c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The ceremony was fast so we wouldn't be caught. When it was over, the men all whispered 'Mazel tov' and climbed back onto their shelves. I went up to the boy and pressed the wooden horse into his hands, the only present I could give him. The boy looked at me with big, round eyes. Had I ever been so young? 'We are alive,' I told him. 'We are alive, and that is all that matters. We cannot let them tear us from the pages of the world.'I said it as much for me as for him. I said it in memory of Uncle Moshe, and my mother and father, and my aunts and other uncles and cousins. The Nazis had put me in a gas chamber. I had thought I was dead, but I was alive. I was a new man that day, just like the bar mitzvah boy. I was a new man, and I was going to survive.
— Alan Gratz, Prisoner B-3087
He reaches over and touches my necklace. "You still have it. That gives me faith." "Faith in what?""God, I suppose. No, I don't know. Survival.
— Christina Baker Kline, Orphan Train
Survival, it is called. Often it is accidental, sometimes it is engineered by creatures or forces that we have no conception of, always it is temporary.
— Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety
I will survive: if the hell rejects me, there is always the paradise.
— Lara Biyuts, La Arme Blanche
He would have died soon, but more painfully. Anyway, it was Urban Bloodshed Limitation. First rule: limit bloodshed by making sure that none of your own gets spilled.
— Margaret Atwood, MaddAddam
Nobody should have to die like these people had. I didn't know each of their circumstances, but I had a good guess. These people had died in terror, horror, and pain. More than likely, they had to watch their friends or loved ones die at the same time. Their last moments would have been spent knowing that they would come back and do the same to anyone they could get their hands on, even people they'd spent their life loving.It was not the way any human being should have to go.
— Rose Wynters, Phase One: Identify
I, personally, have resolved never to display weakness, to be always strong and firm and forthright, to show neither fear nor uncertainty-- no matter how fearful and uncertain I may be inside; I see no other way to survive this ordeal.
— Jim Fergus, One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd
I just have to make it to the Tuichi' I mumbled to myself, 'I just have to make it to the Tuichi'.Alone, deep in the jungle, so small and insignificant, pitted against nature, still I sensed someone was watching me. Or watching over me.Someone could see me, someone was providing for me
— Yossi Ghinsberg, Jungle: A Harrowing True Story of Survival
To return to nature is to embrace extinction.
— Mark X., Citations: A Brief Anthology
Remember: You are no one. You have no name. You do not speak, you do not look at them, you do not volunteer for anything. You work, bot not so hard they notice you. Gizela. Zytka. Your parents, Oskar and Mina. They are dead and gone now, Yanek, and we would grieve for them if we could. But we have only one purpose now: survive. Survive at all costs, Yanek. We cannot let these monsters tear us from the pages of the world.
— Alan Gratz
He glanced at James before continuing. “If you're going to survive this, the first rule you need to learn is never count on anyone but yourself. Never. People make mistakes, and the zombies are fast. They don't need to sleep or eat anything but us. Don't leave your protection in the hands of someone else.
— Rose Wynters, Phase One: Identify
His red eyes swung in my direction. Without a second glance, he released the dead man's body. It hit the ground with a loud thump, but I couldn't bring myself to look at him. He was already dead, but even if he wasn't, there wasn't a thing in this world I could do for him. My death was waiting in those red eyes as well, if I didn't figure out how to save myself in the next few seconds.
— Rose Wynters, Phase One: Identify
He didn't mince words. “Anyone that wants to live, get in.” His voice was deep and powerful, matching the promise his body made. He was confident and self-assured, the kind of man you wanted in your corner when the monsters came knocking. With his arrival, our chance of survival had just shot up exponentially.
— Rose Wynters, Phase One: Identify
I make sure to always have some spinach between my teeth so people are disinclined to bother me.Survival strategies for the 21st century.
— Graham Parke
Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember nothing stays the same for long, not even pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.
— May Sarton
Why should he be spared?''Someone ought to be.' And it will not be me. I have survived, but I have not been spared.
— Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless
the secret of survival was to balance hope and despair
— Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance
But hey this was the FAYZ, where all you could really hope was to delay the pain.
— Michael Grant
Love is a luxury. It's something that people are allowed to indulge in when they're not simply trying to survive and keep other people alive.
— Julianna Baggott, Fuse
There are casualties in war. Those who don’t make it back to a place of sound hopes and dreams. Some take on their demons alone. They are deceived into fearlessness and trampled by the hooves of their oppressor. Besides intervention, there is little justice for the thousands-upon-thousands hacked to pieces all around us. How dare we try to take life to the next level. Instead of merely protecting ourselves or scrounging up our next meal, we have the audacity to hope for something more—a witness for our lives who will survive alongside us.
