c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The plan is to start performing smaller venues and work my way up from there, this anxiety isn't going to get the better of me.
— Zayn Malik, Zayn: The Official Autobiography
I felt sick. I couldn't breathe. The idea of it totally freaked me out and I was paralyzed with anxiety. This overwhelming fear just kicked in out of nowhere, bringing with it a shitstorm of self-doubt
— Zayn Malik, Zayn: The Official Autobiography
But I was living my life sideway. I did not act on what I wanted, I did not say the things I thought, and being so stifled and clamped all the time left me exhausted; no matter what I was doing, I was always imagining something else.
— Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep
Your man may be untroubled about the Future, not because he is concerned with the Present, but because he has persuaded himself that the Future is going to be agreeable. As long as that is the real course of his tranquillity, his tranquillity will do us good, because it is only piling up more disappointment, and therefore more impatience, for him when his false hopes are dashed. If, on the other hand, he is aware that horrors may be in store for him and is praying for the virtues, wherewith to meet them, and meanwhile concerning himself with the Present because there, and there alone, all duty, all grace, all knowledge, and all pleasure dwell, his state is very undesirable and should be attacked at once.
— C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Attempting to succeed in a competitive external environment, we can lose track of how to live without anxiety.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
Even through the dulling effects of the pill, he wanted to be rid of his itching brain, his ignited skin, the flesh beneath, to in some way become so ethereal and Unbound to the earth that he could unsee, disavow, disavow
— Jeff VanderMeer, Authority
He thought the library door would never open again, but that he would be left to live out the rest of his life rooted to the spot on the library carpet, afraid to move a muscle lest the house fall upon his shoulders. He deliberately shrugged them and shuffled his feel just to prove to himself that it could be done.
— Mary Balogh, The Proposal
Rapid movement was a relief in the midst of so much feeling.
— Gail Carson Levine, Ella Enchanted
Everything in us presses toward decision, even toward the wrong decision, just to be free of the anxiety that precedes any big step in life.
— May Sarton, Plant Dreaming Deep
Math anxiety is worst than a regular check up at the dentist.
— Charmaine J. Forde
Nothing conquers the chaos around me like the calm assurance that I am at peace with God.
— Ron Brackin
Procrastination is the lazy cousin of fear.When we feel anxiety around an activity, we postpone it.
— Noelle Hancock, My Year with Eleanor
Anxiety has a purpose. Originally the purpose was to protect the existence of the caveman from wild beasts and savage neighbors. Nowadays the ocassions for anxiety are very different - we are afraid of losing out in the competition, feeling unwanted, isolated, and ostracized. But the purpose of anxiety is still to protect us from dangers that threaten the same things: our existence or values that we identify with our existence. This normal anxiety of life cannot be avoided except at the price of apathy or the numbing of one's sensibilities and imagination.
— Rollo May, The Meaning of Anxiety
An anxious heart is like a string that's out of tune.
— Naguib Mahfouz, Palace Walk
The line between 'normal' and 'neurotic' begins to appear when any activity becomes compulsive - that is, when the person feels pushed to perform the act because it habitually allays his anxiety rather than because of any intrinsic wish to perform the act.
— Rollo May, The Meaning of Anxiety
This is Long Island, land of the rushed, home of the stressed.
— Will Bly, Creatures: A Collection of Short Stories
She finished getting ready with plenty of time to eat breakfast but didn't feel up to braving the dining hall; she still didn't know where it was or how it worked....In new situations, all the trickiest rules are the ones nobody bothers to explain to you. (And the ones you can't Google.) Like, where does the line start? What food can you take? Where are you supposed to stand, then where are you supposed to sit? Where do you go when you're done, why is everyone watching you?... Bah.
— Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl
in this type of anxiety neurosis the anxious attitude is so intimately a part of the individual's method of evaluating stimuli, of orienting herself or himself to every experience, that he or she cannot separate him-or herself enough from anxiety to comprehend the goal of avoidance of, or freedom from, anxiety. What Nancy sought was to be able to step cautiously from rock to rock without falling; the idea or possibility of not being on a precipice at all did not occur to her.
— Rollo May, The Meaning of Anxiety
It is very difficult to appreciate from the outside what a person in severe anxiety is experiencing. Brown rightly remarked about his friends 'imploring a drowning man [me] to swim when they don't know that under the water his hands and feet are tied.
— Rollo May, The Meaning of Anxiety
anxiety, with its concomitant feelings of helplessness, isolation, and conflict, is an exceedingly painful experience. One tends to be angry and resentful toward those responsible for placing him in such a situation of pain. Clinical experience yields many examples like the following: A dependent person, finding himself in a situation of responsibility with which he feels he cannot cope, reacts with hostility both toward those who have placed him in the situation and toward those (usually parents) who caused him to be unable to cope with it. Or he feels hostility toward his therapist, whom he believes should bail him out
— Rollo May, The Meaning of Anxiety
I'm the problem of anxiety we must, therefore, always ask the question of what vital value is being threatened
— Rollo May, The Meaning of Anxiety
But, as is obvious to any observer, many people are thrown into anxiety by situations which are not objectively threatening either in kind or degree. The person may very often state himself that the occasion of his anxiety is a relatively minor event, that his apprehension is 'silly,' and he may be angry with himself for letting such a minor thing bother him; but he still feels it.
