These are among my favorite depression quotes. I chose these quotes because they shine a bright light on depression and some of the quotes even have silver linings!
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“I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were 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 wrote in 1841to his law partner
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“Melancholy without reason grips me as in a vice.”
– Anne Sullivan Macy, lifelong teacher of Helen Keller
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“I can take no interest in my work just now, my heart is so heavy.”
– Helen Keller, who did not suffer from depression, said in regard to her lifelong teacher, Anne Sullivan Macy
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“I still think there is not much to life, except to learn all one can about it, and the only way to learn it is to experience much—to love, to hate, to flounder, to enjoy and to suffer.”
– Anne Sullivan Macy
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“I don’t like standing near the edge of a platform when an express train is passing through. I like to stand right back and if possible get a pillar between me and the train. I don’t like to stand by the side of a ship and look down into the water. A second’s action would end everything. A few drops of desperation.”
– Winston Churchill
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“Never give in, and never give in, never, never, never.”
– Winston Churchill’s entire commencement speech
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“My interactions with the larger PD population put another dimension of my good fortune into stark relief. For whatever reason, I had been spared the torture of depression. I don’t struggle with the chemical imbalance that triggers severe depression.”
– Michael J. Fox
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“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
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“Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.”
– Dodie Smith
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“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
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“Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”
– John Keats
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“Depression is the inability to construct a future.”
– Rollo May
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“Depression can seem worse than terminal cancer, because most cancer patients feel loved and they have hope and self-esteem.”
– David D. Burns
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“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.”
– Ernest Hemingway
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“If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”
– Vincent Van Gogh
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“Do not quench your inspiration and imagination.”
– Vincent Van Gogh
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“If I’ve lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“You can avoid reality, but you can’t avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.”
– Ayn Rand
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“It’s a mistake to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time.”
– Winston Churchill
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“The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.”
– Sophocles
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“The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.”
– W.M. Lewis
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