— Christopher Hawke, Unnatural Truth
Here and there awareness is growing that man, far from being the overlord of all creation, is himself part of nature, subject to the same cosmic forces that control all other life. Man's future welfare and probably even his survival depend upon his learning to live in harmony, rather than in combat, with these fo
— Rachel Carson
Commanders and historians are the people who discuss wars; I was in the infantry, and most of the time I did not know where I was or what I was doing except that I was obeying orders and trying not to be killed in any of the variety of horrible ways open to me.
— Robertson Davies, Fifth Business
But I also knew that if he turned away from me at this moment, somehow I would survive that, and I would find a way to flourish like the yard that still bloomed and grew around my family home.I'm Sookie Stackhouse. I belong here.
— Charlaine Harris, Dead Ever After
You cannot sensibly expect a starving 'God-fearing' man to honor the 8th commandment.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Before civilization, artists painted for the living. Today, most paint for a living.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The men and women who continue to hold Lynn's mind hostage against her will believe the future will be tilled with terrorism, death, destruction and a challenge to the survival of America. They believe Lynn and the other lab rats must still respond to their programming for they are the second line of defence against enemies from within and without and the first line of offence in a catastrophe which would require the recreation of America's constitutional government. They are still intent on preparing Lynn for the day when she will he necessary for battle. One summer day, all these dark realisations came flooding upon Lynn and she knew if she was ever to free herself, she needed to get immediate help.
— Lynn Hersha, Secret Weapons: How Two Sisters Were Brainwashed To Kill For Their Country
Very soon nations will understand that in reality Water is the most expensive natural resource for their survivals. Not Middle East oil neither African gold.
— M.F. Moonzajer
It was two years ago that I first met Yuki. I remember that painfully thin figure covered in dirt: malnourished, exhausted and carrying a sleeping child in his arms like it's the most precious thing in the world.
— Kyuugou, ACID TOWN
You all set?” he asked, tossing me a pair of sunglasses.“Wow, nice.” I felt the frame, rubbing my finger over the lenses to wipe away a smudge. “Not bad, Phoenix.”“Twinkies.” He slid his pair on and adjusted the gun across his chest. “Told you. Breakfast of champions."- Skylla and Jet
— Rachael Wade, Repossession
Money is key to survival. Love is key to happiness.
— Nadair Desmar
Mom stood over the still thrashing ghost with the bat and brought it down on its head again and again. "Leave him alone, leave my family alone!" she screamed. "We are not going to die in a stupid gas station in the middle of nowhere!
— C.A. Marshall, Ghostland
If so, then it was also here where I came to know I can survive what hurts. I believed in my capacity to stand back up and run into the waves again and again, no matter the risk.
— Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice
Style has a profound meaning to Black Americans. If we can’t drive, we will invent walks and the world will envy the dexterity of our feet. If we can’t have ham, we will boil chitterlings; if we are given rotten peaches, we will make cobblers; if given scraps, we will make quilts; take away our drums, and we will clap our hands. We prove the human spirit will prevail. We will take what we have to make what we need. We need confidence in our knowledge of who we are.
— Nikki Giovanni
You need to be proud of the fact that you survived everything you went through as a child. Don't seperate yourself from that life. Embrace it, because I'm so fucking proud of you.
— Colleen Hoover, Hopeless
If people feel lost and alone and helpless and broken and hopeless today, what will it be like if the world really begins to come apart at the hinges?
— Brandon Andress, And Then the End Will Come!: But Five Things You Need to Know in the Meantime
Here is the world. It is not a safe place, but however frightening and bewildering life may become, we can survive our fears, grab them by the wolf ’s tail as Peter did, and make peace with the world.
— Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice
Survival requires guts and instinct.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Dying for someone is easy." J.T. murmured now; as if reading my mind."Living for yourself, that's hard.
— Lisa Gardner, Catch Me
I can't believe that we have reached the end of everything. The red dust is frightening. The carbon dioxide is real. Water is expensive. Bio-tech has created as many problems as it has fixed, but we're here, we're alive, we're the human race, we have survived wars and terrorism and scarcity and global famine, and we have made it back from the brink, not once but many times. History is not a suicide note - it's a record of our survival.
— Jeanette Winterson, The Stone Gods
Willpower survives.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
It is really hurting
—  how big media plagiarize everyday and no one judges them
Jesus, what a nuisance it was, being desperate to stay alive.
— George Alec Effinger
Here, just like in my own world, popularity was power; survival required the occasional sacrifice of a damaged limb—or a damaged cousin—and alliances were crucial.
— Rachel Vincent, Never to Sleep
It is hard to struggle for success but harder for survival.
— M.F. Moonzajer
Our chances of survival were entirely dependent on our ability and willingness to dominate others.
— Elle Casey, Kahayatle
That day I saw people trying to feed themselves but managing to do so only on a subsistence level. And people who are hungry are not worried about communism or Communists.
— Nick Mills, The Vietnam Experience: Combat Photographer
We never surrendered. We always kept in our hearts the most noble, beautiful feeling that sets human beings apart: hope.
— Manel Loureiro, Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End
Mockery be damned, my urine looked delicious.
