Anxiety quotes
1.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside anxiety — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"When we find our core certainty within, then we no longer look for certainty outside. The unfathomable nature of the ever-changing world ceases to be a source of anxiety and instead is a source of joy and adventure."
"Any decrease of anxiety is a step toward love."
"You believe that you live in the world, where in fact the world lives within you."
"Therapy is not to 'talk about' things, but to change the person's life, and to relieve suffering, such as depression, anxiety, or relationship problems."
"Men seek rest in a struggle against difficulties; and when they have conquered these, rest becomes insufferable."
"The state of man is inconstancy, ennui, anxiety."
"Condition de l'homme: inconstance, ennui, inquie tude. Man's condition. Inconstancy, boredom, anxiety."
"When I was young I was very shy and that was my personality. I was a pretty sensitive kid and quite neurotic, filled with a lot of anxiety."
"For the price of intelligence as we now know it is chronic anxiety, anxiety which appears to increase—oddly enough—to the very degree that human life is subjected to intelligent organization."
"I like to joke that I started writing long poems out the anxiety over ending and starting poems. It just seemed easier to keep going."
"Anxiety is love's greatest killer, because it is like the stranglehold of the drowning."
"Anxiety is loves greatest killer."
"At some point I started getting published, and experienced a meager knock-kneed standing in the literary world, and I started to get almost everything that many of you graduates are hoping for--except for the money. I got a lot of things that society had promised would make me whole and fulfilled--all the things that the culture tells you, from preschool on, will quiet the throbbing anxiety inside you. I got some stature, the respect of other writers, even a low-grade fame. The culture says these things will save you, as long as you also manage to keep your weight down. But the culture lies."
"I got a lot of things that society had promised would make me whole and fulfilled - all the things that the culture tells you from preschool on will quiet the throbbing anxiety inside you - stature, the respect of colleagues, maybe even a kind of low-grade fame."
"The stuff I write about is pretty universal, the things my closest friends and I talk about - our anxiety about being here on this scary planet, during these scary times, as vulnerable as kittens, having lost so many people I couldn't live without."
"Shooting of a sex scene is never going to something where you're having a wonderful time. It's a very intimate thing and a very intimate space to be put into - that's usually a space reserved for one. To have someone else in that proximity is pretty jarring, but we're all in the same boat and we're all experiencing the same anxieties."
"The animal lacks both anxiety and hope because its consciousness is restricted to what is clearly evident and thus to the present moment: the animal is the present incarnate."
"If you are not highly educated, you will need to abandon your anxiety and fear of reading and doing research."
"I like to look up the formal definitions of words that I'm already familiar with and sometimes you find out a word means something you didn't already think of, you know? I looked up the definition of "upset" and it was something like, "To be filled with uneasiness and anxiety," and I feel like that all the time, so I was like, "That's appropriate." But also it's a name that when you hear it, you wouldn't assume that it's any certain type of band. It kind of has room to grow into and make it redefine the word."
"I know a lot of shows are like, 'Here's the pages,' right before they start filming. I'd have a heart attack. The anxiety would be way too much for me. I don't have as strong a backbone as those other show writers."
