c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Happiness lies in simplicityComplexity brings anxiety.
— Debasish Mridha
Isn’t everyone on the planet or at least everyone on the planet called me stuck between the two impulses of wanting to walk away like it never happened and wanting to be a good person in love, loving, being loved, making sense, just fine? I want to be that person, part of a respectable people, but I also want nothing to do with being people, because to be people is to be breakable, to know that your breaking is coming, any day now and maybe not even any day but this day, this moment, right now a plane could fall out of the sky and crush you or the building you’re in could just crumble and kill you or kill the someone you love— and to love someone is to know that one day you’ll have to watch them break unless you do first and to love someone means you will certainly lose that love to something slow like boredom or festering hate or something fast like a car wreck or a freak accident or flesh-eating bacteria— and who knows where it came from, that flesh-eating bacteria, he was such a nice-looking fellow, it is such a shame— and your wildebeest, everyone’s wildebeest, just wants to get it over with, can’t bear the tension of walking around the world as if we’re always going to be walking around the world, because we’re not, because here comes a cancer, an illness a voice in your head that wants to jump out a window, a person with a gun, a freak accident, a wild wad of flesh-eating bacteria that will start with your face.
— Catherine Lacey, Nobody Is Ever Missing
Never ignore the elephant in the room. That’s rude
—  play with it and introduce it.
We were made to be distracted by life, by story.
— Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life
It was a myth you couldn't function on opiates: shooting up was one thing but for someone like me-jumping at pigeons beating from the sidewalk, afflicted with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder practically to the point of spasticity and cerebral palsy-pills were the key to being not only competent, but high-functioning.
— Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch
When presented with a member of the opposite sex, some of us get numbers and some of us throw up.
— Daria Snadowsky, Anatomy of a Boyfriend
I remember that I did feel, starting my mini-tour, the resident anxiety you develop when you know you've been too lucky; at any moment, maybe next Tuesday afternoon, I would be stricken with something unbearable.
— Carol Shields
It's hard to imagine which is worse, living with fear, or living without it in a fantasyland were consequences don't exist.
— Brooke Hauser, The New Kids: Big Dreams and Brave Journeys at a High School for Immigrant Teens
If I could drown in sleep as I drown in fear I would be no longer alive.
— Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena
Before New York, the cracks were already there, but now they began to split open and gape, and the difference between how a thing or a place or a person appears and the reality becomes alarmingly visible, garish.
— Elizabeth Winder, Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953
I didn't look over my shoulder; there wasn't a sound behind me on the pavement, but I knew he was coming slowly after me. The crawl of the skin up and down my back told me. Little needles of warning that gathered at the back of my skull told me. I'd never known until then that the jungles aren't so very far behind us, after all, and tails, and four feet instead of two. Where else did those symptoms come from?("Don't Wait Up For Me, Tonight")
— Cornell Woolrich, Violence
I'm going to Hell in a basketWeaved in from my sins,Like wickerWith little Wiccan tiesAs if I'm a witchAccused.
— Matthew Little, Hell in a Basket: A small collection of personal poems.
Mark felt eyes on him as tight as a sniper's aim.
— Davis Bunn, Lion of Babylon
We all want to go there something awful, but to stand there takes some grace.
— Rich Mullins
Fear becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Thinking that there is something to be avoided manifests something to avoid.
— Vironika Tugaleva, The Love Mindset: An Unconventional Guide to Healing and Happiness
(My ability to turn good news into anxiety is rivaled only by my ability to turn anxiety into chin acne.)
— Tina Fey, Bossypants
Panic is something that good operations officers plan for.
— Tom Clancy, The Sum of All Fears
The mind that constantly wanders through the past is always a terrible mess.
— Marwane Caber, THE PAST
Earthly goods deceive the human heart into believing that they give it security and freedom from worry. But in truth, they are what cause anxiety.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
I want to feel calm and at ease. Like someone who lives in Half Moon Bay, California, and makes hummus from scratch. Instead, I feel like I'm a contestant on some awful supermarket game show where I've got sixty seconds to hurl my shopping cart down the aisles, piling it with as much as possible before the buzzer goes off.
— Augusten Burroughs, Dry
When I penetrate into that house, if I ever do, it will be to go on turning, faster and faster, more and more convulsive, like a constipated dog, or one suffering from worms, overturning furniture, in the midst of my family all trying to embrace me at once, until by virtue of a supreme spasm I am catapulted in the opposite direction and gradually leave backwards, without having said good evening.
— Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable
Summer turns and marches away, fed up with being handled like a child. Like she’s a glass doll that might break at any minute. She hasn’t been a child since the day she was whipped into muteness. Anxiety might strangle her sometimes, but she’s not some baby needing to be coddled.
— Laura Kreitzer, Burning Falls
If a transaction in progress appeared threatened with failure, if a shipment of goods seemed to have gone astray, or if a debtor appeared unable to repay his debt, Kamaswami was never able to persuade Siddhartha that it was useful to speak words of worry or of anger, to have a wrinkled brow, or to sleep poorly.
— Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety.
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Once he traveled to a village to purchase a large rice harvest, but when he arrived the rice had already been sold to another tradesman. Nevertheless, Siddhartha remained in this village for several days; he arranged a feast for the peasants, distributed copper coins among their children, helped celebrate a marriage, and returned from his trip in the best of spirits.Kamaswami reproached him for not having returned home at once, saying he had wasted money and time.Siddhartha answered, "Do not scold me, dear friend! Never has anything been achieved by scolding. If there are losses, let me bear them. I am very pleased with this journey I made the acquaintance of many different people, a Brahmin befriended me, children rode on my knees, peasants showed me their fields, and no one took me for a tradesman.""How very lovely!" Kamaswami cried out indignantly. "But in fact a tradesman is just what you are! Or did you undertake this journey solely for your own pleasure?""Certainly." Siddhartha laughed. "Certainly I undertook the journey for my pleasure. Why else? I got to know new people and regions, enjoyed kindness and trust, found friendship. You see, dear friend, had I been Kamaswami, I'd have hurried home in bad spirits the moment I saw my purchase foiled, and indeed money and time would have been lost. But by staying on as I did, I had some agreeable days, learned things, and enjoyed pleasures, harming neither myself nor others with haste and bad spirits. And if ever I should return to this place, perhaps to buy some future harvest or for whatever other purpose, I shall be greeted happily and in friendship by friendly people and I shall praise myself for not having displayed haste and displeasure on my first visit. So be content, friend, and do not harm yourself by scolding! When the day arrives when you see that this Siddhartha is bringing you harm, just say the word and Siddhartha will be on his way. But until that day, let us be satisfied with each other.
— Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
Out of the abundance of the imagination rises the beast called worry and it is soon joined by its partners, anxiety and stress. If you would care to do away with all three at once, simply change your imagination.
— G.V. Richards
When I’ve been anxious, it was because I believed I couldn’t handle whatever came my way and instead tried to stop life from happening.
— Elizabeth Fox Brewer, The Hunger for Home: The Map of My Journey, with Space for Yours
When anxiety comes knocking on your door, don't invite it in.
— E'yen A. Gardner, Detox 21: 21 day cleansing of the soul
Is it possible that anxiety ends at the moment when we no longer have time for it?
— Ann Patchett, This is the Story of a Happy Marriage
Cath couldn't control whether she saw Levi on campus. But she could worry about it, and as long as she was worrying about it, it probably wasn't going to happen. Like some sort of anxiety vaccine. Like watching a pot to make sure it never boiled.
— Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl
Her voice sounded much cooler than she felt. Inside, her internal organs were grinding themselves into nervous pulp. Her intestines were gone. Her kidneys were disintegrating. Her stomach was wringing itself out, yanking on her trachea.
— Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl
There's as much benefit to wishing the world away as there is in demanding a bud to bloom," responded Iphigenia as she patted Prue's hand gently. "It's better to live presently. By living thus, perhaps we can learn to understand the nature of this fragile coexistence we share with the world around us.
— Colin Meloy, Wildwood
Panic attacks are crazy beasts. They don’t care what you think you’re ready for. They don’t care what you want. They just take control, and then you suffer.
— Catherine Gayle, Breakaway
He Himself makes the mortals anxious, and He Himself takes the anxiety away.
— Guru Amar Das, Sri Guru Granth Sahib
I don't like this ideaIt is too much focuson something I am trying to forgetI am afraidthat this attention to detailwill only fuel my anxiety
— Samantha Schutz, I Don't Want To Be Crazy
I know everything's alright but I want proof and the Buddhas and the Virgin Marys are there reminding me of the solemn pledge of faith in this harsh and stupid earth where we rage our so-called lives in a sea of worry, meat for Chicagos of Graves - right this minute my very father and my very brother lie side by side in mud in the North and I'm supposed to be smarter than they are - being quick I am dead.
— Jack Kerouac, Tristessa
My landlord lives in the flat at the bottom of the stairs. I rent a studio flat from him, and live at the top of the staircase. There are two more flights of stairs and four more flats, but it’s me he is obsessed with.
— Craig  Stone, Life Knocks
She went downstairs slowly and sat in front of the fire, rocking herself to and fro as she imagined all of the harm he might have suffered: she could see him enticed into a car by a stranger, she could see him knocked down by a lorry in the road, she could see him falling into the Thames and being carried away by the tide. It was her instinctive belief, however, that if she dwelled upon such scenes in sufficient detail she could prevent them from occurring: anxiety was, for her, a form of prayer. And then she spoke his name aloud, as if she were able to conjure him into existence.
— Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor
You can tell a lot about a society by what it fears.
— Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, Espionage and Covert Operations: A Global History
But here we see the peace of God is not the absence of negative thoughts, it is the presence of God himself.