— Yann Martel, Life of Pi
I think you’re wrong,” she said. “I don’t think humans were supposed to die out during the Infection. And I think those of us who survived have a duty to protect the next generation. We’re starting over, Justin. We’re rebuilding the world. And this time, we’re going to make it even better.” ~ Carly Daniels
— Lissa Bryan, The End of All Things
This island has no secrets, not from me. It loves me, and I love it, and when I paint my face I'm a part of the island. The swarthiness of my face hidden behind the clay and charcoal. I leave behind England, it's not important anymore, our island is all that matters. The rhythm of the hunt, the sun, beats deep in my blood. The littl'uns play, eat, and sleep, there good for nothing and just take up precious space on my island.I couldn't have known a ship would pass at the exact moment my hunters left the fire. We needed the meat. Everything was perfect, the pigs on the mountain, the hunters and our spears, we had to go then. The hunt was perfect, the gouts and gouts of blood, the pigs death screams. But that stupid boat went by, and destroyed my trophy.Then Simon, stupid little Simon, gives the fat belligerent Fatty a piece of meat. He doesn't deserve it, the fat, ass-mar infected, fatty. The know-it-all that says he could do better, he wouldn't he'd do the exact same thing in my shoes. Damn him, damn them all! They should have just taken the meat. Then Ralph stands there and tells me I'm too malevolent. I even apologized. He doesn't deserve to be chief, he's weak. He wouldn't do it, he wouldn't kill. There's power behind the spear, impalpable to people like Ralph. We dominate those pigs. Now that we have found the way to kill the pigs, we don't even need to be rescued. It doesn't matter that there was no fire to signal the ship, because we needed the men for the hunt, and I don't regret it anymore because now we have meat.
— William Golding, Lord of the Flies
The point is valid: the difference between survival and wipe-out in a physical crisis is nearly always a matter of conditioned reflexes.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga
Come aboard if your destination is oblivion - it should be our next stop.
— Yann Martel, Life of Pi
If there comes among you a prophet saying ‘Let us return to the darkness,’ you shall stone him, because he has sought to thrust you away from the light.
— David Litwack
Bad bloods aren't born evil or dangerous. We are taught to be, but only because we have to if we want to survive.
— Shannon A. Thompson, November Snow
It is laughable how often good manners interfere with my survival.
— Andrew Levkoff, The Other Alexander
This world ye speak of, Akira, is built upon survival. The strong conquer and live, while the weak crumble and die.
— Jennifer Hudson Taylor, Highland Blessings
Ah, but when one predator leaves, another inevitably will take its place. A void never remains a void for long.
— A.T. Baron, A Tale of Two Squirrels
As long as it’s an every man for himself kind of world, men will always be for themselves. - Mayor Bentley in 'Tilt
— Ashley Chappell
Survival is running from death.Our whole life is running from death, but we all just meet it while we are running from it! what a failure is this try!
— Fereidoon Yazdi
At the edge of chaos, unexpected outcomes occur. The risk to survival is severe.
— Michael Crichton, The Lost World
They forget that we, too, have earned the right to live! So I say if we are going to die, my friend, let us die trying, not sitting.
— Velma Wallis, Two Old Women: An Alaskan Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival
Successful hunting, it could be said, is an act of terminal empathy: the kill depends on how successfully a hunter inserts himself into the umwelt of his prey--even to the point of disguising himself as that animal and mimicking its behavior.
— John Vaillant, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival
When did my youth slip away from me? I suddenly thought. It was over, wasn't it? Seemed just like yesterday I was still only half grown up. Huey Lewis and the News had a couple of hit songs then. Not so many years ago. And now here I was, inside a closed circuit, spinning my wheels. Knowing I wasn't getting anywhere but spinning just the same. I had to. Had to keep that up or I wouldn't be able to survive.
— Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
There were two choices in life. Survive or succumb. And most people weren’t even conscious of the path they chose. Because they chose for all the wrong reasons. Love, principles, dreams, desire. The world hadn’t changed. It had always been survival of the fittest.
— Claire Merle
Now, because we have spent so many years convincing the younger people that we are helpless, they believe that we are no longer of use to this world.
— Velma Wallis, Two Old Women: An Alaskan Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival
Survival is an ancient dream Life is nothing but an everlasting illusionNothing is RealDon’t believe in illusion,Remember me,I am here …
— Rixa White
I think you're crazy good at this survival stuff, Cary."His shoulders sag. He gives me a small, relieved smile and we start walking again, his step a little lighter than it was before. It feels strange to have that kind of power over someone."I mean, you're crazy good at it for a stoner who couldn't seem to get his shit together academically at all," I add.
— Courtney Summers, This is Not a Test
We fought back with our music
—  it was the only weapon we had.
Surviving is a basic thing. Getting by. Staying alive in whatever way we can. It doesn't mean we make right choices or drive fine cars or have good jobs. It means we found a way not to die. I survived.
