Quotes about depression (A list)

In this brief guide, we have curated a list of quotes about depression which may be able to help you if you are feeling depressed, sad or maybe the day just isn’t going well for you. 

These quotes about depression have been mainly written up by people just like you who are suffering from depression, feeling low or just haven’t had a great day.

We have curated these quotes about depression by searching the internet for the very best quotes which we feel will have an impact on your wellbeing.

If you have any other quotes about depression which you want us to include then please let us know in the comments below.

Quotes about depression

“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, Poet

“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,

“Unhappiness is not caused by the situation itself, but your thoughts about the situation.”

Quotes about depression

“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

“You’re not a bad person for the ways you tried to kill your sadness.”

“When you suffer from depression, ‘I’m tired‘ means a permanent state of exhaustion that sleep doesn’t fix. Sleep just isn’t sleep anymore—it’s escape.”

Quotes about depression

“Our wounds and sorrows can only be healed when we touch them with kindness and compassion.”

“Life has moments that feel as if the sun has blackened to tar and the entire world turned to ice.  It feels as if Hades and his vile demons have risen from the depths of Tartarus solely for the purpose of banding to personally torture you, and that their genuine intent of mental, emotional, and spiritual anguish is tearing you to shreds.  Your heart weighs as heavily as leaden legs which you would drag yourself forward with if not for the quicksand that pulls you down inch by inch, paralyzing your will and threatening oblivion. And all the while fire and brimstone pour from the sky, pelting only you.  

Truly, that is what it feels like. But that feeling is a trial that won’t last forever.  Never give up.”

― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway

“           Telling a depressed person to be happy is the same as telling a cancer patient to cure themselves.     

Dissentient      “

Quotes about depression

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors.”

-David Foster Wallace, Author

“Depression has been called the world’s number one public health problem. In fact, depression is so widespread it is considered the common cold of psychiatric disturbances. But there is a grim difference between depression and a cold. Depression can kill you.”

– David D. Burns, adjunct professor emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine

“        Being with a crowd does not stop you from being depressed. in actual fact, it’s the idea that so many people exist who really don’t know what you are going through that keeps you depressed.         “

Quotes about depression

“I think one thing is that anybody who’s had to contend with mental illness – whether it’s depression, bipolar illness or severe anxiety, whatever – actually has a fair amount of resilience in the sense that they’ve had to deal with suffering already, personal suffering.” – Kay Redfield Jamison

“ 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—making it impossible to ever see the end. That fog is like a cage without a key.         “

“I worry my depression and anxiety are always going to keep me from being the person I dreamed of becoming.” Anonymous

Quotes about depression

“That’s the scary thing about depression: humans can survive just about anything as long as we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. But depression is sneaky and it continues to build up each day. Ultimately, it becomes impossible to see the light. The fog is like being trapped in a cage without a key.”

  “Measure yourself by your best moments, not by your worst. we are too prone to judge ourselves by our moments of despondency and depression.” Anonymous      

“      Some days are just like volcanoes, your throat burns, your eyes sting, you feel like throwing up, you scream into a pillow. Other days you can feel the cold hands of death and horrible isolation.           “

Quotes about depression

“    If the silence does not kill you, the way people assume all is well without asking to find out would. Depression is not about having no friends, it’s about having friends that don’t care.          “

“Depression makes you feel like you want to just disappear from the world, but in reality, all you truly want is to be found.”

“And all of a sudden I felt really tired. Like the world had drained me for everything that I had.” Anonymous

Quotes about depression

“   People think depression is sadness. People think depression is crying. People think depression is dressing in black.  But people are wrong. Depression is the constant feeling of being numb. Being numb to emotions, being numb to life. You wake up in the morning just to go to bed again.”   

“We are all damaged. We have all been hurt. We have all had to learn painful lessons. We are all recovering from some mistake, loss, betrayal, abuse, injustice or misfortune. All of life is a process of recovery that never ends. We each must find ways to accept and move through the pain and to pick ourselves back up. For each pang of grief, depression, doubt or despair there is an inverse toward renewal coming to you in time. Each tragedy is an announcement that some good will indeed come in time. Be patient with yourself.”

― Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life

“I hate feeling like I’m here, but I’m really not; like someone cares, but they really don’t; like I belong anywhere but here.”

Quotes about depression

“      It’s like being in a glass elevator in the middle of a crowded mall; you see everything and would love to join in, but the door won’t open so you can’t.

Lisa Moore Sherman        “

“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

“I have studiously tried to avoid ever using the word ‘madness’ to describe my condition. Now and again, the word slips out, but I hate it. ‘Madness’ is too glamorous a term to convey what happens to most people who are losing their minds. That word is too exciting, too literary, too interesting in its connotations, to convey the boredom, the slowness, the dreariness, the dampness of depression.”

― Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

Quotes about depression

“What people never understand is that depression isn’t about the outside; it’s about the inside.” Jasmine Warga

“My lips say, ‘Fine, thanks,‘ but my eyes tell a different story, my heart sings a different tune, and my soul just weeps.”