His terror became his companion. When it seemed to diminish, or grow easier to bear, he forced himself to remember the details of what he had said and done so that his fears returned, redoubled. His previous life, which had been without fear, he now dismissed as an illusion since he had come to believe that only in fear could the truth be found. When he woke from sleep without anxiety, he asked himself, What is wrong? What is missing? And then his door opened slowly, and a child put its head around and gazed at him: there are wheels, Ned thought, wheels within wheels. The curtains were now always closed, for the sun horrified him: he was reminded of a film he had seen some time before, and how the brightness of the noonday light had struck the water where a man, in danger of drowning, was struggling for his life.
— Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor
Disquite SonnetI wish that I could find the words to tellYou were it hurts; nothing breaking my skinSlices whispering in my brain like hellLeaking suggestions of a morose grinCannot collect my thoughts long enough toShare them in an understandable waySo I lock my lips firmly and walk throughLife, searching for the perfect words to sayTrapped in my head, I seek to be let outGrasping connections with those who might knowWhat it feels like, alone in a crowd, doubtFilling my body with reasons to goFace to face, I might not find the right phraseBut I hope someone hears me anyway
— Kathy Trithardt
It is very much in the interest of the food industry to exacerbate our anxieties about what to eat, the better to then assuage them with new products.
— Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Things work out the way they're supposed to.
— Mika TWD 4x14
It's hard to not worry, because trying not to worry reminds me that I should be worried
— Matthew Green, Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend
She had been too early habituated to anxious reasoning to drop the habit suddenly.
— Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge
Everyone must imagine his own snakes because no one else's snakes can ever be as awful.
— Tove Jansson, Sculptor's Daughter
In looking back now, I see how it began in my childhood, altho’ I was not conscious of the necessity until ’67 or ’68 when I broke down first, acutely, and had violent turns of hysteria. As I lay prostrate after the storm with my mind luminous and active and susceptible of the clearest, strongest impressions, I saw so distinctly that it was a fight simply between my body and my will, a battle in which the former was to be triumphant to the end....So, with the rest, you abandon the pit of your stomach, the palms of your hands, the soles of your feet, and refuse to keep them sane when you find in turn one moral impression after another producing despair in the one, terror in the others, anxiety in the third and so on until life becomes one long flight from remote suggestion and complicated eluding of the multifold traps set for your undoing.
— Alice James, The Diary of Alice James
While doubt cannot be expelled, it can be subdued.
— Richard Baxter
Evil, let it never be mistaken, is real. But it is inferior. It is parasitic. It is incomplete. The moment we take counsel from it, become overwhelmed by it, or put it on an equal footing with the Good of God, it will have become something entirely more dangerous. It becomes an idol.
— Tod Worner
The demons are not easily dispatched, instead attaching themselves to otherwise beautiful things, a favorite food or a love note left for you, to see how you react when they rear up.
— Thomm Quackenbush, Find What You Love and Let It Kill You
When we are true to ourselves, all that is toxic and burdensome simply falls away
— Dina Hansen, Stop Eating Your Stress!: Discover the Secret to Inner Calm, Comfort & True Nourishment On and Off Your Plate
Can all you worries add a single moment to your life? Of course not!
— Matthew 6 27 NLT
Their heartbeats fought each other, a mess of rhythm. Liesel tried to eat hers down. The taste of heart was not too cheerful.
— Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
Worry is a dividend paid to disaster before it is due.
— Ian Fleming
Faith is unlearning this senseless worries and misguided beliefs that keep us captive. It is far more complex than simply modifying behavior. Faith is rewiring the human brain. We are literally upgrading our minds by downloading the mind of Christ.
— Mark Batterson, In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day: How to Survive and Thrive When Opportunity Roars
Guilt at least has a purpose
—  it tells us we’ve violated some ethical code. Ditto for remorse. Those feelings are educational
Sometimes, too often, I don't want to muster the energy. Stress and anxiety seem easier.
— Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
Dying is more terrifying than actual death.
— Ştefan Bolea, Caietul Roxanei şi alte Jurnale
I felt so skinless at times! Things hit me so hard!
— Daniel Smith, Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety
You are not alone...please know that hope can fly in on the most unexpected of wings.
— Tracy Shawn, The Grace of Crows
Belief and confusion are not mutually exclusive; I believe that belief gives you the direction in the confusion. But you don't see the full picture. That's the point. That's what faith is. You can't see it. It comes back to instinct. Faith is just up the street. Faith and instinct, you can't just rely on them. You have to beat them up. You have to pummel them to make sure they can withstand it, to make sure they can be trusted.
— Bono
The only God-ordained fear is the fear of God, and if we fear Him, we don't have to fear anyone or anything else.
— Mark Batterson, In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day: How to Survive and Thrive When Opportunity Roars
If this all sounds melodramatic, well that, too, isn’t a bad metaphor for anxiety—as a kind of drama queen of the mind. If you have ever been friends with a drama queen you know how taxing it can be. To have one in your head is enough to make you comatose.