— Rollo May, The Meaning of Anxiety
Our feelings of anxiety are genuine but confused signals that something is amiss, and so need to be listened to and patiently interpreted -- processes which are unlikely to be completed when we have to hand, in the computer, one of the most powerful tools of distraction ever invented. The entire internet is in a sense pornographic, a deliverer of a constant excitement that we have no innate capacity to resist, a seducer that leads us down paths that for the most part do nothing to answer our real needs.
— Alain de Botton, How to Think More About Sex
Neurotic anxiety, therefore, is that which occurs when the incapacity for coping adequately with threats is not objective but subjective - I.e., is due not to objective weakness but to inner psychological patterns and conflicts which prevent the individual from using his powers.
— Rollo May, The Meaning of Anxiety
The threat, thus, in anxiety is not necessarily more intense than fear. Rather, it attacks us on a deeper level. The threat must be to something in the 'core' or 'essence' of the personality. My self-esteem, my experience of myself as a person, my feeling of being of worth - all of these are imperfect descriptions of what is threatened.
— Rollo May, The Meaning of Anxiety
One means of allaying anxiety is frantic activity. The anxiety arising out of the dilemma of powerlessness in the face of suprapersonal economic forces on one hand, but theoretical belief in the efficacy of individual effort on the other, was symptomized partly by excessive activism.
— Rollo May, The Meaning of Anxiety
Intense fatigue or illness may also weaken the control of the cortex. Hence we find tired or sick persons responding to threats with a greater degree of undifferentiated anxiety. In psychoanalytic terms, we would speak of this as regression.
— Rollo May, The Meaning of Anxiety
The threat of frustration of a biological urge does not cause conflict and anxiety unless that urge is identified with some value essential to the existence of the personality.
— Rollo May
It struck me then, for the first time, how unethical anxiety is, how it voids the reality of other people by conscripting them as palliatives for your own fear.
— Adam Haslett, Imagine Me Gone
I was afraid to go into a restaurant because I was intimidated by the waiters furtively hovering behind me waiting for my plate to be emptied. Most of all I dreaded paying a bill-my awkwardness when I handed over the money after buying something did not arise from my stinginess, but from excessive tension, excessive embarrassment, excessive uneasiness and apprehension.
— Osamu Dazai
Honestly? I think all of this would be easier if I could point to one thing, one moment, one person, and say this is why. I could explain it, then. Understand the why of it. Blame it on something other than myself. If I were a victim, maybe it would keep everyone from being so frustrated with me. On a few occasions, I’ve even considered making up something, just to see the sympathy that flashed in my mom’s eyes a second ago, just to have her be patient with me for more than a minute at a time. But I’m not a liar, so instead I get the frustrated, calculating way she’s glaring at me now. I’ve seen it so many times before. It’s a look that makes my stomach ache.
— Mila Ferrera, Everything Between Us
Medications used to treat psychiatric disorders are commonly referred to as psychotropic drugs. These drugs are commonly described by their major clinical application, for example, antidepressants, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, anxiolytics, hypnotics, cognitive enhancers, and stimulants. A problem with this approach is that these drugs have multiple indicators. For example, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRls) are both antidepressants and anxiolytics, and the serotonin-dopamine antagonists (SDAs) are both anxiolytics and mood stabilizers.
— Benjamin James Sadock, Kaplan and Sadock's Synopsis of Psychiatry: Behavioral Sciences/Clinical Psychiatry
Fear of Death Stops You to Live
— Tushar Saxena
Survivors create survival mechanisms. Mine is pushing through. I push everything to the side, out of my line of vision, out of my mind and I focus relentlessly on my goal. Not sure what you’d call it, but who cares? I’m a fighter and that’s enough. I live each day happy to wake up each morning to my children’s bright eyes and warm cheeks. If pushing through gives me more days with the family I’ve created, with my writing, with my loves— fine by me. Call it what you want. I call it living. -Broken Places
— Rachel Thompson
Awareness of freedom and responsibility creates anxiety, which is also referred to as anguish or angst. Aspects of romantic attachments can relieve anxieties. For example, Mario Mikulincer et al. argue that loving relationships can act as a "death-anxiety buffering mechanism", since the sense of security, protection, comfort, self-esteem, and social validation that close relationships provide may serve as defensive devices with respect to existential anxiety about the threat of mortality.
— Skye Cleary, The Fictions of Anita Brookner: Illusions of Romance
The worst thing to be afraid of is fear. Give yourself grace. – Jessica Willis
— The Willis Clan
Creative people, as I see them, are distinguished by the fact that they can live with anxiety, even though a high price may be paid in terms of insecurity, sensitivity, and defenselessness for the gift of the “divine madness,” to borrow the term used by the classical Greeks. They do not run away from non-being, but by encountering and wrestling with it, force it to produce being. They knock on silence for an answering music; they pursue meaninglessness until they can force it to mean.
