Quotes for anxiety
“Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life.”
Carl Jung
“Psychological or spiritual development always requires a greater capacity for anxiety and ambiguity.”
Carl Jung
“When we drop fear, we can draw nearer to people, we can draw nearer to the earth, we can draw nearer to all the heavenly creatures that surround us.”
bell hooks
“Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.”
William S. Burroughs
“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.”
Virginia Woolf
“The most important thing is not to think very much about oneself. To investigate candidly the charge; but not fussily, not very anxiously. On no account to retaliate by going to the other extreme — thinking too much.”
Virginia Woolf
“You become strong by doing the things you need to be strong for. This is the way genuine learning takes place. That’s a very difficult way to live, but it also has served me. It’s been an asset as well as a liability.”
Audre Lorde
“Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
Helen Keller
“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.”
William James
“The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”
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Harvey Barrison, CC BY-SA 2.0
“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”
“And this, too, affords no small occasion for anxieties – if you are bent on assuming a pose and never reveal yourself to anyone frankly, in the fashion of many who live a false life that is all made up for show; for it is torturous to be constantly watching oneself and be fearful of being caught out of our usual role. And we are never free from concern if we think that every time anyone looks at us he is always taking-our measure; for many things happen that strip off our pretence against our will, and, though all this attention to self is successful, yet the life of those who live under a mask cannot be happy and without anxiety. But how much pleasure there is in simplicity that is pure, in itself unadorned, and veils no part of its character! Yet even such a life as this does run some risk of scorn, if everything lies open to everybody; for there are those who disdain whatever has become too familiar. But neither does virtue run any risk of being despised when she is brought close to the eyes, and it is better to be scorned by reason of simplicity than tortured by perpetual pretence.”
“Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.”
Plato
“Each moment of worry, anxiety or stress represents lack of faith in miracles, for they never cease.”
T.F. Hodge
“Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future, but from wanting to control it.”
Kahlil Gibran
“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”
Epicurus
“I never desired to please the rabble. What pleased them, I did not learn; and what I knew was far removed from their understanding.”
Epicurus
“Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems”
Epictetus
“We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate; it oppresses.”
“The distressing internal state is not examined: the focus is entirely on the outside: What can I receive from the world that will make me feel okay, if only for a moment? Bare attention can show her that these moods and feelings have only the meaning and power that she gives them. Eventually she will realize that there is nothing to run away from. Situations might need to be changed, but there is no internal hell that one must escape by dulling or stimulating the mind.”
Gabor Maté
“The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers. “
Erich Fromm
“’Civilized’ society is a hopeful belief and protest that science, money and goods make man count for more than any other animal. In this sense everything that man does is religious and heroic, and yet in danger of being fictitious and fallible.”
Ernest Becker
“The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.”
Virginia Woolf
“To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one’s self…. And to venture in the highest is precisely to be conscious of one’s self.”
Soren Kierkegaard
“Smile, breathe, and go slowly.”
Thich Nhat Hanh
“Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.”
“Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.”
“It’s not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It’s because we dare not venture that they are difficult.”
“He who is brave is free”
Seneca
“The difficulty comes from our lack of confidence.”
“Just as with storytelling, so with life: it’s important how well it is done, not how long.”
“Reason shows us there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”
Seneca
“We are members of one great body, planted by nature…. We must consider that we were born for the good of the whole”
“If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to. If you are not afraid of dying, there is nothing you cannot achieve.”
Lao Tzu
“The world belongs to those who let go.”
“Ordinary people hate solitude. But the Sage makes use of it, embracing her aloneness, realizing she is one with the whole universe.”
“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.”
Lao Tzu
Lao Tzu
“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”
Lao Tzu
“Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.”
Chinese proverb
“The whole secret of existence is to have no fear.”
Buddha
“Success is as dangerous as failure.
Hope is as hollow as fear.”
“Some think they can control what goes on.
I don’t think anyone can.
The flow is sacred, digests all volition:
observe it, perturb it,
try to hold, it lose it.”
Lao Tzu, The Tao Te Ching
“Try your hardest to grow empty,
hold fast to stillness.
All things are active at once,
watch them go through their cycles.
After flourishing, everything
returns to its root. Returning
to the root is known as stillness,
it rejoins you with your destiny.
Rejoining your destiny is the underlying
order; it’s wise to be aware of this.”
Lao Tzu, The Tao Te Ching
“I am looking forward enormously to getting back to the sea again, where the overstimulated psyche can recover in the presence of that infinite peace and spaciousness.”
Carl Jung
