Inspirational Quotes on Depression

“I have always found that the Trough periods of the human undulation provide excellent opportunity for all sensual temptations, particularly those of sex. This may surprise you, because, of course, there is more physical energy, and therefore more potential appetite, at the Peak periods; but you must remember that the powers of resistance are then also at their highest. The health and spirits which you... use in producing lust can also... be very easily used for work or play or thought or innocuous merriment. The attack has a much better chance of success when the man's whole inner world is drab and cold and empty. And it is also to be noted that the Trough sexuality is subtly different in quality from that of the Peak - much less likely to lead to... "being in love," much more easily drawn into perversions, much less... generous and imaginative and even spiritual... It is the same with other desires of the flesh. You are much more likely to make [a] man a sound drunkard by pressing drink on him as an anodyne when he is dull and weary... than... when he is happy...”

“Man disavows, and Deity disowns me; Hell might afford my miseries a shelter; Therefore Hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths all Bolted against me. Hard lot! encompassed with a thousand dangers, Weary, faint, trembling with a thousand terrors, I'm called, if vanquished, to receive a sentence Worse than Abiram's. Him the vindictive rod of angry Justice Sent quick and howling to the centre headlong; I, fed with judgement, in a fleshy tomb, am Buried above ground.”

“It seems it has been my fate to sadden those I should have made happy.”

“Who am I? They often tell me I would step from my cell's confinement calmly, cheerfully, firmly, like a squire from his country-house. Who am I? They often tell me I would talk to my warden freely and friendly and clearly, as though it were mine to command. Who am I? They also tell me I would bear the days of misfortune equably, smilingly, proudly, like one accustomed to win. Am I then really all that which other men tell of, or am I only what I know of myself, restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage, struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat, yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds, thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness, trembling with anger at despotisms and petty humiliation, tossing in expectation of great events, powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance, weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making, faint and ready to say farewell to it all. Who am I? This or the other? Am I one person today, and tomorrow another? Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others, and before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling? Or is something within me still like a beaten army, fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved? Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine. Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine!”

“When people quit talking to God, they quit talking to one another. And people who quit talking to God soon get very lonely and depressed. They are actually lonely for God, hungering for communion with Him, yearning for His close love and nearness; but instead of recognizing these needs as spiritual, they blame their lack of fulfillment on their husbands or wives.”

“DOING is often God's remedy for despair.”

“لم أكن أعرف كيف أكون أي شيء! لم أستطع أن أكون حقودًا أو طيب القلب، ولا نذلًا أو أمينًا، ولا بطلًا أو حشرة. إنني أعيش حياتي الآن في هذه الزاوية، مهينًا نفسي بمواساة حاقدة غير مجدية تتمثل في قولي لها: " ﺇﻥ ﺍﻟﺫﻜﻲ ﻻ ﻴﻤﻜﻨﻪ ﺃﻥ ﻴﻜﻭﻥ ﺸﻴﺌﺎ ﺨﻁﻴﺭًا، وﺃﻥ ﺍﻷﺤﻤﻕ ﻭﺤﺩﻩ ، ﻫﻭ الذي ﻴﻤﻜﻨﻪ ﺃﻥ ﻴﻜﻭﻥ ﺃﻱ ﺸﻲ.”

“The iron bolt which so mysteriously fastens the door of hope and holds our spirits in gloomy prison, needs a heavenly hand to push it back.”

“Thus I remained to myself an unhappy lodging where I could neither stay nor leave. For where could my heart fly from my heart? Where could I fly from my own self?”

“There have been occasions in my later life (I suppose in most lives) when I have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen on all interest in romance, to shut me out from anything save dull endurance.”

“My wretched passions were acute, smarting, from my continual, sickly irritability I had hysterical impulses, with tears and convulsions. I had no resource except reading, that is, there was nothing in my surroundings which I could respect and which attracted me. I was overwhelmed with depression, too; I had an hysterical craving for incongruity and for contrast, and so I took to vice.”

“Absolute statements of our unbelief that we make in the darkness are notoriously unreliable.”

“Hope doesn't require a massive chain where heavy links of logic hold it together. A thin wire will do...just strong enough to get us through the night until the winds die down.”

“When something drops into your life that seems to threaten your future, remember this: the first shockwaves of the bomb are not sin. The real danger is yielding to them. Giving in. Putting up no spiritual fight. And the root of that surrender is unbelief - a failure to fight for faith in future grace. A failure to cherish all that God promises to be for us in Jesus.”

“Perhaps it was because a terrible anguish had developed within my soul, occasioned by a circumstance which loomed infinitely larger than my own self: to be precise, it was the dawning conviction that in the world at large, . I had had a presentiment of this for a good long time, but complete conviction came swiftly during this last year. All of a sudden, I realized that it to me whether the world existed or whether there was nothing at all anywhere. I began to intuit and sense with all my being, that .”

“Do you know what hurts so very much? It's love. Love is the strongest force in the world, and when it is blocked that means pain. There are two things we can do when this happens. We can kill that love so that it stops hurting. But then of course part of us dies, too. Or we can ask God to open up another route for that love to travel.' I did not know, as I listened to my father's footsteps winding back down the stairs, that he had given me more than the key to this hard moment. I did not know that he had put in my had the secret that would open far darker rooms that this--places where there was not, on a human level, anything to love at all.”

“When I had lain awake a little awhile, those extraordinary voices with which silence teems, began to make themselves audible. The closet whispered, the fireplace sighed, the little washing-stand ticked, and one guitar-string played occasionally in the chest of drawers.”

“When I went out, light of day seemed a darker color than when I went in.”

“(...) grinding your teeth in silent impotence to sink into luxurious inertia, brooding in the fact that there is no one even got you to feel vindictive against, that you have not, and perhaps will never have, an object of your spite, that it is a sleight of hand, a bit of juggling, a card-sharper's trick, that it is simply a mess, no knowing what and no knowing who, but in spite of all these uncertainties and jugglings, still there is an ache in you, and the more you do not know, the worse the ache.”

“In the Eastern story, the heavy slab that was to fall on the bed of state in the flush of conquest was slowly wrought out of the quarry, the tunnel of the rope to hold it in its place was slowly carried through the leagues of rock, the slab was slowly raised and fitted in the roof, the rope to the great iron ring. All being made ready with much labour, and the hour come, the sultan was aroused in the dead of the night, and the sharpened axe that was to sever the rope from the great iron ring was put into his hand, and he struck with it, and the rope parted and rushed away, and the ceiling fell. So, in my case; all the work, near and afar, that tended to the end had been accomplished, and in an instant the blow was struck, and the roof of my stronghold dropped upon me.”