— Daniel Smith, Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety
The game isn't big enough unless it scares you a little. Cmdr. William Riker
— Star Trek: The Next Generation Episode Guide Team, STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION EPISODE GUIDE: Details All 178 Episodes with Plot Summaries. Searchable. Companion to DVDs, Blu Ray and Box Set
Yet I also felt, for the first time, truly and sincerely pissed. It was enough already. Enough! I’d reached that point that comes in the life of most anxiety sufferers when, fed up by the constant waking torture, dejected and buckled but not yet crushed, they at last turn to their anxiety, to themselves, and say, “Listen here: Fuck you. Fuck you! I am sick and fucking tired of this bullshit. I refuse to let you win. I am not going to take it anymore. You are ruining my fucking life and you MUST FUCKING DIE!” Unfortunately, this approach rarely solves the problem. Anxiety doesn’t bend to absolutism. You have to take a subtler, more reasoned approach. But that doesn’t mean anger is totally unhelpful. Being pissed off is a strong cocktail for the will. It stiffens the spine. It strengthens resolve. It makes a person less willing to run away from the anxiety and more willing to walk into it, which you’re going to have to do, ultimately, if you don’t want to end up a complete agoraphobic. Anger breeds defiance, and defiance is inspiriting. It’s good to refuse to give in to anxiety. You just have to know how much you can take.
— Daniel Smith, Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety
As a young girl, and still to this day, I struggle with trying to figure everything out. Figure out why things happen, what they mean, and how they all work together. It sometimes drives me crazy. Not literally, but I do sometimes feel different. Like maybe I think too much.
— J.W. Lord
...Anxiety and panic happen to be mundane phenomena, i.e., even when they are caused by extraordinary things like war and rape, they tend to occur when things are ordinary and predictable and relatively stable, against a backdrop of normal, everyday experience. This, of course, is one of the features of anxiety and panic that make them suck so bad.
— Daniel Smith, Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety
One of the things anxiety educates you in is how deeply physical thought can be, how concrete. In anxiety, there is no time to luxuriate in abstractions. It’s just you and your mind, which has fists and is using them. It may be dualistic and logically untenable to posit the situation as You v. Head; it may not make sense philosophically. But in the throes of anxiety? In the cognitive shit? There’s really no other way to think about what’s going on.
— Daniel Smith, Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety
Sometimes when I really like something, or try to do or experience something, I get all anxious about the end before it even begins. I was doing it again. This is really hard to put into words, but it was as if I was already experiencing the end of the weekend before it had even begun, and it created a lot of anxiety in me. It worried me that I would not get everything out of it that I wanted, or that it would not be all that I had hoped it would be. I was too emotional.
— J.W. Lord
I’ve gotta stop thinking I know what other people think, cause most of ‘what other people think’ is something I’m making up. So I should just let them have their experience, I’ll have my experience and not pretend to know, and just get past that. [I think that] is a major obstacle: manifesting that insecurity, that fear. Believing the audience in your head as opposed to what’s really going on in the world—not responding to the one I’m making up, which is always going to judge me harder than the real one.
— Marc Maron
Worry is worthless. It can't change the past or control the future. It only spoils the moment.
— Darrin Patrick
We can't be in survival mode. We have to be in growth mode.
— Jeff Bezos
I always claimed I became the Batman to fight crime. That was a lie. I did it to overcome the fear.
— Jim Starlin, Batman: The Cult
Sometimes, I feel my breath coming in shorter, quicker, spastic bursts, feel my heart threaten to thunder through my ribs, feel sweat beading on my brow...and I know it’s time to bust out those “chocolate frogs” from Harry Potter.
— Shannon Celebi
This is where I go, when I go:It's a room with no windows and no doors, and walls that are thin enough for me to see and hear everything but too thick to break through.I'm there, but I'm not there.I am pounding to be let out, but nobody can hear me. This is where I go, when I go: To a country where everyone's face looks different from mine, and the language is the act of not speaking, and noise is everywhere in the air we breathe. I am doing what the Romans do in Rome; I am trying to communicate, but no one has bothered to tell me that these people cannot hear.This is where I go, when I go:Somewhere completely, unutterably orange.This is where I go, when I go:To the place where my body becomes a piano full of black keys only—the sharps and the flats, when everyone know that to play a song other people want to hear, you need some white keys.This is why I come back:To find those white keys.
— Jodi Picoult, House Rules
Prison left me with some strange little tics.' She has taken all the door off their hinges in all the apartments she has lived in since. It's not that she has anxiety attacks about small spaces, she says, it's just that she starts to sweat and go cold. 'This apartment is perfect for me,' she says, looking around the open space.'How about elevators?' I ask, recalling the schlepp up the stairs. 'Exactly,' she replies, 'I don't like them much either.'One day, years later, her husband Charlie was fooling around at home, playing the guitar. Miriam said something provocative and he stood up suddenly, lifting his arm to take off the guitar strap. He was probably just going to say 'That's outrageous', or tickle her or tackle her. But she was gone. She was already down in the courtyard of the building. She does not remember getting down the stairs-it was an automatic flight reaction.
