101 Quotes About Depression to Help You Not Feel So Alone in Your Struggle
JANUARY 12, 2021 – 12:45 PM – 2 COMMENTS
By @parademagazine
Whether you suffer from daily depression or get bouts of depressed feelings dealing with the isolation of the pandemic, it’s important to remember you’re not alone in your mental health struggle—others feel your pain and care for you. However, it’s not always easy to express yourself and the moods you’re feeling. Sometimes, it’s refreshing to read a few words from others who are feeling similar to you.
We rounded up 101 quotes about depression to make you feel not alone. So, the next time you’re looking for words to express yourself or help you feel less alone, this handy list of depression quotes will be there for you.
Depression Quotes
1. “I found that with depression, one of the most important things you could realize is that you’re not alone.” — Dwayne Johnson
2. “You say you’re ‘depressed’ – all I see is resilience. You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn’t mean you’re defective – it just means you’re human.” ― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
3. “Try to understand the blackness, lethargy, hopelessness, and loneliness they’re going through. Be there for them when they come through the other side. It’s hard to be a friend to someone who’s depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest, and best things you will ever do.” ― Stephen Fry
Related: What Not To Say To Someone Dealing With Depression
4. “People who have never dealt with depression think it’s just being sad or being in a bad mood. That’s not what depression is for me; it’s falling into a state of grayness and numbness.” — Dan Reynolds
5. “I go through a lot of depression, and I know other people do, too, but I have an outlet that so many people don’t. If you have that inside of you and can’t get it out, what do you do?” – Billie Eilish
6. “A big part of depression is feeling really lonely, even if you’re in a room full of a million people.” — Lilly Singh
7. “When you’re surrounded by all these people, it can be lonelier than when you’re by yourself. You can be in a huge crowd, but if you don’t feel like you can trust anyone or talk to anybody, you feel like you’re really alone.” ― Fiona Apple
8. “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 increases the burden: it is easier to say, ‘My tooth is aching’ than to say, ‘My heart is broken.’ ― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
9. “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
10. “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, Prozac Nation
11. “I am bent, but not broken. I am scarred, but not disfigured. I am sad, but not hopeless. I am tired, but not powerless. I am angry, but not bitter. I am depressed, but not giving up.” — Anonymous
12. “I’ll never forget how the depression and loneliness felt good and bad at the same time. Still does.”― Henry Rollins, The Portable Henry Rollins
13. “I have depression. But I prefer to say, ‘I battle’ depression instead of ‘I suffer’ with it. Because depression hits, but I hit back. Battle on.” — Anonymous
14. “Depression is being colorblind and constantly told how colorful the world is.” — Atticus, Love Her Wild
15. “It is very hard to explain to people who have never known serious depression or anxiety the sheer continuous intensity of it. There is no off switch.” – Matt Haig
16. “There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, ‘There now, hang on, you’ll get over it.’ Sadness is more or less like a head cold – with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.” ― Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees
17. “Mental illness is so much more complicated than any pill that any mortal could invent.” – Elizabeth Wintzel
18. “Depression, suffering and anger are all part of being human.” – Janet Fitch
19. “Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.” ―
20. “There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.” ― Laurell K. Hamilton, Mistral’s Kiss
Related: 101 Anxiety Quotes
21. “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?