— Rollo May, The Courage to Create
Empowered Women 101: If they made you an option you will always be an option vs. the person they really wanted. Don't ever settle for someone that makes you go through hell only to stay with you because they don't have the confidence to go get what they really want. Fear will always follow your rules when they know they don't have options that make them stay comfortable. You won't grow real love in this type of a relationship. You will water weeds and call it a garden.
— Shannon L. Alder
Anxiety is the monster that resides within.
— Karon Waddell
Horses get anxious when their expectations are not met.
— Wendy Williams, The Horse
Hey man let me ask you something. Do you sort of feel like you are carrying a low level anxiety about the existence of shark attacks? I mean, just the fact that it really happens, it's horrible, it's horrible enough that you kind of have to worry about it, at least a little bit, almost all the time...
— Kevin Hooyman, Conditions on the Ground
That's the thing about anxiety: It's a real time suck.
— Corey Ann Haydu, OCD Love Story
This is the trouble with origin hunting. There are so many origins.
— Daniel Smith, Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety
But a child is a sensitive instrument. You can hide the factual truth from a child, but you can't blanket influence. Your agitation will out, and over time it will mod your child's temperament as surely as water wear at rock.
— Daniel Smith, Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety
Dissociative Identity Disorder is borne out of trauma. Many individuals who survive severe trauma will later experience marked anxiety, which may or may not relate to triggers from the original trauma. Individuals with DID are highly likely to have a great deal of anxiety.
— Karen Marshall, Amongst Ourselves: A Self-Help Guide to Living with Dissociative Identity Disorder
How do you fill the space between, "God says it," and, "I believe it,"?
— Jen Pollock Michel, Teach Us to Want: Longing, Ambition & the Life of Faith
I listened to make sure I was meeting the minimum requirement to stay out of jail, so to speak.
— Bill  McKenzie
Once in a while, he worries, but about what? Like the scattered clouds that drift over farmland in the afternoon, that sort of anxiety is what, ultimately?
— Tang Fei, Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 100
The problem of anxiety isn't that the organism responds to threats by near-instantly powering up. That's clearly a good thing, species-survival-wise. It's that sometimes the organism starts seeing threats too readily.
— Daniel Smith, Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety
My mother took the measure of what could be built with the material she'd been given, and she built it.
— Daniel Smith, Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety
We were forever one earthquake away from losing it all.
— Alison Singh Gee, Where the Peacocks Sing: A Palace, a Prince, and the Search for Home
Many problems can be solved by a man not frightened by them.
— Robert A. Heinlein, Have Space Suit—Will Travel
...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
Reputation became the pirates' sharpest sword.
— Robert Kurson, Pirate Hunters: Treasure, Obsession, and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship
Apprehension of a painful or disagreeable recognition made me tremble. I am confident that it took no distinctness of shape, and that it was the revival for a few minutes of the terror of childhood.
— Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
I wished that I had some other guardian of minor abilities.
— Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Unbelief is a master carpenter at cross-making.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, Based on the English Standard Version
Standing alone, walking my own path. Rearranging my thoughts. Pushing worries away. Climbing out of the fog, towards freedom of mind.
— TinaJ. Richardson
A mentoring nurse to new doctors: "Check your own pulse first.
— Code Black
Meanwhile, back in the real world, my first instinct is a sort of stupid ducking motion I’ve learned from the movies, and I have the sure sense I’m going to be shot in the neck, where I feel particularly exposed and vulnerable.
— Charles D'Ambrosio, Loitering: New & Collected Essays
Equally as therapeutic was the fact that disaster did not come.
— Daniel Smith
If you're afraid of heights, lean over a railing. If you're afraid of germs, lick a floor. But what do you do if your greatest fear is of being afraid?
— Daniel Smith, Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety
What delicious abandon in the sleep of the child. Where do we lose it?
— Frank Herbert, Dune
Do not be discourage by people who reject your true purpose. Do not stop because of anxiety; stop because you are done with the mission! Don't ever be down by the susurrant call of the masses to stop, halt or abort your true purpose when you are convinced within your innermost man of how true your purpose is. A true purpose is mostly rejected, spat upon and seen as an unworthy cause by the masses until they come to a later realization of how true it is and then they accept, celebrate and enjoy it.
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
For our anxiety is the one thing we cannot place on the shoulders of others, it suffocates them.
— Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 5: 1947-1955
You must teach me the way you thrust your worries aside and turn to practical matters.
— Frank Herbert, Dune
There is only one thing to be done," went on the old lady, "be simple and quiet. Whenever your soul begins to be disturbed and anxious, put yourself in His Hands, and refuse to decide for yourself. It is easy, so easy.
— Robert Hugh Benson, By What Authority?
