60+ Best Overcoming Depression Quotes: Exclusive Selection

Depression is a common and serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you act. Profoundly inspirational overcoming depression quotes will get you through anything when the going gets tough and help you succeed in every aspect of life.

If you’re searching for quotes about being depressed and calming overthinking quotes that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of top pessimistic quotes, uplifting self harm quotes and famous abusive relationship quotes.

Famous Overcoming Depression Quotes

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

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. Jennifer Niven

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

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

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

I believe that words are strong, that they can overwhelm what we fear when fear seems more awful than life is good. Andrew Solomon

overcoming depression quotes

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

Losing your life is not the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing is to lose your reason for living. Jo Nesbo

Life is ten percent what you experience and ninety percent how you respond to it. Dorothy M. Neddermeyer

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

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

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. D.D. Barant

Best Overcoming Depression Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. Banana Yoshimoto

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

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

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

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

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

Amazing Overcoming Depression Quotes

A big part of depression is feeling really lonely, even if you’re in a room full of a million people. Lilly Singh

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

Depression is melancholy minus its charms. Susan Sontag

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. Brené Brown

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

Maybe we all have darkness inside of us and some of us are better at dealing with it than others. Jasmine Warga

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. Elizabeth Gilbert

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. Shaun David Hutchinson

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

That is all I want in life: for this pain to seem purposeful. Elizabeth Wurtzel

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

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

I’ll never forget how the depression and loneliness felt good and bad at the same time. Still does. Henry Rollins

Mental illness is so much more complicated than any pill that any mortal could invent. Elizabeth Wintzel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everyday is a second chance. Anonymous

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

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

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

Depression, suffering and anger are all part of being human. Janet Fitch

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. Soren Kierkegaard

I found that with depression, one of the most important things you could realize is that you’re not alone. Dwayne Johnson

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

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

You’re like a grey sky. You’re beautiful, even though you don’t want to be. Jasmine Warga

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. Goldie Hawn

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. Jennifer Elisabeth