22. “I didn’t want my picture taken because I was going to cry. I didn’t know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I’d cry for a week. I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full.” ― Sylvia Plath
23. “Depression presents itself as a realism regarding the rottenness of the world in general and the rottenness of your life in particular. But the realism is merely a mask for depression’s actual essence, which is an overwhelming estrangement from humanity. The more persuaded you are of your unique access to the rottenness, the more afraid you become of engaging with the world; and the less you engage with the world, the more perfidiously happy-faced the rest of humanity seems for continuing to engage with it.”― Jonathan Franzen, How to Be Alone
24. “When people don’t know exactly what depression is, they can be judgmental.” – Marion Cotillard
Related: Signs of High-Functioning Depression
25. “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
26. “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
27. “Maybe we all have darkness inside of us and some of us are better at dealing with it than others.” ― Jasmine Warga, My Heart and Other Black Holes
28. “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, It’s Kind of a Funny Story
29. “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
30. “That is all I want in life: for this pain to seem purposeful.” ― Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation
Related: Songs about Depression
31. “It’s not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.” ― Stephen Fry, Moab Is My Washpot
32. “When you’re depressed you don’t control your thoughts, your thoughts control you. I wish people understood that.” — Anonymous
33. “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.” — Anonymous
34. “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.” — Anonymous
35. “Everyday is a second chance.” — Anonymous
36. “I need one of those long hugs where you kinda forget whatever else is happening around you for minute.” — Marilyn Monroe
Related: Books About Depression
37. “You’re not a bad person for the ways you tried to kill your sadness.” — Anonymous
38. “I don’t want to do anything. I don’t even want to start this day because then I’ll just be expected to finish it.” ― Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl
40. “Having anxiety and depression is like being scared and tired at the same time. It’s the fear of failure, but no urge to be productive. It’s wanting friends, but hate socializing. It’s wanting to be alone, but not wanting to be lonely. It’s feeling everything at once then feeling paralyzingly numb.” — Anonymous
41. “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
42. “I’m not better, you know. The weight hasn’t left my head. I feel how easily I could fall back into it, lie down and not eat, waste my time and curse wasting my time, look at my homework and freak out and go and chill at Aaron’s, look at Nia and be jealous again, take the subway home and hope that it has an accident, go and get my bike and head to the Brooklyn Bridge. All of that is still there. The only thing is, it’s not an option now. It’s just… a possibility, like it’s a possibility that I could turn to dust in the next instant and be disseminated throughout the universe as an omniscient consciousness. It’s not a very likely possibility.” ― Ned Vizzini, It’s Kind of a Funny Story
43. “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
44. “Whenever I have a good few months and I think I’ve gotten over the worst on my depression, it silently returns. This isn’t a battle I asked to fight. I’m tired of knowing it’s always coming back.” — Anonymous
45. “The worst type of crying wasn’t the kind everyone could see–the wailing on street corners, the tearing at clothes. No, the worst kind happened when your soul wept and no matter what you did, there was no way to comfort it. A section withered and became a scar on the part of your soul that survived. For people like me and Echo, our souls contained more scar tissue than life.” ― Katie McGarry, Pushing the Limits
46. “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.”― Prozac Nation
47. “When you’re lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you’ve just wandered off the path, that you’ll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it’s time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don’t even know from which direction the sun rises anymore.” ―
48. “I believe that words are strong, that they can overwhelm what we fear when fear seems more awful than life is good.” ― The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
49. “It’s my experience that people are a lot more sympathetic if they can see you hurting, and for the millionth time in my life I wish for measles or smallpox or some other easily understood disease just to make it easier on me and also on them.” ― All the Bright Places
50. “The lotus is the most beautiful flower, whose petals open one by one. But it will only grow in the mud. In order to grow and gain wisdom, first you must have the mud — the obstacles of life and its suffering. … The mud speaks of the common ground that humans share, no matter what our stations in life. … Whether we have it all or we have nothing, we are all faced with the same obstacles: sadness, loss, illness, dying and death. If we are to strive as human beings to gain more wisdom, more kindness and more compassion, we must have the intention to grow as a lotus and open each petal one by one. ” ―
51. “I’ve got a bad case of the 3:00 am guilts — you know, when you lie in bed awake and replay all those things you didn’t do right? Because, as we all know, nothing solves insomnia like a nice warm glass of regret, depression and self-loathing.” ― Dying Bites
52. “Losing your life is not the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing is to lose your reason for living.”―