— Carolyn Wall
It's important to have fun. Survival is more than making sure we have enough food and water.
— Scott Cramer, Night of the Purple Moon
I took to the Kingswood the midsummer after the Dame died. I did not swear a vow, but I kept to myself just as strictly, living like a beast in the forest from one midsummer to the next, without fire or iron or the taste of meat. I lived as prey, and I learned from the dogs how to run, from the hare how to hide in the bracken, and from the deer how to go hungry.In sorrow and pride I exiled myself to Kingswood. I shunned fire for I feared the kingsmen would hunt me down, and so by the way of cold and hunger I came near to refusing life itself. I never thought to anger or please a god by it.
— Sarah Micklem, Firethorn
We lay there with our bodies touching, and as I shook, a powerful knowledge took hold. He had done this thing to me and I had lived. That was all. I was still breathing. I heard his heart. I smelled his breath. The dark earth around us smelled like what it was, moist dirt where animals lived their daily lives. I could have yelled for hours.
— Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones
The climber, like a fox which is hard-pressed, should always have one more trick in his bag.
— Whipplesnaith, The Night Climbers Of Cambridge
Do I think it was inherent nobility that brought us out here?” He shook his head. “Maybe. I don’t call it nobility, though. I think it’s our innate human need to champion the underdog. We are constant optimists. We’re the emotional descendents of the caveman who stood defiant in the front of the wooly mammoth. We rebuild cities at the base of Vesuvius, get back on the bicycle when we fall off, whack that hornet’s nest every spring. Humans cheer for the couldn’t be, believe in the shouldn’t be. We love causes; the harder, the more lost they are, the more we love them. Is that nobility?Maybe. Maybe it’s a pernicious genetic defect that makes our species susceptible to shared delusion. Whatever it is, it keeps life interesting.
— Cassandra Davis, Dremiks
Never diagnosed the enemy before.
— Henry V. O'Neil, Glory Main
It’s a lot cleaner when Command kills you on purpose . . . than when they do it by accident.
— Henry V. O'Neil, Glory Main
You can pray and fight at the same time, Corporal. Especially if you learn how before things get rough. It’s important to have a philosophy of life . . . and of death.
— Henry V. O'Neil, Glory Main
I do care. That's why I hunt them. But if you've seen what I have, then you learn to deal with the murders and disappearances. You learn to push it aside and move on. The other life isn't here anymore. This new world has its own rules. Survival of the fittest is one of them. If you're hoping for kindness and pity, don't hold your breath.
— Susanne Winnacker, The Other Life
I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But (...) we must see all scars as beauty. (...) Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, 'I survived'.
— Chris Cleave, Little Bee
Worrying is carrying tomorrow's load with today's strength- carrying two days at once. It is moving into tomorrow ahead of time. Worrying doesn't empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.
— Corrie ten Boom
It did what all ads are supposed to do: create an anxiety relievable by purchase.
— David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
Our anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strengths.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems
— Epictetus
I've spent most of my life and most of my friendships holding my breath and hoping that when people get close enough they won't leave, and fearing that it's a matter of time before they figure me out and go.
— Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way
The punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder.
— Augustine of Hippo, Confessions
The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
I sat down and tried to rest. I could not; though I had been on foot all day, I could not now repose an instant; I was too much excited. A phase of my life was closing tonight, a new one opening tomorrow: impossible to slumber in the interval; I must watch feverishly while the change was being accomplished.
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Her forehead was a maze of anxious little grooves, from a lifetime of wondering about whether everyone within range was OK.
— Tana French, Faithful Place
Did you have one of those days today, like a nail in the foot? Did the pterodactyl corpse dropped by the ghost of your mother from the spectral Hindenburg forever circling the Earth come smashing through the lid of your glass coffin? Did the New York strip steak you attacked at dinner suddenly show a mouth filled with needle-sharp teeth, and did it snap off the end of your fork, the last solid-gold fork from the set Anastasia pressed into your hands as they took her away to be shot? Is the slab under your apartment building moaning that it cannot stand the weight on its back a moment longer, and is the building stretching and creaking? Did a good friend betray you today, or did that good friend merely keep silent and fail to come to your aid? Are you holding the razor at your throat this very instant? Take heart, comfort is at hand. This is the hour that stretches. Djan karet. We are the cavalry. We're here. Put away the pills. We'll get you through this bloody night. Next time, it'll be your turn to help us."Eidolons" (1988)
— Harlan Ellison
Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye,And where care lodges, sleep will never lie.
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Fear and anxiety affect decision making in the direction of more caution and risk aversion... Traumatized individuals pay more attention to cues of threat than other experiences, and they interpret ambiguous stimuli and situations as threatening (Eyesenck, 1992), leading to more fear-driven decisions. In people with a dissociative disorder, certain parts are compelled to focus on the perception of danger. Living in trauma-time, these dissociative parts immediately perceive the present as being "just like" the past and "emergency" emotions such as fear, rage, or terror are immediately evoked, which compel impulsive decisions to engage in defensive behaviors (freeze, flight, fight, or collapse). When parts of you are triggered, more rational and grounded parts may be overwhelmed and unable to make effective decisions.