Be not be discourage by the rejections. Do not stop because of anxiety; stop because you are done with the mission! Be not be down by the susurrant call of the masses to stop, halt or abort your true purpose when you are convinced within your innermost man of how true your purpose is. A true purpose is mostly to a greater extent rejected, spat upon and seen as unworthy cause by the masses until they come to a later realization of how true it is to be accepted
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
A man may follow vanity as truly in the counting-house as in the theatre. If he be spending his life in amassing wealth, he passes his days in a vain show.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, Based on the English Standard Version
We will have to work hard to rest.
— Kevin DeYoung, Crazy Busy: A (Mercifully) Short Book about a (Really) Big Problem
Try to breathe," he said, and for the first time the only thought in my head after an instruction like that wasn't Fuck you.I breathed.
— Alice Sebold
We live in the tension between neophillia, or attraction to new things, and neophobia, or fear of new things.
— Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
I always thought a shipwreck was a well-organized affair, but I've learned the devil a lot in the last five minutes.
— Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
At that moment my shyness and anxiety all flooded back and I took a few steps back, and then sank to the ground; crouching, overwhelmed, covering my face. ‘What will he think? What if he already hates me? Maybe I was wrong in the first place? Maybe he didn’t like me at all.’ No matter how much I tried, I wasn’t able to produce a single positive thought to counter my panic. I wasn’t able to take a deep breath and relax. This day had been too eventful. I began to shake furiously, afraid of what was to come. ‘He hates me! He hates me!’ I thought over and over. Hot tears began to fall down my cheeks and I squeezed my eyes trying to stop them. My breathing quickened. What was I doing? I had said what I wanted, proudly, trying to be something to him but here I was: a total mess.‘What kind of a confession ends in a panic attack? GET A HOLD OF YOURSELF!’ I thought furiously, my efforts rewarded with futility. The world started to spin, my mouth becoming numb for reasons I couldn’t understand, almost as if to prevent me from panicking aloud. As if I had the friggin’ courage.
— Anja Owona Okoa, What if we're faeries?
During World War I, Germany had only 25 of its vaunted submarines sailing at any one time.
— Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
She became an illusion of herself. It was easier to cope with people that way
— Tina J. Richardson, I didnt mean it that way
I tried to write how I felt. The pen remained frozen. The paper stayed white and empty,while my brain was dark and full
— Tina J. Richardson, I didnt mean it that way
I will not allow anxiety dictate the terms of my life
— Jeanette Purkis, The Guide to Good Mental Health on the Autism Spectrum
As we’ve already mentioned, the main premise of the worrier is that things are uniformly dangerous. No risks can be tolerated. It is here, in the mind of the worrier, that the four rules of anxiety come into play: detect danger, catastrophize danger, control all the circumstances, and avoid discomfort. Sticking to this set of rules greatly interferes with one’s ability to assess risks in a balanced and rational way.
— Robert L. Leahy
Worried moonI'm afraid of what's to comeWorried moonYeah, tell me what you knowWorried moonYou see further down the roadWorried moon
— Chris Cornell
Jesus takes the chaos of the world upon Himself.
— Mark Sayers, Facing Leviathan: Leadership, Influence, and Creating in a Cultural Storm
He had to pause for his usual misgivings.
— Paul C. Nagel, John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life
You can't bluff an old theologian. Linus
— Charlie brown Christmas
It was an undemanding job both physically and mentally, which was fine. Stress was for the rich and hard-working.
— Joe Cawley
It's because the door hasn't been closed yet that the nightmares still find their way in.
— Joyce Rachelle
My compulsive thoughts aren't even thoughts, they're absolute certainties and obeying them isn't a choice.
— Paul Rudnick
A sure way to have someone crushed by their doubt is to preach a sermon on how to remove your doubt.
— Matt      Chandler
Which sort of shows why my body is an idiot, because forced narcolepsy is pretty much the worst defense ever.
— Jenny  Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things
In intimate conversation I am as supportive and positive as the next man, but gatherings of happy people make me miserable. I long to share in the collective joy, but instead I am racked with anxiety.
— Joel Derfner, Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever
The conviction that's underneath a lot of other statements is, "I don't trust Gjod.
— Matt      Chandler
Fury reigns down on those who ignore in the wisdom of fear itself.
— Abdulkadir Abdullahi Mohamed Mirre
Fear is elemental to every human endeavour involving risk and change, which includes ALL creative endeavours. To be creative is to be anxious. To endure the anxiousness - to face it and work with it, to allow it to lay bare what has been hidden - is the beginning of faith, which, in a certain sense, is the courage to become, to become present, along with all the other characters, tribes and audiences whose actions move the unfolding drama that is the world.
— Billy Marshall Stoneking
He is now judging himself, harshly, by his captors' rules.
— Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism
Henry Adams observes that John Hay has the ability to take the world as a whole rather than pulling it to pieces in criticism. He also observes that, in the routine of a stressful job, this perspective is challenged
— John Taliaferro, All the Great Prizes : The Life of John Hay, from Lincoln to Roosevelt
Because we have only one (life) we go about blundering along him nervous haste.