53. “In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant… My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known — no wonder, then, that I return the love.” ― Either/Or: A Fragment of Life
54. “You’re like a grey sky. You’re beautiful, even though you don’t want to be.” ― My Heart and Other Black Holes
55. “Depression is melancholy minus its charms.” ― Illness as Metaphor
56. “Don’t worry if people think you’re crazy. You are crazy. You have that kind of intoxicating insanity that lets other people dream outside of the lines and become who they’re destined to be.” ― Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl
57. “Even when I try to stir myself up, I just get irritated because I can’t make anything come out. And in the middle of the night I lie here thinking about all this. If I don’t get back on track somehow, I’m dead, that’s the sense I get. There isn’t a single strong emotion inside me.” ―
58. “Life is ten percent what you experience and ninety percent how you respond to it.” ―
59. “Understanding the difference between healthy striving and perfectionism is critical to laying down the shield and picking up your life. Research shows that perfectionism hampers success. In fact, it’s often the path to depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis.” ― The Gifts of Imperfection
60. “Depression isn’t a war you win. It’s a battle you fight every day. You never stop, never get to rest. It’s one bloody fray after another.” ― We Are the Ants
61. “I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.” ― Ariel
62. “Depression is like a bruise that never goes away. A bruise in your mind. You just got to be careful not to touch it where it hurts. It’s always there, though.” ― The Marriage Plot
63. “Crying is one of the highest devotional songs. One who knows crying, knows spiritual practice. If you can cry with a pure heart, nothing else compares to such a prayer. Crying includes all the principles of Yoga.” ―
64. “One of the things that baffles me (and there are quite a few) is how there can be so much lingering stigma with regards to mental illness, specifically bipolar disorder. In my opinion, living with manic depression takes a tremendous amount of balls. Not unlike a tour of Afghanistan (though the bombs and bullets, in this case, come from the inside). At times, being bipolar can be an all-consuming challenge, requiring a lot of stamina and even more courage, so if you’re living with this illness and functioning at all, it’s something to be proud of, not ashamed of. They should issue medals along with the steady stream of medication.”― Wishful Drinking
65. “No amount of love can cure madness or unblacken one’s dark moods. Love can help, it can make the pain more tolerable, but, always, one is beholden to medication that may or may not always work and may or may not be bearable”― An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
66. “Take a shower, wash off the day. Drink a glass of water. Make the room dark. Lie down and close your eyes. Notice the silence. Notice your heart. Still beating. Still fighting. You made it, after all. You made it, another day. And you can make it one more. You’re doing just fine.” ―
67. “If you could read my mind, you wouldn’t be smiling.”― Every Last Word
68. “Rain makes me feel less alone. All rain is, is a cloud- falling apart, and pouring its shattered pieces down on top of you. It makes me feel good to know I’m not the only thing that falls apart . It makes me feel better to know other things in nature can shatter.”―
69. “They always call depression the blues, but I would have been happy to waken to a periwinkle outlook. Depression to me is urine yellow, washed out, exhausted miles of weak piss.”― Sharp Objects
70. “The hardest thing about depression is that it is addictive. It begins to feel uncomfortable not to be depressed. You feel guilty for feeling happy.” ―
71. “Perhaps depression is caused by asking oneself too many unanswerable questions.”― Miriam Toews, Swing Low
72. “She was a free bird one minute: queen of the world and laughing. The next minute she would be in tears like a porcelain angel, about to teeter, fall and break. She never cried because she was afraid that something ‘would’ happen; she would cry because she feared something that could render the world more beautiful, ‘would not’ happen.” ― The Wanderess
73. “But he [Depression] just gives me that dark smile, settles into my favorite chair, puts his feet on my table and lights a cigar, filling the place with his awful smoke. Loneliness watches and sighs, then climbs into my bed and pulls the covers over himself, fully dressed, shoes and all. He’s going to make me sleep with him again tonight, I just know it.”― Eat, Pray, Love
74. “Depression weighs you down like a rock in a river. You don’t stand a chance. You can fight and pray and hope you have the strength to swim, but sometimes, you have to let yourself sink. Because you’ll never know true happiness until someone or something pulls you back out of that river–and you’ll never believe it until you realize it was you, yourself who saved you.” ―
75. “In the silence of night I have often wished for just a few words of love from one man, rather than the applause of thousands of people.” ―
76. “Dead, but not allowed to die. Alive, but as good as dead.”―
77. “Almost everyone is overconfident—except the people who are depressed, and they tend to be realists.” ―
78. “I didn’t know why I was feeling anxious or what was wrong with me, when I would go into public and feeling like I could vomit. I didn’t know why I wanted to sit on a couch while I was supposedly becoming something that everyone was so excited for me.” — Goldie Hawn
79. “I understand your pain. Trust me, I do. I’ve seen people go from the darkest moments in their lives to living a happy, fulfilling life. You can do it too. I believe in you. You are not a burden. You will NEVER BE a burden.” — Sophie Turner