— Suzette Boon, Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation: Skills Training for Patients and Therapists
Some part of me can't wait to see what life's going to come up with next! Anticipation without the usual anxiety. And underneath it all is the feeling that we both belong here, just as we are, right now.
— Alexander Shulgin
Men seek rest in a struggle against difficulties; and when they have conquered these, rest becomes insufferable.
— Blaise Pascal, Pensées
A bitter man needs to place his troubles on the front of his tongue so that they taste sweeter.
— Jay Wickre, Dubious Musings of a Peculiar Man
She was terrified of everything, and terrified to show it.
— David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
in my experience, the words “now just calm down” almost inevitably have the opposite effect on the person you are speaking to.
— Elyn R. Saks
He might have been encased in a thick glass bubble, so separate did he feel from his three dining companions. It was a sensation with which he was only too familiar, that of walking in a giant sphere of worry, enclosed by it, watching his own terrors roll by, obscuring the outside world.
— J.K. Rowling, The Casual Vacancy
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
He felt like normal. Filled with anxiety, dread, sure. But even that wasn't unusual...
— John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In
After a traumatic experience, the human system of self-preservation seems to go onto permanent alert, as if the danger might return at any moment.
— Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
I was in misery, and misery is the state of every soul overcome by friendship with mortal things and lacerated when they are lost. Then the soul becomes aware of the misery which is its actual condition even before it loses them.
— Augustine of Hippo, Confessions
Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.
— Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety
Quite collected at cocktail parties,meanwhile in my headI'm undergoing open-heart surgery.
— Anne Sexton, Transformations
It is our work to cast care, and it is God's work to take care.
— Thomas Watson, The Art of Divine Contentment
So why do we worry? Why do we worry about food and clothing About finances and money? About security and the needs of life? We have Jehovah-Rohi! We have the Lord as our caring Shepherd. When fears regarding the cares of this world set in, we need to confidently lean on God's promise to care for us. Then we can declare to God, "Whenever I am afraid, I will trust in You" (Psalm 56:3)
— Elizabeth George, Quiet Confidence for a Woman's Heart
Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.
— Alain de Botton
The novice in the military art flew from point to point, retarding his own preparations by the excess of his violent and somewhat distempered zeal; while the more practiced veteran made his arrangements with a deliberation that scorned every appearance of haste
— James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans
Free time is death to the anxious, and thank goodness I don't have any of it right now.
— Jon Stewart
The soul is "torn apart in a painful condition as long as it prefers the eternal because of its Truth but does not discard the temporal because of familiarity.
— Augustine of Hippo, Confessions
We live only a few conscious decades, and we fret ourselves enough for several lifetimes.
— Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
A Jewish man with his parents alive is half the time a helpless infant!
— Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint
It ain't no use putting up your umbrella till it rains!
— Alice Caldwell Rice
his face, though lined, bore few traces of anxiety. But, perhaps the confidential bachelor clerks in Tellson's Bank were principally occupied with the cares of other people; and perhaps second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes, come easily off and on.
— Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
I am stupid, am I not? What more can I want? If you ask them who is brave--who is true--who is just--who is it they would trust with their lives?--they would say, Tuan Jim. And yet they can never know the real, real truth....
— Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim
It was an unfamiliar feeling, waking up with a place to go, a place I was actually beginning to comprehend and face without a sense of terror.More than that, I was even questioning the assumption that I was, in my bones, a scared and anxious and miserable person. It felt like the days were almost supernaturally good, that I could wake up without the usual wave of terror, that the days were admixed with some foreign substance dripping into them, some animating essence, like the dragonborn races of Endoria, dragonborn days. I felt like I'd stumbled on one of the open secrets of the world. Why hadn't I realized before that being a grown-up could be anything you wanted it to be?
— Austin Grossman, You
My mind turned by anxiety, or other cause, from its scrutiny of blank paper, is like a lost child–wandering the house, sitting on the bottom step to cry.
— Virginia Woolf, A Writer's Diary
To some people, I may seem calm. But if you could peer beneath the surface, you would see that I'm like a duck--paddling, paddling, paddling.
— Scott Stossel, My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind
Human beings, like plans, prove fallible in the presence of those ingredients that are missing in maneuvers - danger, death, and live ammunition.
— Barbara W. Tuchman, The Guns of August
When I don't have something to worry about, I worry. Nothing comes so naturally to a human being as anxiety and worry.
— Brian Richardson
He was agitated for some reason that he could not name. (page 35)
— Kate DiCamillo, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
A sharp decline in actual deprivation may, paradoxically, have been accompanied by an ongoing and even escalating sense of fear of deprivation.
— Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety
as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status anxiety be altered.
— Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety
Se tudo o resto não me basta por que hei-de impedir o efeito paliativo das benzodiazepinas e a volúpia desta evocação alucinatória?If everything else is not enough for me why should I stop the palliative effect of benzodiazepines and the lust of this hallucinatory evocation?
— Victor Eustáquio, O Carrossel de Lúcifer
I watch worry and anxiety being pandered to through technology which is neutral.
— Brian Richardson
Democratic citizenship in an anxious world can be deeper, more informed citizenship. Without full spectrum of voices from partisan political elites, though, anxious citizens in search of protection from threats to their health and way of life may support charlatans or madman who offer bodily protection while destroying the body politic.
— Bethany Albertson, Anxious Politics: Democratic Citizenship in a Threatening World
I have a pretty good handle on my anxiety. I basically treat myself like a nervy horse: lots of exercise, lots of sleep, lots of interesting work to keep my mind occupied, and generally avoiding being ridden hard by strangers.
— Caitlin Moran
I close my eyes, but my mind runs and runs. Tubes and fluids enter my body, but there's nothing to stop the anxiety. My heart pounds and sometimes I fear I'm on the cusp of crossing into whatever lies on the other side of sane.
— James Morris
There was no outlet, my fear was so deep and tangible I couldn't scream. It felt like an actual substance that enveloped my body, my brain, my very being, I receded further and further within myself, a dark hole, my entire body a taut muscle.
— James       Morris, Feel Me Fall
The old summer's-end melancholy nips at my heels. There's no school to go back to; no detail of my life will change come the onset of September; yet still, I feel the old trepidation.
— Sara Baume, A Line Made by Walking
The best part of having superpowersis that most of the time other people do not even know that you have them— like when Peter Parker goes paintballing,people just think he is a really awesome paintballer,and he totally gets away with using his Spidey senses,and when Aquaman is on OkCupid,and he says he spends a lot of timethinking about global warming, people just think he’s a conscientiousdude, and on the days that I get out of bed and put on appropriate workplace attireand eat three meals, none of which are Hot Pockets,people can’t even tell that right then,at that moment,I am using my superpowers.Anxiety is your body’s response to perceived dangerand mine is so strongyou would have to call it a superpower.It never gives up;It is always looking for a fight;It is the fiercest part of me.
— Brenna Twohy, Forgive Me My Salt
Your unconscious wants to express the pain you feel about your own lost innocence. But your ego wants to keep it repressed. To the compromise is anxiety.
— Alison Bechdel, Are You My Mother?
The fear, though, is unassailable. The dark balls of dread pinball through my brain. This is what anxiety does to a brain, I know that. A barrage of intrusive, unwanted, and distressing thoughts that the person thinking them can't turn them off no matter how hard they try...
— Lauren Miller
The worst part about anxiety attacks, is that you’re aware it’s irrational and sometimes unexplainable, but knowing that gives no aid what so ever. In most cases, it deepens the anxiety as you realise “if I know it’s irrational, why can’t I stop it… Oh god I can’t stop it” you begin to believe you are no longer in control of your mind. That. That is fear.
— Ami Desu
You want to be there for me but an anxiety attack is a solitary activity.
— R. Y.S. Perez, I Hope You Fall in Love: Poetry Collection
... beginnings are always reserved for anxiety, middles are for experience, problems and troubleshooting, and only once the beginning and middle have been combined to form a past can room be made for the ending, and relief.
— Tania Aebi, I've Been Around
This is how you explain how you feel: broken words and hard truths.
— R. Y.S. Perez, I Hope You Fall in Love: Poetry Collection
Many things can cause us to worry, but a kind word or deed can do wonders. Sometimes that's all we need to feel better.
— Kate Klise, The Greatest Star on Earth
Humankind devotes much of its collective energy to managing personal and institutional anxiety and dealing with unsuccessful efforts of its civilians to cope with the tides of shifting social and economic conditions. Every city corridor houses downtrodden citizens whom have given up on life, the dopers, smoke hounds, crack heads, and unrepentant drunkards whom spend their days pushing shopping carts and their nights sleeping in gutters. In marked contrast to these filthy and wretched souls whom inhabit the skid row of every city’s streets, all animals display an admirable state of hygiene and a zest for life. Except for poor critters sentenced to live confined in a zoo and domestic animals held captives in deplorable harvesting pens, all animals live a carefree existence that is preferable to living off stress sandwiches of modern humankind.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
A person can hurry through or sleep walk through life, but whenever they stop to catch their breath or awaken from a long nap, they will find apprehension, disquiet, and fretfulness waiting their directed attention.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
At first, sending the confession by real mail had felt like a genius device. I would not have to sit by my phone and watch for the signs that indicated it had been sent and seen. Slim but solid paper would, I hoped, convey me better. Now I had to consider the very real frailties of the system. Ludicrous, in fact, to entrust something of such magnitude to a mailman. A perfect stranger. I looked up stories of nefarious New York mailmen. There was one who has willfully upturned the lives of ordinary people like myself by hoarding 40,000 pieces of undelivered mail. The city was crawling with thieves and malcontents.
