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Beneath the seemingly rational exterior of our lives is a fear of insanity. We dare not question the values by which we live or rebel against the roles we play for fear of putting our sanity in doubt.
-- Alexander Lowen -
The true opposite of depression is not gaiety or absence of pain, but vitality: the freedom to experience spontaneous feelings.
-- Alice MillerSource : Alice Miller (1981). “The drama of the gifted child”, Basic Books (AZ)
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Among writers, if you don't have a therapist, it's like saying you don't keep a journal or use the thesaurus. It's a natural accompaniment.
-- Amy Tan -
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.
-- Andrew Solomon -
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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 SolomonSource : Andrew Solomon (2014). “The Noonday Demon: An Atlas Of Depression”, p.29, Simon and Schuster
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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. People forgive, but it is best not to stir things up to the point at which forgiveness is required. 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 SolomonSource : Andrew Solomon (2014). “The Noonday Demon: An Atlas Of Depression”, p.110, Simon and Schuster
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Grief is depression in proportion to circumstance; depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance. It is tumbleweed distress that thrives on thin air, growing despite its detachment from the nourishing earth. It can be described only in metaphor and allegory
-- Andrew Solomon -
Antonin Artaud wrote on one of his drawings, "Never real and always true," and that is how depression feels. You know that it is not real, that you are someone else, and yet you know that it is absolutely true.
-- Andrew Solomon -
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Though many schizophrenics become curiously attached to their delusions, the fading of the nondelusional world puts them in loneliness beyond all reckoning, a fixed residence on a noxious private planet they can never leave, and where they can receive no visitors.
-- Andrew Solomon -
A large proportion of my best friends are a little bit crazy. ... I try to be cautious with my friends who are too sane. Depression is itself destructive, and it breeds destructive impulses: I am easily disappointed in people who don't get it ...
-- Andrew Solomon -
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.
-- Andrew Solomon -
Grief is depression in proportion to circumstance; depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance.
-- Andrew Solomon -
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Today is the tomorrow we worried about yesterday.
-- Ann BrasharesSource : Twitter post from Jan 26, 2010
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Depression is anger slowed down; panic is grief speeded up.
-- Ann-Marie MacDonald -
On one level my sense of despair had been dispelled by therapy, yet on another it had not been replaced by either the desire for a future or the concept of one. I felt more aware of who I was, but that in itself-dominated as it was by sensations of fragmentation and isolation-filled me with no great hope, and in many ways only fuelled an appetite for destruction.
-- Anthony LoydSource : Anthony Loyd (2014). “My War Gone By, I Miss It So”, p.136, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
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You've got everything except one thing: madness! A man needs a little madness, or else...
-- Anthony Quinn -
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Had [Winston Churchill] been a stable and equable man, he could never have inspired the nation. In 1940, when all the odds were against Britain, a leader of sober judgment might well have concluded that we were finished.
-- Anthony Storr -
There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him.
-- Antonin ArtaudSource : "Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society". Essay by Antonin Artaud, 1947.