80. “Depression is your body saying, ‘I don’t want to be this character anymore. I don’t want to hold up this avatar that you’ve created in the world. It’s too much for me. You should think of the word ‘depressed’ as ‘deep rest.’ Your body needs to be depressed. It needs deep rest from the character that you’ve been trying to play.” — Jim Carrey
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81. “I’m very available to depression. I can slip in and out of it quite easily. It started when my granddad died, when I was about 10, and while I never had a suicidal thought, I have been in therapy, lots.” — Adele
82. “I moved out of L.A., went into a severe depression, started seeing a therapist and had to go on antidepressants for the first time in my life. It was scary and lonely. I can’t believe I came back from that point.” — Ellen DeGeneres
83. “I had everything I needed to be happy. And yet, for much of the last year, I felt unhappy. I started taking an antidepressant, which helped and I started sharing the news with friends and family—I felt like everyone deserved an explanation, and I didn’t know how else to say it other than the only way I know: just saying it. It got easier and easier to say it aloud every time.” — Chrissy Teigen
84. “I felt plagued with a negative attitude and a sense that I was permanently in the shade. I’m normally such a bubbly, positive person, and all of a sudden I stopped feeling like myself. Anyone can be affected, despite their level of success or their place on the food chain. In fact, there is a good chance you know someone who is struggling with it since nearly 20% of American adults face some form of mental illness in their lifetime. So why aren’t we talking about it?” — Kristen Bell
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85. “My brain and my heart are really important to me. I don’t know why I wouldn’t seek help to have those things be as healthy as my teeth. I go to the dentist. So why wouldn’t I go to a shrink?” — Kerry Washington
86. “Depression doesn’t take away your talents—it just makes them harder to find.” — Lady Gaga
87. “I have probably been very close to a complete breakdown on numerous occasions when all sorts of grief and sort of lies and misconceptions and everything are coming to you from every angle.” — Prince Harry
88. “I tend to get pretty depressed and I have some issues with anxiety and things like that … For me, it’s more psychological. Exercise is a means of expelling those demons.” — Ryan Reynolds
89. “After every Olympics I think I fell into a major state of depression, and after 2012 that was probably the hardest fall for me. I didn’t want to be in the sport anymore…a year and a half, two years after that…I didn’t want to be alive anymore. I think people actually finally understand it’s real. People are talking about it and I think this is the only way that it can change.” — Michael Phelps
90. “I disliked myself so intensely. It was just a mindset. I didn’t know how to love myself. I didn’t know how to love anybody.” — Anne Hathaway
91. “It’s my mission to share this with the world and to let them know that there is life on the other side of those dark times that seem so hopeless and helpless. I want to show the world that there is life — surprising, wonderful and unexpected life after diagnosis.” — Demi Lovato
92. “I went through a time where I was really depressed. Like, I locked myself in my room and my dad had to break my door down. It was a lot to do with, like, I had really bad skin, and I felt really bullied because of that. But I never was depressed because of the way someone else made me feel, I just was depressed.” — Miley Cyrus
93. “I was 25 years old. I had my own TV show. I was happy with my work, but I couldn’t figure out what it was; it doesn’t always make sense is my point. It’s not just people who can’t find a job, or can’t fit in in society that struggle with depression sometimes.” — Jared Padalecki
94. “What I would tell kids going through anxiety, which I have and can relate to, is that you’re so normal. Everyone experiences a version of anxiety or worry in their lives, and maybe we go through it in a different or more intense way for longer periods of time, but there’s nothing wrong with you. To be a sensitive person that cares a lot, that takes things in in a deep way is actually part of what makes you amazing… I wouldn’t trade it for the world, even when there are really hard times. Don’t ever feel like you’re a weirdo for it because we’re all weirdos.” — Emma Stone
95. “You are the one thing in this world, above all other things, that you must never give up on. When I was in middle school, I was struggling with severe anxiety and depression and the help and support I received from my family and a therapist saved my life. Asking for help is the first step. You are more precious to this world than you’ll ever know.” — Lili Reinhart
96. “It is okay to have depression, it is okay to have anxiety and it is okay to have an adjustment disorder. We need to improve the conversation. We all have mental health in the same way we all have physical health.” — Prince Harry
97. “All it takes is a beautiful fake smile to hide an injured soul and they will never notice how broken you really are.” — Robin Williams
98. “A child’s mental health is just as important as their physical health and deserves the same quality of support. No one would feel embarrassed about seeking help for a child if they broke their arm.” — Kate Middleton
99. “Being an actress hasn’t made me insecure. I was insecure long before I declared I was an actress.” — Amy Adams
100. “I was born with a great awareness of my surroundings and other people … Sometimes that awareness is good, and sometimes I wish I wasn’t so sensitive.” — Scarlett Johansson
101. “If you have been brutally broken but still have the courage to be gentle to other living beings, then you’re a badass with a heart of an angel.” — Keanu Reeves
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