— John Taliaferro, All the Great Prizes : The Life of John Hay, from Lincoln to Roosevelt
If someone wants to be in your life they will find you. If they don't they will find an excuse.
— Shannon L. Alder
Fear transforms your body like an inept sculptor does a perfect block of stone...It's just that you're chipped away at from within, and no one sees how many splinters and layers have been taken off you. You become ever thinner and more brittle inside, until eve the slightest emotion bowls you over. One hug, and you think you're going to shatter and be lost.
— Nina George, The Little Paris Bookshop
I've had to keep defining and defending myself as a writer every single day of my adult life -- constantly reminding and re-reminding my soul and the cosmos that I'm very serious about the business of creative living, and that I will never stop creating, no matter what the outcome, and no matter how deep my anxieties and insecurities may be.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
I didn't doubt the potential value of paying attention to subconscious cues...problem was, my inner voice resembled Chicken Little: it was screaming that I was about to die, but it did that almost every time I laced up my climbing boots.
— Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster
The words kept coming and he could not stop them, not while Callie was standing there so indecipherably, and so he was going to keep talking until he used up all the words there were and then no one would be able to talk to anyone else anymore and then all anyone would have left were one another's unintelligible faces, and maybe some weird gesturing, too, and it would be all Oscar's fault.
— Anne Ursu, The Real Boy
Faith enables you to hold on loosely without letting go.
— John Kasich, Every Other Monday: Twenty Years of Life, Lunch, Faith, and Friendship
A phobia is an excessive or unreasonable fear of an object, situation or place. Phobias are quite common and often take root in childhood for no apparent reason. Other times they spring from traumatic events or develop from an attempt to make sense of unexpected and intense feelings of anxiety or panic.Simple phobias are fears of specific things such as insects, infections, or even flying. Agoraphobia is a fear of being in places where one feels trapped or unable to get help, such as in crowds, on a bus or in a car, or standing in a line. It is basically an anxiety that ignites from being in places or situations from which escape might be difficult (or embarrassing). A social phobia is a marked fear of social or performance situations.When the phobic person actually encounters, or even anticipates, being in the presence of the feared object or situation, immediate anxiety can be triggered. The physical symptoms of anxiety may include shortness of breath, sweating, a racing heart, chest or abdominal discomfort, trembling, and similar reactions. The emotional component involves an intense fear and may include feelings of losing control, embarrassing oneself, or passing out.Most people who experience phobias try to escape or avoid the feared situation wherever possible. This may be fairly easy if the feared object is rarely encountered (such as snakes) and avoidance will not greatly restrict the person’s life. At other times, avoiding the feared situation (in the case of agoraphobia, social phobia) is not easily done. After all, we live in a world filled with people and places. Having a fear of such things can limit anyone’s life significantly, and trying to escape or avoid a feared object or situation because of feelings of fear about that object or situation can escalate and make the feelings of dread and terror even more pronounced.In some situations of phobias, the person may have specific thoughts that contribute some threat to the feared situation. This is particularly true for social phobia, in which there is often a fear of being negatively evaluated by others, and for agoraphobia, in which there may be a fear of passing out or dying with no one around to help, and of having a panic attack where one fears making a fool of oneself in the presence of other people.Upon recognizing their problem for what it is, men should take heart in knowing that eighty percent of people who seek help can experience improvement of symptoms or, in male-speak, the illness can be “fixed.
— Sahar Abdulaziz, But You Look Just Fine: Unmasking Depression, Anxiety, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Panic Disorder and Seasonal Affective Disorder
You're so haunted by other people's futures that you forget, the only future you cannot see is your own.
— Minority Report (TV show)
You have to let go before you can reach.
— Kate Messner, All the Answers
And because his narrator was characterized above all by his anxiety regarding the disconnect between his internal experience and his social self-presentation, the more intensely the author worried about distinguishing himself from the narrator, the more he felt he had become him.
— Ben Lerner
And if I talk to him, I'll say something wrong, give something away. I can feel it coming, a betrayal of myself.
— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
Facing up to non-being enables us to put our life into perspective, see it in its entirety, and thereby lend it a sense of direction and unity. If the ultimate source of anxiety is fear of the future, the future ends in death; and if the ultimate source of anxiety is uncertainty, death is the only certainty. It is only by facing up to death, accepting its inevitability, and integrating it into life that we can escape from the pettiness and paralysis of anxiety, and, in so doing, free ourselves to make the most out of our lives and out of ourselves.
— Neel Burton, The Meaning of Madness
Many people suffer alone and in silence because they are scared or ashamed. They feel weak…or pitiful. How can a person be incapable of having joy? “Why can’t I just have a good time? Why can’t I get on with it?” And for those in the spotlight who live under the microscope of public scrutiny fear being discovered, ridiculed, and shunned should their illness be discovered. So they wear a mask for the public, and sometimes even for themselves.
— Sahar Abdulaziz, But You Look Just Fine: Unmasking Depression, Anxiety, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Panic Disorder and Seasonal Affective Disorder
Anxiety, in short, is a conscious feeling. It can arise in a bottom-up way, driven by activity in defensive circuits or from higher processes that conceptualize worry, either about an uncertain future or about existence itself.