“Bipolar robs you of that which is you. It can take from you the very core of your being and replace it with something that is completely opposite of who and what you truly are. Because my bipolar went untreated for so long, I spent many years looking in the mirror and seeing a person I did not recognize or understand. Not only did bipolar rob me of my sanity, but it robbed me of my ability to see beyond the space it dictated me to look. I no longer could tell reality from fantasy, and I walked in a world no longer my own.”

― Alyssa Reyans, Letters from a Bipolar Mother

Quotes about depression

“Sad hurts but it’s a healthy feeling. It is a necessary thing to feel. Depression is very different.” ― J.K. Rowling

“Depression exist without you knowing it, even denying it. It is not an illusion. You don’t even know you’re in it. It takes a while before you realize it.” Ann Marie Aguilar

“A phenomenon that a number of people have noted while in deep depression is the sense of being accompanied by a second self — a wraithlike observer who, not sharing the dementia of his double, is able to watch with dispassionate curiosity as his companion struggles against the oncoming disaster, or decides to embrace it. There is a theatrical quality about all this, and during the next several days, as I went about stolidly preparing for extinction, I couldn’t shake off a sense of melodrama — a melodrama in which I, the victim-to-be of self-killing, was both the solitary actor and lone member of the audience.”

― William Styron, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness

Quotes about depression

“      There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.

Laurell K. Hamilton        “

“I couldn’t be with people and I didn’t want to be alone. Suddenly my perspective whooshed and I was far out in space, watching the world. I could see millions and millions of people, all slotted into their lives; then I could see me—I’d lost my place in the universe. It had closed up and there was nowhere for me to be. I was more lost than I had known it was possible for any human being to be.”

― Marian Keyes, Anybody Out There?

 “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, It’s Kind of a Funny Story  

Quotes about depression

“All depression has its roots in self-pity, and all self-pity is rooted in people taking themselves too seriously.”

At the time Switters had disputed her assertion. Even at seventeen, he was aware that depression could have chemical causes.

“The key word here is roots,” Maestra had countered. “The roots of depression. For most people, self-awareness and self-pity blossom simultaneously in early adolescence. It’s about that time that we start viewing the world as something other than a whoop-de-doo playground, we start to experience personally how threatening it can be, how cruel and unjust. At the very moment when we become, for the first time, both introspective and socially conscientious, we receive the bad news that the world, by and large, doesn’t give a rat’s back. Even an old tomato like me can recall how painful, scary, and disillusioning that realization was. So, there’s a tendency, then, to slip into rage and self-pity, which if indulged, can fester into bouts of depression.”

“Yeah but Maestra—”

“Don’t interrupt. Now, unless someone stronger and wiser—a friend, a parent, a novelist, filmmaker, teacher, or musician—can josh us out of it, can elevate us and show us how petty and pompous and monumentally useless it is to take ourselves so seriously, then depression can become a habit, which, in tern, can produce a neurological imprint. Are you with me? Gradually, our brain chemistry becomes conditioned to react to negative stimuli in a particular, predictable way. One thing’ll go wrong and it’ll automatically switch on its blender and mix us that black cocktail, the ol’ doomsday daiquiri, and before we know it, we’re soused to the gills from the inside out. Once depression has become electrochemically integrated, it can be extremely difficult to philosophically or psychologically override it; by then it’s playing by physical rules, a whole different ball game. That’s why, Switters my dearest, every time you’ve shown signs of feeling sorry for yourself, I’ve played my blues records really loud or read to you from The Horse’s Mouth. And that’s why when you’ve exhibited the slightest tendency toward self-importance, I’ve reminded you that you and me— you and I: excuse me—may be every bit as important as the President or the pope or the biggest prime-time icon in Hollywood, but none of us is much more than a pimple on the back-end of creation, so let’s not get carried away with ourselves. Preventive medicine, boy. It’s preventive medicine.”

“But what about self-esteem?”

“Heh! Self-esteem is for sissies. Accept that you’re a pimple and try to keep a lively sense of humor about it. That way lies grace—and maybe even glory.”

― Tom Robbins, Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

“The only thing more exhausting than being depressed is pretending that you’re not.” —Anonymous

“I honestly don’t like getting close to people. In my mind, they’re just going to walk out of my life anyway no matter how close we were.”

Quotes about depression

“This story [“The Depressed Person”] was the most painful thing I ever wrote. It’s about narcissism, which is a part of depression. The character has traits of myself. I really lost friends while writing on that story, I became ugly and unhappy and just yelled at people. The cruel thing with depression is that it’s such a self-centered illness – Dostoevsky shows that pretty good in his “Notes from Underground”. The depression is painful, you’re sapped/consumed by yourself; the worse the depression, the more you just think about yourself and the stranger and repellent you appear to others.”

― David Foster Wallace

“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 Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

“I honestly don’t know what I want in life. I don’t even know what I want right now. All I know is that it hurts so much inside, and it’s eating me alive. One day, there won’t be anything left of me.”

