Top 30 Depression Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “I think I’m afraid of being happy because whenever I get too happy something bad always happens.”

— Charles M. Schulz

2. “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

— George Lucas

Also featured in: Fear Quotes, Hate Quotes

3. “I’ll never forget how the depression and loneliness felt good and bad at the same time. Still does.”

— Henry Rollins

Also featured in: Loneliness Quotes

4. “You don’t have to control your thoughts; you just have to stop letting them control you.”

— Dan Millman

5. “Every day begins with an act of courage and hope: getting out of bed.”

— Mason Cooley

6. “Many of us spend our whole lives running from feeling with the mistaken belief that you can not bear the pain. But you have already borne the pain. What you have not done is feel all you are beyond that pain.”

— Khalil Gibran

7. “I’m a happy-go-lucky manic-depressive. It does get very deep and dark for me, and it gets scary at times when I feel I can’t pull out of it. But I don’t consider myself negative-negative. I’m positive-negative.”

— Tim Burton

8. “In a mad world, only the mad are sane.”

— Akira Kurosawa

Also featured in: Crazy Quotes

9. “I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.”

— Franz Kafka

10. “It’s brilliant, being depressed; you can behave as badly as you like.”

— Nick Hornby

11. “If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.”

— Fred Rogers

Also featured in: Uplifting Quotes

12. “Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.”

— Steven Wright

Also featured in: Sarcastic Quotes, Anger Quotes

13. “Sanity is a cozy lie.”

— Susan Sontag

14. “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

— Marcus Aurelius

Also featured in: Attitude Quotes, Stoic Philosophy Quotes

15. “Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.”

— William Faulkner

16. “Suffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive.”

— Franz Kafka

17. “Watch out for the joy-stealers: gossip, criticism, complaining, faultfinding, and a negative, judgmental attitude.”

— Joyce Meyer

18. “Depression is rage spread thin.”

— George Santayana

19. “People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.”

— Nhat Hanh

Also featured in: Moving On Quotes, Letting Go Quotes, Goodbye Quotes

20. “Of course I’m crazy, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

— Robert Anton Wilson

21. “Truly, it is in darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.”

— Meister Eckhart

22. “Storms make trees take deeper roots.”

— Dolly Parton

Also featured in: Being Strong Quotes

23. “A positive attitude gives you power over your circumstances instead of your circumstances having power over you.”

— Joyce Meyer

Also featured in: Attitude Quotes, Uplifting Quotes

24. “Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.”

— Graham Greene

25. “No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

26. “Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.”

— C.G. Jung

27. “At sixteen, the adolescent knows about suffering because he himself has suffered, but he barely knows that other beings also suffer.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

28. “The only way to escape the abyss is to look at it, gauge it, sound it out and descend into it.”

— Cesare Pavese

29. “Habits of pessimism lead to depression, wither achievement, and undermine physical health. The good news is that pessimism can be unlearned, and that with its removal depression, underachievement, and poor health can be alleviated.”

— Martin E.P. Seligman

30. “May I not forget that poverty and riches are of the spirit. Though the world knows me not, may my thoughts and actions be such as will keep me friendly with myself.”

— Max Ehrmann