— Joseph E. Ledoux
Thoughts were zipping around my head like fireflies in a jar, bumping into each other, blinking on and off.
— Cameron West
Don't say "I'm a worrier and this is just who I am"....or "I've always been a worrier, I can't help it"; instead decide from this day forward to become someone who DOESN'T worry.
— Miya Yamanouchi, Embrace Your Sexual Self: A Practical Guide for Women
stress is not stress until we experience it in our bodies and have a physiological reaction in our bodies.
— Linda Lantieri
The more you rationalize, the more you move farther away from your authentic self.
— Shannon L. Alder
A man without fear cannot be a slave.
— Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way
I know a little something about fear, honey. I know what a relief it feels like to give into it at first. It’s not hard to persuade yourself that you’re doing the right thing—that you’re making the smart, safe decision. But fear is insidious. It takes anything you’re willing to give it, the parts of your life you don’t mind cutting out, but when you’re not looking, it takes anything else it damn well pleases, too.
— Andrea Lochen, Imaginary Things
Badger had been waiting with ever increasing certainty for that brown, government stamped envelope, to hit the floor with the impact of several atomic bombs; the shockwaves hitting him before the sound could penetrate his ears.
— Paul Howsley, The Year of the Badgers
I envision my mind as a plot of grass full of sheep surrounded by a perimeter of electric fence. If I'm not constantly vigilant and aware of my thoughts, the electric fence shuts off, the sheep jump out, and my panic gets away from me. The chance for an attack is especially bad just before bed or when I'm distracted or lost in thought in the car, causing me to slap myself in the face as hard as I can or bite the inside of my upper arm. If I can feel the pain, then I am still alive and can begin to focus on rounding up the sheep again. See? This makes perfect sense in my head.
— Brittany Gibbons, Fat Girl Walking: Sex, Food, Love, and Being Comfortable in Your Skin...Every Inch of It
Our anxieties were driving us to become other people-he was Earner; I was Mother, like characters in some phenomenally boring Ionesco play. We both worried all the time and often didn't remember to laugh. I could find relief in the baby's smile, or with my friends, or now, in yoga. I didn't see that Bruce was headed someplace where there was no relief.
— Claire Dederer, Poser: My Life in Twenty-three Yoga Poses
No amount of regret can change the past. No amount of anxiety can change the future.
— Karen Salmansohn
the prospect of beginning a third- act career scared me almost as much as it attracted me.
— Tony Danza, I'd Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had: My Year as a Rookie Teacher at Northeast High
Sometimes I don't have enough energy to be social. I need time alone to recover from the last time I went out.
— Tina J. Richardson
When my anxiety is really bad, the fast beating of my heart makes my body feel like it rocks back and forth.
— Tina J. Richardson
Scripture assumes that we will be afraid and anxious sometimes. What is important is where we turn, or to whom we turn when we are afraid. The God who calls you to trust in Him when you are afraid will spend a great deal of time showing you that you can trust Him.
— Edward T. Welch
People with depression can't just snap out of it or "turn that frown upside down." Depression can be a painful and overwhelming state that makes one unable to function, to think clearly or reasonably, or to want to simply face another day. Many people suffer alone and in silence because they are scared or ashamed. They feel weak…or pitiful. How can a person be incapable of having joy? “Why can’t I just have a good time? Why can’t I get on with it?
— Sahar Abdulaziz, But You Look Just Fine: Unmasking Depression, Anxiety, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Panic Disorder and Seasonal Affective Disorder
We will martyr ourselves, suffering under the weight of a non-reciprocal relationship until some part of us bursts in protest. Suddenly, we lose our mind, and allowing ourselves to heap all manner of nastiness, name calling, patronizing, death threats on the “deserving” jerk who has it coming after all we do for him/her! As the final insult rings across the room and we regain consciousness, we are horrified by what has come out of our mouth. After all, we LOVE these people, and we quickly move into anxious terror that this time we have gone too far . . . this time we crossed the line and they will leave us. So, we hunker back down and the martyrdom begins again. It’s a terrible cycle.
— Mary Crocker Cook, Awakening Hope. a Developmental, Behavioral, Biological Approach to Codependency Treatment.
[I]n spite of her work as a reference librarian, she discovered that life isn't about knowing all the answers. The best we can do is make peace with our questions, learn who we are, know our strengths, and do the best we can with the gifts we've been given while we're here.
— Kate Messner, All the Answers
It's simple,' Kat told them. 'You bombard them with images of what they ought to be, and you make them feel grotty for being the way they are. You're working with the gap between reality and perception. That's why you have to hit them with something new, something they've never seen before, something they aren't. Nothing sells like anxiety.
— Margaret Atwood, Wilderness Tips
Anxiously attached Codependents demonstrate the ability to maximize the attention they get from their partner, regardless of whether it is positive or negative (i.e., "I'd rather be screamed at than ignored"). Manipulation is used to keep the inattentive or inconsistent partner involved by alternating dramatic angry demands with needy dependence. When the partner is preoccupied and not paying attention, the anxious Codependent explodes in angry demands and behaviors that cannot be ignored.