Quotes about depression

“     Depression, for me, has been a couple of different things – but the first time I felt it, I felt helpless, hopeless, and things I had never felt before. I lost myself and my will to live. Ginger Zee

        “

“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 increase the burden. It is easier to say, “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken”.”

“You know all that sympathy that you feel for an abused child who suffers without a good mom or dad to love and care for them? Well, they don’t stay children forever. No one magically becomes an adult the day they turn eighteen. Some people grow up sooner, many grow up later. Some never really do. But just remember that some people in this world are older versions of those same kids we cry for.”

― Ashly Lorenzana

Quotes about depression

“I was so scared to give up depression, fearing that somehow the worst part of me was actually all of me. ” —Elizabeth Wurtzel

“What they don’t tell you about depression is that sometimes it feels a lot less like sadness and a lot more like the emotional equivalent of watching paint dry.” —Alexis,

“People ask me what depression is like. I tell them it’s a lot like walking down a dark hallway, never really knowing when the light turn go on.”

Quotes about depression

“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, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

“People talk about physical fitness, but mental health is equally important. I see people suffering, and their families feel a sense of shame about it, which doesn’t help. One needs support and understanding. I am now working on an initiative to create awareness about anxiety and depression and help people.” Deepika Padukone

“Some friends don’t understand this. They don’t understand how desperate I am to have someone say, I love you and I support you just the way you are because you’re wonderful just the way you are. They don’t understand that I can’t remember anyone ever saying that to me. I am so demanding and difficult for my friends because I want to crumble and fall apart before them so that they will love me even though I am no fun, lying in bed, crying all the time, not moving. Depression is all about If you loved me you would.”

― Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

Quotes about depression

“Behind my smile is a hurting heart, behind my laugh I’m falling apart. Look closely at me and you will see, the girl I am, it isn’t me.”

“It’s so difficult to describe depression to someone who’s never been there, because it’s not sadness. I know sadness. Sadness is to cry and to feel. But it’s that cold absence of feeling—that really hollowed-out feeling.” —J.K. Rowling

“Depression is feeling like you’ve lost something but having no clue when or where you last had it.  Then one day you realize what you lost is yourself.”

Quotes about depression

“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. I actually put my hands up to my face, one next to each eye, like blinders on a horse.” Regina Brett

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. 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 honour 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, The Once and Future King

“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   

Quotes about depression

“We hide to try our feelings, but we forget that out eyes speak.”            “

“Depression is a battle between a body that fights with all its might to survive and a mind that wants to die.”

“Whenever someone tells me to ‘Just be happy,’ I want to yell, ‘Oh, hey, depression’s gone! Why didn’t I think of that?’ But usually I just roll my eyes instead.” —Anonymous

Quotes about depression

 “Depression is being colorblind and constantly told how colorful the world is.” Atticus      

“Human bodies are designed for regular physical activity. The sedentary nature of much of modern life probably plays a significant role in the epidemic incidence of depression today. Many studies show that depressed patients who stick to a regimen of aerobic exercise improve as much as those treated with medication.”

-Andrew Weil, MD guru of alternative medicine          

“    No one wishes to have dark days, sleepless nights, grumpy mornings and this endless dark tunnel with no sign that it ever ends. Depression is not a choice.             “

Quotes about depression

“Depression on my left, loneliness on my right. They don’t need to show me their badges. I know these guys very well.” – Elizabeth Gilbert

“     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           

“      If you feel depressed you shouldn’t go out on the street because it will show on your face and you’ll give it to others. Misery is a communicable disease.

Martha Graham           “

Quotes about depression

“        Whenever someone tells me to ‘Just be happy,’ I want to yell, ‘Oh, hey, depression’s gone! Why didn’t I think of that?’ But usually I just roll my eyes instead.” —Anonymous

“        When you’re depressed you don’t control your thoughts, your thoughts control you. I wish people understood that        “

“     Being sad and being depressed are two different things. Also, people going through depression don’t look so, while someone sad will look sad. The most common reaction is, ‘How can you be depressed? You have everything going for you. You are the supposed number one heroine and have a plush home, car, movies… What else do you want?’ Deepika Padukone

      “

Quotes about depression

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”

― David Foster Wallace

“       When people don’t know exactly what depression is, they can be judgmental.” – Marion Cotillard         

“      I need one of those long hugs where you kinda forget whatever else is happening around you for minute           “

Quotes about depression( Images)

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If you are suffering from depression, anxiety, loneliness or any similar mental health issue then seeking help for it may be a good option.

Mental health issues such as depression, loneliness and anxiety can affect anyone of us.

If you are under 18 then CAMHS, an NHS run programme may just be the answer for your mental health struggles.

You should look to see if you meet the CAMHS referral criteria and then fill in the CAMHS referral form.

In this brief guide, we curated a list of quotes about depression which we hope has helped you during your financial wellbeing.