— Anna Funder, Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall
For too many women in America are becoming sick with exhaustion and stress as they try to do things that can't be -- shouldn't be -- done. Too many are eaten up by resentment toward their husbands, who are not subject to the same heartless pressures. Too many are becoming anxious and depressed because they are overwhelmed and disappointed. Too many are letting their lives be poisoned by guilt because their expectations can't be met, and because there is an enormous cognitive dissonance between what they know to be right for themselves and what they're told is right for their children. Too many feel out of control.
— Judith Warner, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety
Of course, I rationalize the fear. I realize it’s not real, that my house isn’t burning down, that the deer aren’t going to kill me.
— Shannon Celebi
--what's really unique about maternal anxiety today is our belief that if something goes wrong with or for our children, it's a reflection on us as mothers. Because we believe we should be able to control life so perfectly that we can keep bad things from happening.
— Judith Warner, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety
Jesus paid a high price for your peace. Don't give it away.
— David McGee
We seem to feel as though the life our children have -- that we have built for them -- is just a delicate house of cards, held together by the most intricate balancing of all its carefully selected components, and that the slightest shock, the slightest jar to all our perfect orchestration, will bring the whole edifice crashing down.
— Judith Warner, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety
I tried to do it all myself: be mommy and camp counselor and art teacher and prereading specialist (and somehow, in my off-hours, to do my own work). I tried my absolute best. And like so many of the moms around me, I started to go a little crazy.
— Judith Warner, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety
Too many of us now allow ourselves to be defined by motherhood and direct every ounce of our energy into our children. This sounds noble on the surface but in fact it's doing no one-- not ourselves, or our children -- any good. Because when we lose ourselves in our mommy selves, we experience this loss as depression. When we disempower ourselves in our mommy selves, we experience this weakness as anxiety. When we desexualize ourselves in our mommy selves, it leads us to feel dead in our skin. All this places an undue burden upon our children. By making them the be-all-and-end-all of our lives, by breaking down the boundaries between ourselves and them so thoroughly, by giving them so much power within the family when they're very small, we risk overwhelming them psychologically and ill-preparing them, socially, for the world of other children and, eventually, other adults. Nursery school and kindergarten teachers are already complaining that our children are so indulged, made so royal at home, that they come to school lacking compassion for others and with real problems functioning socially.
— Judith Warner, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety
The media not only fans our fears, it comforts us in our hubris. Nearly every scare story comes with a Message: You can take control. You can do something to keep bad things from happening to your children and to keep life from throwing you curveballs.
— Judith Warner, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety
Something is missing, and it's something not so easy to name as semiabsent husbands, not so easy to point to as a lack of work, or too much work, or a lack of adequate child care. It's the sense that life should have led up to more than it has. A sense that after all the hard work, for all our achievements as individuals and as a "postfeminist" generation, life should be better than this.
— Judith Warner, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety
All these things we do bespeak a terrible anxiety: that our children simply will not be able to make it through life if we do not perform totemic acts to keep them on the path toward self-perfection and keep their lives pure and unfettered by distracting emotion, personality foibles, or less-than-ideal experiences.
— Judith Warner, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety
Neva ought to smile more. It breaks her anxiety into tiny pieces of joy you want to gather up and hand back to her in your palms, as if to say, “See what you can make when you loose the reins.
— Vicki Covington, Bird of Paradise
Listen, I wanted to say, I don't need your judgment, okay? I have enough to deal with without you contributing, so can we just get on with this so I can get out of here?But I couldn't form the words. Dr. Johnson viewed me as a child, and somehow, under his contemptuous gaze, I had regressed to one. I was frightened and shy, and it was all I could do to answer his questions and count the seconds until the end of the visit.
— Jessica Verdi, My Life After Now
When he heard laughter, before he could think or feel anything, his heart would already be beating like he’d sprinted twenty yards. As the beating slowly normalized he’d think of how his heart, unlike him, was safely contained, away from the world, behind bone and inside skin, held by muscles and arteries in its place, carefully off-center, as if to artfully assert itself as source and creator, having grown the chest to hide in and to muffle and absorb—and, later, after innovating the brain and face and limbs, to convert into productive behavior—its uncontrollable, indefensible, unexplainable, embarrassing squeezing of itself.
— Tao Lin, Taipei
For all his gentleness and humility unto death on the Cross, God does not relinquish his attribute of being judge and consuming fire. Nothing is more majestic than his Passion; even his anxiety is sublime. And God never denies his attributes to those who are his light in the world. They shine like stars in the cosmos, and even their anxiety, if God allows it, bears the marks of their divine destiny.
— Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Christian and Anxiety
I never sleep on the plane. I have to be awake and using my mind power to keep it in the air
— Jen Lancaster, My Fair Lazy: One Reality Television Addict's Attempt to Discover If Not Being A Dumb Ass Is the New Black, or, a Culture-Up Manifesto
Years ago, I dated a lovely young woman who was a few thousand dollars in debt. She was completely stressed out about this. Every month, more interest would be added to her debts.To deal with her stress, she would go every Tuesday night to a meditation and yoga class. This was her one free night, and she said it seemed to be helping her. She would breathe in, imagining that she was finding ways to deal with her debts. She would breathe out, telling herself that her money problems would one day be behind her.It went on like this, Tuesday after Tuesday.Finally, one day I looked through her finances with her. I figured out that if she spent four or five months working a part-time job on Tuesday nights, she could actually pay off all the money she owed.I told her I had nothing against yoga or meditation. But I did think its always best to try to treat the disease first. Her symptoms were stress and anxiety. Her disease was the money she owed."Why don't you get a job on Tuesday nights and skip yoga for a while?" I suggested.This was something of a revelation to her. And she took my advice. She became a Tuesday-night waitress and soon enough paid off her debts. After that, she could go back to yoga and really breathe easier.
— Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
ANXIETY i will transform you into something useful and productive. I will not bow down to you. ~THE END
— Jaeda DeWalt
Is it possible that we never feel grown-up because, as our capabilities increased with age, so increased our responsibilities?
— R.C. Sproul Jr.
What if I turned out to be a great kisser, and suddenly, girls everywhere wanted to kiss me? Did I really want to risk losing my free time to watch people so I could kiss every girl in town?
— S.L. Madden, The Shadow Walker
No one feels good at four in the morning.If ants feel good at four in the morning—three cheers for the ants.
— Wisława Szymborska
Lord, grant us rest tonight, and if we must be wakeful, cheerful.
— Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons
Peace is a fruit of the Spirit, not the byproduct of accumulated wealth.
— Andy Stanley, Enemies of the Heart: Breaking Free from the Four Emotions That Control You
Being stress and anxiety free is a human preset, I just show you how to 'flick the switch' to off. Permanent stress and anxiety recovery is possible quickly and simply despite what many are told.
— Charles Linden, The Linden Method: The Anxiety and Panic Attacks Elimination Solution
A small step toward recovery is giant progress.
— Mark Cortes
Being thin created intense anxiety that I wouldn’t be able to maintain that weight for life, and I couldn’t.
— Jenni Schaefer, Goodbye Ed, Hello Me: Recover from Your Eating Disorder and Fall in Love with Life
anxiety becomes high energy when taken to the light. For me, it worked like this: I used to live in a constant state of anxiety, worrying about the past and the future. Now I do my best to focus my attention on the present moment. So the mental energy I used to waste on worrying is channeled into the present, making me better able to focus intently and enthusiastically on a task (whether work or play). In a similar way, perfection becomes tenacity, and compulsivity becomes drive. Traits that once brought us down can lift us up when taken to the light.
— Jenni Schaefer, Goodbye Ed, Hello Me: Recover from Your Eating Disorder and Fall in Love with Life
Greed is supported by an endless cast of what-ifs. Greedy people can never have enough to satisfy the need they feel in light of every conceivable eventuality.
— Andy Stanley, Enemies of the Heart: Breaking Free from the Four Emotions That Control You
Stop stressin' and be a blessin'.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
People complain about cold weather during winter, about hot weather during summer and about rain in rainyseason. People who are single are depressed that they are single, those who are married think that singlesare having more fun, people with darker skin want to get fair skin, people with white skin want tanning and the list never ends. Sometimes I think what wouldhappen to people’s life if you take their complaining habit out of their life? -Subodh Gupta author, "Stress Management a Holistic Approach-5 Steps Plan
— Subodh Gupta, Stress Management a Holistic Approach
Think of your attacks as the ocean during a storm. Waves come and crash. They beat on the sand over and over. Slamming into anything on its way. But then, the storm retreats. The water is calm and the waves slowly come and go. Every attack rises and falls. You either have to hold on," he squeezes my shoulders, "or stop it before the storm comes.
— Lindsay Paige, Don't Panic
I wiggled and squirmed in my seat as if I had ants in my pants, but in reality it was merely impatience.
— A.B. Shepherd, Lifeboat
Greater is Your care for me than all the care I am able to take from myself.
— Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
Petunia only ever went to the doctor reluctantly, and her motive in doing so was always the same: she did it in order to feel less anxious about things. The doctor was supposed to make the worry go away; she did quite enough worrying without actually having something to worry about. When she came out feeling no less anxious, as this time, something had gone wrong. The basic contract had been broken.
