Anxiety
Quotes - Anxiety is a living body
“Knowing
about God is crucially important for the living of our lives. As it would be
cruel to an Amazonian tribesmen to fly him to London, put him down without
explanation in Trafalgar Square and leave him, as one who knew nothing of
English or England, to fend for himself, so we are cruel to ourselves if we try
to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who
runs it .The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life in it a
disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know about God.
Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder
through life blindfold, as it were , with no sense of direction, and no
understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose
your soul.”
―
J.I. Packer, Knowing God
“Relax;
the world's not watching that closely. It's too busy contemplating itself in
the mirror.”
―
Richelle E. Goodrich, Making Wishes: Quotes, Thoughts, & a Little Poetry
for Every Day of the Year
“Anxiety
is a living body,
Poised
beside us like a shadow.
It
is the last creature standing,
The
only beast who loves us
Enough
to stay.”
―
Amanda Gorman, Call Us What We Carry
“Have
no worries, have no fear,
when
you see the clouds and rain.
The
gloomy clouds will soon clear,
to
leave room for bright sunshine.”
―
Mouloud Benzadi
“Do
not let your peace depend on the words of men. Their thinking well or badly of
you does not make you different from what you are. Where are true peace and
glory? Are they not in Me? He who neither cares to please men nor fears to
displease them will enjoy great peace, for all unrest and distraction of the
senses arise out of disorderly love and vain fear.”
―
Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
“No
power on earth, if it labours beneath the burden of fear, can possibly be
strong enough to survive.”
― Marcus
Tullius Cicero, On Duties
“Depression
and anxiety are not feelings. Feelings return me to myself. Depression and
anxiety are body snatchers that suck me out of myself so that I appear to be
there but I’m really gone. Other people can still see me, but no one can feel
me anymore—including me. For me, the tragedy of mental illness is not that I’m
sad but that I’m not anything. Mental illness makes me miss my own life.”
―
Glennon Doyle, Untamed
“There
is simply no problem of life; it is absolutely purposeless play; it doesn't
have to continue; there is no reason whatever to explain it, for explanations
are just another form of complexity, a new manifestation of life on top of
life, gestures gesturing. If there is any problem at all it is to find out how
people come to think there is a problem, whatever made them imagine that life
is serious. Basically there is the gesture. Time, space, multiplicity are all
complications of it. Pain and suffering are very far-out forms of play, and
there just isn't anything at all to be afraid of. There isn't any ego. The ego
is a kind of flip, knowing that you know — like being afraid of being afraid.
It's a curlicue, an extra jazz to things, a sort of double take or
reverberation, a dithering of consciousness which is the same as anxiety.”
―
Alan Watts, The Collected Letters of Alan Watts
“If
you live with fear and consider yourself as something special then
automatically, emotionally, you are distanced from others. You then create the
basis for feelings of alienation from others and loneliness. So, I never
consider, even when giving a talk to a large crowd, that I am something
special, I am 'His Holiness the Dalai Lama' . . . I always emphasize that when
I meet people, we are all the same human beings. A thousand people -- same
human being. Ten thousand or a hundred thousand -- same human being --
mentally, emotionally, and physically. Then, you see, no barrier. Then my mind
remains completely calm and relaxed. If too much emphasis on myself, and I
start to think I'm something special, then more anxiety, more nervousness.”
―
Dalai Lama XIV, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World
“She
steadied her breathing the way R had taught her—counting, holding, releasing.”
―
D.L. Maddox, Stolen
“But
if we define the Megaphone as the composite of the hundreds of voices we hear
each day that come to us from people we don't know, via high-tech sources, it's
clear that a significant and ascendant component of that voice has become
bottom-dwelling, shrill, incurious, ranting, and agenda-driven. It strives to
antagonize us, make us feel anxious, ineffective, and alone; convince us that
the world is full of enemies and of people stupider and less agreeable than
ourselves; is dedicated to the idea that, outside the sphere of our immediate
experience, the world works in a different, more hostile, less knowable manner.
This braindead tendency is viral and manifests intermittently; while it is the
blood in the veins of some of our media figures, it flickers on and off in
others.”
―
George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone
“Just
a glance at the ragged mess around her fingernails communicated more than the
lenghiest essays on the nature of distress.”
―
Mark Z. Danielewski, One Rainy Day in May
“The
suspense: the fearful, acute suspense: of standing idly by while the life of
one we dearly love, is trembling in the balance; the racking thoughts that
crowd upon the mind, and make the heart beat violently, and the breath come
thick, by the force of the images they conjure up before it; the desperate
anxiety to be doing something to relieve the pain, or lessen the danger, which
we have no power to alleviate; the sinking of soul and spirit, which the sad
remembrance of our helplessness produces; what tortures can equal these; what
reflections of endeavours can, in the full tide and fever of the time, allay
them!”
―
Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
“Each
moment of worry, anxiety or stress represents lack of faith in miracles, for
they never cease.”
―
T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious
Encounters With the Divine Presence
“The
search for Nirvana, like the search for Utopia or the end of history or the
classless society, is ultimately a futile and dangerous one. It involves, if it
does not necessitate, the sleep of reason. There is no escape from anxiety and
struggle.”
―
Christopher Hitchens, Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays
“When
your past shows up to haunt you, make sure it comes after supper so it doesn't
ruin your whole day.”
―
Jay Wickre
“Does
our purpose on Earth directly link to the people whom we end up meeting? Are
our relationships and experiences actually the required dots that connect and
then lead us to our ultimate destinies?”
―
Jennifer Elisabeth, Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl
“Usually
she ordered a cup of coffee and a cup of tea, as well as a brownie, propping up
her sadness with chocolate and caffeine so that it became an anxiety.”
―
Lorrie Moore, Like Life
“The
same sensitivity that opens artists to Being also makes them vulnerable to the
dark powers of non-Being. It is no accident that many creative
people--including Dante, Pascal, Goethe, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Beethoven,
Rilke, Blake, and Van Gogh--struggled with depression, anxiety, and despair.
They paid a heavy price to wrest their gifts from the clutches of non-Being.
But this is what true artists do: they make their own frayed lives the cable
for the surges of power generated in the creative force fields of Being and
non-Being. (Beyond Religion, p. 124)”
―
David N. Elkins