— Olivia Sudjic, Sympathy
All those years when Ronni thought she was sick, all those years convinced that every mole was melanoma, every cough was lung cancer, every case of heartburn was an oncoming heart attack, after all those years, when the gods finally stopped taking care of her she wasn't scared. What a pity, she thought after the doctor first diagnosed her. Then, when she refused to believe it, after the second, and the third, agreed, she thought again, what a pity I wasted all those years worrying about the worst. Somehow now that the worst was upon her, it was peaceful, calming, as if this was what she had always been waiting for. Now that it was here, it wasn't scary at all.
— Jane Green, The Sunshine Sisters
The creeping sense that he might have seen him reading the book came up from the ground, but that was more anxiety than evidence.
— Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street
The problem was that I carried around with me a tendency to feel that other people’s respect for me would vanish if what I did was second rate. And while I accept that this “perfectionism” is likely to stimulate the production of better work, it doesn’t, unfortunately, go hand in hand with a relaxed and happy attitude to life.
— John Cleese, So, Anyway...
Anxiety isn't an attack that explodes out of me; it's not a volcano that lies dormant until it's triggered by an earth-shattering event. It's a constant companion. Like a blowfly that gets into the house in the middle of summer, flying around and around. You can hear it buzzing, but you can't see it, can't capture it, can't let it out. My anxiety is invisible to others, but often it's the focal point on my mind. Everything that happens on a day-to-day basis is filtered through a lens colored by anxiety.
— Jen Wilde
I understand that your brain is large and perpetually at war with itself
— Chris Cleave, Everyone Brave is Forgiven
When people think time is against them, they get a different feeling. No one however knows with all certainty, what exactly is in the next moment of time! Something can change!
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
I don't know what I was looking for . . . I felt empty. I guess. Not hearing from you made it all seem surreal, like you were never there, a dream, a figment of my imagination.I went to your site that day to . . . I guess, double-check.I thought. . . maybe you wrote something, a new story . . . a message . . . anything.I did find a new story . . . It wasn't about us . . .And I ended up feeling even emptier.
— Stjepan Šejić, Sunstone, Vol. 5
Be thankful when you find yourself worrying about the smallest things, for it often means there aren't any bigger things to truly worry about.
— Joyce Rachelle
As you enter, you pray to leave. As you leave, you pray to never return.
— Victoria Aveyard, King's Cage
That was the problem with the outside world, the human world. The whole thing was made up puzzles, of a language she didn't quite speak.
— Lauren Oliver, Replica
Fixed mindset worries in the nest and the growth mindset dances on the edge.
— Amit Ray, Mindfulness Living in the Moment - Living in the Breath
Despair is the state in which anxiety and restlessness are immanent to existence. Nobody in despair suffers from “problems”, but from his own inner torment and fire. It’s a pity that nothing can be solved in this world. Yet there never was and here never will be anyone who would commit suicide for this reason. So much for the power that intellectual anxiety has over the total anxiety of our being! That is why I prefer the dramatic life, consumed by inner fires and tortured by destiny, to the intellectual, caught up in abstractions which do not engage the essence of our subjectivity. I despise the absence of risks, madness and passion in abstract thinking. How fertile live, passionate thinking is! Lyricism feeds it like blood pumped into the heart!
— Emil M. Cioran, On the Heights of Despair
Solomon had good days and he had bad days, but the good had far outnumbered the bad since Lisa and Clark had started coming around. Sometimes, though, they'd show up and he's look completely exhausted, drained of all his charm and moving in slow motion. They could do that to him—the attacks. Something about the physical response to panic can drain all the energy out of a person, and it doesn't matter what causes it or how long it lasts. What Solomon had was unforgiving and sneaky and as smart as any other illness. It was like a virus or cancer that would hide just long enough to fool him into thinking it was gone. And because it showed up when it damn well pleased, he'd learned to be honest about it, knowing that embarrassment only made it worse.
— John Corey Whaley, Highly Illogical Behavior
Like I'm on the verge of just blowing up. All the stress and pressure and anxiety just bubbling up.
— Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story
Distract yourself, that's what Margaret always told him. When you start getting anxious, give your mind something else to think about. He had become an expert at distracting himself. He had distracted himself so much, he found himself drowning in distractions, and all the little details in the world seemed to join up together in his head and make a whole new problem to worry about.
— Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep
How much time is wasted in what is called thought, but is merely care--an anxious idling over the fancied probabilities of result
— George MacDonald, Mary Marston
I think there’s something wrong with my lungs. Maybe I have an allergy or hay fever. I think it might even be a fracture they forgot to fix. I worry about it a lot. I can picture the broken rib impaling my lungs, my heart.