— Mary Crocker Cook, Awakening Hope. A Developmental, Behavioral, Biological Approach to Codependency Treatment.
Life comes with problems, you have to accept that. And you have to try to lead the simple life; to not constantly ask questions about the whys and the wherefores of everything.
— Elizabeth Berg, Home Safe
This is one of the many paradoxes of happiness: we seek to control our lives, but the unfamiliar and the unexpected are important sources of happiness.
— Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
And if she had appeared, would I have dared to speak to her?
— Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
If you smell fear - bite on it
—  it can't bite back.
Men in their position cannot afford to seem anxious about anything. You know that’s a sign of weakness.
— Peter Cimino, The Four Corners, a Sicilian Story
My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.
— Michel de Montaigne
The need for control always comes from someone that has lost it.
— Shannon L. Alder
For there is no joy in continuity, in the perpetual. We desire it only because the present is empty. A person who is trying to eat money is always hungry. When someone says, "Time to stop now!" he is in a panic because he has had nothing to eat yet, and wants more and more time to go on eating money, ever hopeful of satisfaction around the corner. We do not really want continuity, but rather a present experience of total happiness. The thought of wanting such an experience to go on and on is a result of being self-conscious in the experience, and thus incompletely aware of it. So long as there is the feeling of an "I" having this experience, the moment is not all. Eternal life is realized when the last trace of difference between "I" and "now" has vanished - when there is just this "now" and nothing else.By contrast, hell or "everlasting damnation" is not the everlastingness of time going on forever, but of the unbroken circle, the continuity and frustration of going round and round in pursuit of something which can never be attained. Hell is the fatuity, the everlasting impossibility, of self-love, self-consciousness, and seld-possession. It is trying to see one´s own eyes, hear one´s own ears, and kiss one´s own lips.
— Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety
I was beginning to realize that what I wanted was the noise of people living near me, but not near enough to cause any inaudible noises to show up because I knew that those sorts of noises often shift into inaudible minor chords and I am unable to deal with that shift.
— Catherine Lacey, Nobody Is Ever Missing
Water is peaceful. I am at rest. In the water, I am safe and pulled in where I can't get out. Everything slows down-the noise and the racing of my thoughts.
— Jennifer Niven
If I can trust the word of a friend, why do I question the word of the God of the universe? Go figure. Sin is truly bizarre." [Running Scared, p. 111]
— Edward T. Welch
I did my best parenting by prayer. I began to speak less to the kids and more to God. It was actually quite relaxing.
— Elyse M. Fitzpatrick, Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus
As she stared at the restless pixels on the screen, her impatience grew. This agitation was familiar, a paradoxical feeling that built up inside her when she was spending too much time online, as though some force was at once goading her and holding her back. How to describe it? A temporal stuttering, an urgent lassitude, a feeling of simultaneous rushing and lagging behind. It was a horrible, stilted, panicky sensation, hard to put into words.
— Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being
All relationship systems become anxious. People put together and inevitably anxiety will arise. Anxiety can be infectious. We can give it to others or catch it from them. What precisely triggers anxiety is unique to each system. Common Activators are significant changes and losses. They upset the stable patterns and balance of the system.
— Peter L. Steinke
What I find predictable is crazy people's ability to predict that unpredictable people can be predicted by their consistent unpredictable behavior, thus making all crazy people predictable when the world says they are unpredictable. Therefore, I must be “right” because I can predict crazy because I have been trained in the unpredictable nature of consistent craziness because I am crazy.
— Shannon L. Alder
When you're betting for tiles in an archery contest, you shoot with skill. When you're betting for fancy belt buckles, you worry about your aim. And when you're betting for real gold, you're a nervous wreck. Your skill is the same in all three cases - but because one prize means more to you than another, you let outside considerations weigh on your mind. He who looks too hard at the outside gets clumsy on the inside.
— Zhuangzi, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu
For there is no joy in continuity, in the perpetual. We desire it only because the present is empty. A person who is trying to eat money is always hungry. When someone says, "Time to stop now!" he is in a panic because he has had nothing to eat yet, and wants more and more time to go on eating money, ever hopeful of satisfaction around the corner. We do not really want continuity, but rather a present experience of total happiness. The though of wanting such an experience to go on and on is a result of being self-conscious in the experience, and thsu incompletely aware of it. So long as there is the feeling of an "I" having this experience, the moment is not all. Eternal life is realized when the last trace of difference between "I" and "now" has vanished - when there is just this "now" and nothing else.By contrast, hell or "everlasting damnation" is not the everlastingness of time going on forever, but of the unbroken circle, the continuity and frustration of going round and round in pursuit of something which can never be attained. Hell is the fatuity, the everlasting impossibility, of self-love, self-consciousness, and seld-possession. It is trying to see one´s own eyes, hear one´s own ears, and kiss one´s own lips.