— John Lanchester, Capital
We tend to have a limited concept of spiritual death as saying no only to things we want or covet -- our guilty pleasures and selfish ambitions. But in reality, it means dying inwardly to whatever has control over us. The thing that really controls us may not be what we want. It may be what we fear. Fear can dominate our lives just as strongly as desire.
— Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity
Rapid change, accommodating it can be one of the great human capacities. But living through it can be the stuff of stress and often suffering.
— Ron Suskind, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President
Anxiety was born in the very same moment as mankind. And since we will never be able to master it, we will have to learn to live with it—just as we have learned to live with storms.
— Paulo Coelho, Manuscrito encontrado em Accra
Excessive caution destroys the soul and the heart, because living is an act of courage, and an act of courage is always an act of love.
— Paulo Coelho, Manuscript Found in Accra
God does not regret saving you. There is no sin which you commit which is beyond the cross of Christ.
— Matt      Chandler
Whenever he was in company he wanted to get away, and whenever he was alone he wanted company.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Schoolboy days are no happier than the days of afterlife, but we look back upon them regretfully because we have forgotten our punishments at school and how we grieved when our marbles were lost and our kites destroyed – because we have forgotten all the sorrows and privations of the canonized ethic and remember only its orchard robberies, its wooden-sword pageants, and its fishing holidays.
— Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
All the greatest blessings are a source of anxiety, and at no time should fortune be less trusted than when it is best; to maintain prosperity there is need of other prosperity, and in behalf of the prayers that have turned out well we must make still other prayers. For everything that comes to us from chance is unstable, and the higher it rises, the more liable it is to fall. Moreover, what is doomed to perish brings pleasure to no one; very wretched, therefore, and not merely short, must the life of those be who work hard to gain what they must work harder to keep. By great toil they attain what they wish, and with anxiety hold what they have attained; meanwhile they take no account of time that will never more return.
— Seneca
I felt so weak and unhappy that I buried my face in the ground: I could not bear the strain of seeing around me the things of the earth. I felt convinced that every movement and every thought was forced, and that one had to be on one's guard against them.
— Franz Kafka, The Complete Stories
So close to the powers of evil she must have lived that she still breathed more freely in their air.
— Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
We imagine that a little anxiety and worry is an indication of how wise we really are
—  it may be an indication of how wicked we really are.
The vision I see in the mirror is me, who I am, supposedly, but that vision does not express the way my mind works or the way I feel inside. A realization creeps over me, the words tumbling into my head quietly like falling leaves.I.Am.Crazy.This is my new shameful truth. Something changed yesterday. A door has been opened that I can never close again. I touch my reflection, the glass smooth and cold, not really believing that the girl I see is me.
— Victoria Sawyer, Angst
Let pressure pass over and through you. That way you can't be harmed by it.
— Brian Herbert, House Atreides
If you are resolute to go, I will not stop you. But I hope I’m making the right decision.
— Mario Stinger, Destined for Oblivion: As Nature Intended
The other day in prayer I said to God, "Look - I understand that an unexamined life is not worth living, but do you think I could someday have an unexamined lunch?".
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
Let your cares drive you to God. I shall not mind if you have many of them if each one leads you to prayer. If every fret makes you lean more on the Beloved, it will be a benefit.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Almost everything that I've ever worried about has never happened ..
— Ian Tucker, Your Simple Path - Find Happiness in every step.
It’s been my experience that people always assume that generalized anxiety disorder is preferable to social anxiety disorder, because it sounds more vague and unthreatening, but those people are totally wrong. For me, having generalized anxiety disorder is basically like having all of the other anxiety disorders smooshed into one. Even the ones that aren’t recognized by modern science. Things like birds-will-probably-smother-me-in-my-sleep anxiety disorder and I-keep-crackers-in-my-pocket-in-case-I-get-trapped-in-an-elevator anxiety disorder. Basically I’m just generally anxious about f***ing everything. In fact, I suspect that’s how they came up with the name.
— Jenny  Lawson
Her little butterfly soul fluttered incessantly between memory and dubious expectation.
— George Eliot, Adam Bede
Panic---a deep abiding, free-floating anxiety, often without any reason or logical basis.
— Nelson DeMille, The General's Daughter
Avoiding life, avoiding making any concrete plans for your life--that's just one way you're pretending you can keep bad things from happening to you again.
— Susan Vaught, Going Underground
Keep making noise, I prayed, laughing. Bang drums. Clamor and ring bells for I cannot stand to hear the tired beating of this almost heart.
— Meg Howrey, The Cranes Dance
The apprehension of this blessed truth (God's faithfulness) will check our murmurings. The Lord knows what is best for each of us, and one effect or resting on this truth will be the silencing of our petulant complainings. God is greatly honored when, under trial and chastening, we have good thoughts of Him, vindicate His wisdom and justice, and recognize His love in His very rebukes.
— Arthur W. Pink
There's no work so tirin' as danglin' about an' starin' an' not rightly knowin' what you're goin' to do next
—  and keepin' your face i' smilin' order like a grocer o' market-day for fear people shouldna think you civil enough.