— Jinat Rehana Begum, First Fires
The burden of my anxiety is not my child's.
— Paula Heller Garland
It felt like so many years' worth of anxiety and worry were trying to escape all at once—maybe like an emotional volcano, only my mom and dad, they didn't run away to save themselves but sprinted right into my lava.
— Matthew Quick, Every Exquisite Thing
If a person does not satisfy the need to self-actualization, his satisfaction and anxiety increases
— Sunday Adelaja
Panic attacks are a lot like being drunk in some ways, you lose self-control. You cry for seemingly no reason. You deal with the hangover long into the next day.
— Sara  Barnard, A Quiet Kind of Thunder
Here are three separate but similar things: shyness, introversion and social anxiety. You can have one, two or all three of these things simultaneously. A lot of the time people thing they're all the same thing, but that's just not true. Extroverts can be shy, introverts can be bold, and a condition like anxiety can strike whatever kind of social animal you are. Lots of people are shy. Shy is normal. A bit of anxiety is normal. Throw the two together, add some brain-signal error - a NO ENTRY sign on the neural highway from my brain to my mouth perhaps, though no one really knows - and you have me.
— Sara  Barnard, A Quiet Kind of Thunder
You’re not fine. You’re not. And that’s OK. The first thing I want you to do is to finally tell yourself that it’s OK not to be OK. To accept that you’re feeling badly and that something isn’t right. Too many of us are in denial because we think that to admit there’s something wrong means we’re weak or broken or odd. I don’t know if it’s society, or just who we associate with, but we need to change our way of thinking. We are not weak. We are not broken. We are not odd.
— S.R. Crawford, From My Suffering: 25 Ways to Break the Chains of Anxiety, Depression & Stress
Anxiety isn't an attack that explodes out of me; it's not a volcano that lies dormant until it's triggered by an earth-shattering event. It's a constant companion. Like a blow fly that gets into the house in the middle of summer, flying around and around. You can hear it buzzing, but you can't see it, can't capture it, can't let it out.
— Jen Wilde
That's another sort of being haunted: starting something and never finishing it.
— Caitlín R. Kiernan, The Drowning Girl
I like to describe worry or anxiety as spending today trying to figure out tomorrow. Let's learn to use the time God has given us for today!
— Joyce Meyer
Calling someone equally as anxious on the phone makes you feel less alone. Sometimes the best thing to hear is not "Don't worry, it's going to be okay" but actually "Tell me about it! The whole world is going to explode and I haven't slept for weeks. Now let me tell you about my specific fears of small boats and big businesses!
— Amy Poehler, Yes Please
For me, concept of death works as a liberator from anxiety -- no matter whatever is happening, its all going to end when we die.
— Shon Mehta
For one, dazzling, infinite moment, August felt like he was standing on a precipice, the end of one world and the beginning of another, a whisper and a bang.
— Victoria Schwab, This Savage Song
When you are open to living and trust the process of life and ready to face all your fears, and not afraid to go astray with life, life definitely comes and talk to you, in its own language.
— Roshan Sharma
But at home, that same day he'd jumped into the fountain, he'd gotten so anxious, pacing around the living room listening to his parents try to calm him, that he suddenly just lost it completely and slapped his face. He immediately started crying, confused and guilty, looking up at his parents like he had no idea how it happened. And, really, that's the way it always was with the hitting. It would happen so fast, his body shaking to release the tension that built up from all the thoughts swirling through his mind and all the air he was having trouble breathing and all the loud beating of his own heart ringing in his ears. It had to get out and that was the path it chose. Slap. Instant relief.
— John Corey Whaley, Highly Illogical Behavior
People-pleasers feel they must constantly be performing acts of service to others to gain acceptance. That requires a lot of work, effort, and energy. From the book: Removing Your Shame Label.
— Eddie  Capparucci
What starts out as an intrusive thought can turn into an overwhelming concept if we "feed" it with more negative thinking. From the book: Removing Your Shame Label.
— Eddie  Capparucci
What do you fear when you fear everything? Time passing and not passing. Death and life. I could say my lungs never filled with enough air, no matter how many puffs of my inhaler I took. Or that my thoughts moved too quickly to complete, severed by a perpetual vigilance. But even to say this would abet the lie that terror can be described, when anyone who's ever known it knows that it has no components but is instead everywhere inside you all the time, until you recognize yourself only by the tensions that string one minute to the next. And yet I keep lying, by describing, because how else can I avoid this second, and the one after it? This being the condition itself: the relentless need to escape a moment that never ends.
— Adam Haslett, Imagine Me Gone
Everything takes place at a right time. It’s your anxiety to achieve everything before time or grab things more than you required, add misery to your life.
— Roshan Sharma
I was brought up,' Freddy informed him, 'not to suffer anxiety about decisive initiative of all types.
— Mark Helprin, Freddy and Fredericka
Forsake it in the morning. Do not ring it the next day.Make no commitment to comfort.
— Taylor Patton