— Alan W. Watts
We are at the tail end of a decline in infant mortality that began just over a century ago. Babies no longer wander into open hearths or are mauled by marauding pigs. We have vaccines, lead-free educational toys, diapers that can sop up a typhoon. But we have never been more worried.
— Nicholas Day, Baby Meets World: Suck, Smile, Touch, Toddle
I have plenty of information now, but I can't get it into words. I'm afraid it's too big a task for me. I wonder if I will find everything in life too big for my abilities. Well, time will tell." Theodore Roosevelt, writing in naval history in his spare time while in law school
— Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism
When you wake up to kingdom realities, you find that you are tracing the steps of both the Israelites and Jesus himself into the wilderness. . . . The wilderness is the place where God meets his people, Satan attacks, and kingdom allegiances are revealed. [Ed Welch, Running Scared, 118]
— Edward T. Welch
I admit that at times my prayer for my children is nothing more than vocalized unbelief aimed at God.
— Elyse M. Fitzpatrick, Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus
I struggled with insecurity because I was trying to find my security in things. But when I began serving God with all my heart, my security was in Him.
— Jeremy Camp, I Still Believe
For there is no joy in continuity, in the perpetual. We desire it only because the present is empty. A person who is trying to eat money is always hungry. When someone says, "Time to stop now!" he is in a panic because he has had nothing to eat yet, and wants more and more time to go on eating money, ever hopeful of satisfaction around the corner. We do not really want continuity, but rather a present experience of total happiness. The thought of wanting such an experience to go on and on is a result of being self-conscious in the experience, and thus incompletely aware of it. So long as there is the feeling of an "I" having this experience, the moment is not all. Eternal life is realized when the last trace of difference between "I" and "now" has vanished - when there is just this "now" and nothing else.By contrast, hell or "everlasting damnation" is not the everlastingness of time going on forever, but of the unbroken circle, the continuity and frustration of going round and round in pursuit of something which can never be attained. Hell is the fatuity, the everlasting impossibility, of self-love, self-consciousness, and self-possession. It is trying to see one´s own eyes, hear one´s own ears, and kiss one´s own lips.
— Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety
The contrast between earthly and spiritual is not a contrast between the tangible and the intangible; it is between the transitory and the eternal. Earthly is temporary, spiritual is everlasting. [Ed Welch, Running Scared, 127]
— Edward T. Welch
No power on earth, if it labours beneath the burden of fear, can possibly be strong enough to survive.
— Marcus Tullius Cicero, On Duties
God is able to give you the power to endure that which cannot be changed... Why be anxious? Come what may, God is able.
— Martin Luther King Jr.
I finally understand that it’s okay to be a little afraid of things but that obsessing over them does not mean you have any more control over what you fear.
— Jen Kirkman, I Can Barely Take Care of Myself: Tales From a Happy Life Without Kids
Anxiety kicked in. I lacked people skills all my life. Any normal human interaction was foreign to me. I don’t know what to say, to not look like a major dork or something. I am weird like that. Always were.The dead – that’s a whole other world we’re talking about. They can’t interfere with my everyday life, other than to annoy me. I can be myself around the dead. The dead are good. The living? Not so much.
— Tia Artemis, The Death's Daughter
In cities where peace and the arts flourish, men are more consumed by jealousy, worry, and anxiety than they are in cities under the blight of a besieging army. Private sorrows are more bitter than public suffering.
— Voltaire
Christianity sees in the picture of Jesus as the Christ a human life in which all forms of anxiety are present but in which all forms of despair are absent.
— Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol 1
Jesus had no regard for the lifeboat politics you and I live within every day.
— Donald Miller, Searching for God Knows What
Recipe for a WorryTake one pound morbid preoccupation and mix vigorously with one cup overactive imagination. In a separate bowl, add one part hypersensitivity to three parts increased hormone activity. Fold together and let stew for hours on end.
— Emily Colas, Just Checking: Scenes From the Life of an Obsessive-Compulsive
Every time you try to do something that anxiety wants to stop you from doing, you've struck a blow that will make the anxiety weaker.
— Jamie Blyth
A great imperative imparts a wonderful impulse to the spirit.
— Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute
You always were such a worrier. It was as if you thought your worrying was all that held the world together, and if you stopped for a split second the whole thing would just fly apart.
— Paul Murray
Although enlightened people know that an extreme phobia wasn't a form of madness, hey could not help but regard it as odd.
— Dean Koontz, False Memory
After everything that's happened, her fear of requesting a prescription or of asking Trevor about his mother baffles her. Shouldn't life-altering events make you less afraid of the little stuff? But it's the little stuff that paralyzes her: talking, eating, dressing, sleeping. Everyone in school is afraid of the apocalypse; she is afraid of living through it.
— Alaya Dawn Johnson, Love Is the Drug
Steffi wasn't tired anymore. In fact, she felt invigorated. She was going to make it. She needed more of those kisses.
— Kim Baldwin, Taken by Storm
The Cause that caused a Fear need not appear again. There for not fear about Fear.
— Purushothaman Kollam