Do you remember what I forgot?
— Erica Goros
My anxiety house a house and a fence and a deer in the yard. A zip code. A plague of starlings.
— Kristy Bowen, Feign
One source of frustration in the workplace is the frequent mismatch between what people must do and whatpeople can do. When what they must do exceeds their capabilities, the result is anxiety. When what they must do falls short of their capabilities,the result is boredom. But when thematch is just right, the results can be glorious. This is the essence of flow.
— Daniel H. Pink
But the Christian also knows that he not only cannot and dare not be anxious, but that there is no need for him to be so. Neither anxiety now work can secure his daily bread, for bread is the gift of the Father.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
A CD. How quaint. We have these in museums.
— Eoin Colfer, The Eternity Code
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
— Pablo Picasso
I know there's a proverb which that says 'To err is human,' but a human error is nothing to what a computer can do if it tries.
— Agatha Christie, Hallowe'en Party
Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.
— Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means
The test of the machine is the satisfaction it gives you. There isn't any other test. If the machine produces tranquility it's right. If it disturbs you it's wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed.
— Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Even the technology that promises to unite us, divides us. Each of us is now electronically connected to the globe, and yet we feel utterly alone.
— Dan Brown, Angels & Demons
It doesn't stop being magic just because you know how it works.
— Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men
Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we do not experience it.
— Rollo May, The Cry for Myth
The intentions of a tool are what it does. A hammer intends to strike, a vise intends to hold fast, a lever intends to lift. They are what it is made for. But sometimes a tool may have other uses that you don't know. Sometimes in doing what you intend, you also do what the knife intends, without knowing.
— Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials Trilogy: The Golden Compass / The Subtle Knife / The Amber Spyglass
There are cameras nowadays that have been developed to tell the difference between a squirrel and a bomb.
— George W. Bush
Ethics change with technology.
— Larry Niven, N-Space
Hi there," squeaked a precocious little voice, "you are speaking to Chloe Fusakawa, and I have just learned how to answer the phone.
— Gabrielle Zevin, Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac
The Internet is like alcohol in some sense. It accentuates what you would do anyway. If you want to be a loner, you can be more alone. If you want to connect, it makes it easier to connect.
— Esther Dyson
Technology is the campfire around which we tell our stories.
— Laurie  Anderson
P15 - Our advanced technological society is rapidly making objects of us and subtly programming us into conformity to the logic of its system to the degree that this happens, we are also becoming submerged in a new "Culture of Silence".
— Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.
— Sydney J. Harris
Our technology forces us to live mythically
— Marshall McLuhan
Here though, there are no oppressors. No one's forcing you to do this. You willingly tie yourself to these leashes. And you willingly become utterly socially autistic. You no longer pick up on basic human communication clues. You're at a table with three humans, all of whom are looking at you and trying to talk to you, and you're staring at a screen! Searching for strangers in... Dubai!
— Dave Eggers, The Circle
This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature. - Murray (WN 285)
— Don DeLillo, White Noise: Text and Criticism
TELEPHONE n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
— Ambrose Bierce
Design is not limited to fancy new gadgets. Our family just bought a new washing machine and dryer. We didn’t have a very good one so we spent a little time looking at them. It turns out that the Americans make washers and dryers all wrong. The Europeans make them much better – but they take twice as long to do clothes! It turns out that they wash them with about a quarter as much water and your clothes end up with a lot less detergent on them. Most important, they don’t trash your clothes. They use a lot less soap, a lot less water, but they come out much cleaner, much softer, and they last a lot longer. We spent some time in our family talking about what’s the trade-off we want to make. We ended up talking a lot about design, but also about the values of our family. Did we care most about getting our wash done in an hour versus an hour and a half? Or did we care most about our clothes feeling really soft and lasting longer? Did we care about using a quarter of the water? We spent about two weeks talking about this every night at the dinner table. We’d get around to that old washer-dryer discussion. And the talk was about design. We ended up opting for these Miele appliances, made in Germany. They’re too expensive, but that’s just because nobody buys them in this country. They are really wonderfully made and one of the few products we’ve bought over the last few years that we’re all really happy about. These guys really thought the process through. They did such a great job designing these washers and dryers. I got more thrill out of them than I have out of any piece of high tech in years.
— Steve Jobs
I hate technology. It provides so many different channels of loneliness. Every time you check your email and don’t see a new message, you know that, even though people have the ability to contact you at any time of the day from anywhere on the planet, no one is interested in doing so. Phones are constant reminders that 160 people you know fairly well have nothing to say to you most of the time.
— Adi Alsaid, Somewhere Over the Sun
Emphasizing the crowd means de-emphasizing individual humans in the design of society, and when you ask people not to be people, they revert to bad, mob-like behaviors.
— Jaron Lanier, You Are Not a Gadget
As technology advances in complexity and scope, fear becomes more primitive.
— Don DeLillo