Depressing Quotes & Sayings

It’s okay to feel sadness. In fact, it’s healthy. Sadness is a natural emotion that we all feel at different points in our lives. Just like happiness, anger, or love, sadness is a normal human emotion that’s part of being alive.

When we experience sad, depressing feelings, it can be tempting to try to push those feelings away and pretend they don’t exist. We might tell ourselves to “cheer up” or try to distract ourselves with other activities. But suppressing or ignoring our feelings can actually make it worse in the long run.

Instead of trying to avoid feeling sad, it’s important to accept those emotions and allow yourself to experience them. When we allow ourselves to feel these tough emotions, we can also find compassion, understanding, and hope.

When we read these quotes, we realize that we are not alone in our sadness and that other people have felt the same way before. This can help us to feel more connected to others and less alone in our sadness.

Depressing Quotes

“Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.” Percy Bysshe Shelley

“A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ.” John Steinbeck

“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.” Leo Buscaglia

“Every human walks around with a certain kind of sadness. They may not wear it on their sleeves, but it’s there if you look deep.” Taraji P. Henson

“Depression is being colorblind and constantly told how colorful the world is.” Atticus

“It doesn’t hurt to feel sad from time to time.” Willie Nelson

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives – the death of genuine feeling, the death of inspired response, the awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain or the glory of other men in yourself.” Norman Cousins

“Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.” Rumi

“Tears come from the heart and not from the brain.” Leonardo da Vinci

“Every life has a measure of sorrow, and sometimes this is what awakens us.” Steven Tyler

“It’s a sad man my friend who’s livin’ in his own skin and can’t stand the company.” Bruce Springsteen

“It is very hard to explain to people who have never known serious depression or anxiety the sheer continuous intensity of it. There is no off switch.” Matt Haig

“The word ‘happy’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.” Carl Jung

“Sadness flies away on the wings of time.” Jean de La Fontaine

“Nobody understands another’s sorrow, and nobody another’s joy.” Franz Schubert

“The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy.” Jim Rohn

“Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart, don’t know how to laugh either.” Golda Meir

“Sad things happen. They do. But we don’t need to live sad forever.” Mattie Stepanek

“Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.” Henry David Thoreau

“One must not let oneself be overwhelmed by sadness.” Jackie Kennedy

“The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.” Sophocles

“Crying is cleansing. There’s a reason for tears, happiness or sadness.” Dionne Warwick

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.” Khalil Gibran

“It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.” F. Scott Fitzgerald

“They say it’s better to bury your sadness in a graveyard or garden that waits for the spring to wake from its sleep and burst into green.” Conor Oberst

“I seldom think about my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times; but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers.” Helen Keller

“Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.” Joseph Campbell

“Sorrows are like thunderclouds, in the distance they look black, over our heads scarcely gray.” Jean Paul

“It is one of the most saddening things in life that, try as we may, we can never be certain of making people happy, whereas we can almost always be certain of making them unhappy.” Thomas Huxley

“Those who gave away their wings are sad not to see them fly.” Antonio Porchia

“The good times of today, are the sad thoughts of tomorrow.” Bob Marley

“There are times I am happy. There are times I am sad. But I always try to separate emotion from the need to reach for something stronger, deeper. And then no matter the emotion, I can reach for a stability that helps me accomplish what is the goal.” Troy Polamalu

“You can’t have an up without a down, a right without a left, a back without a front – or a happy without a sad.” Harlan Coben

“I am an optimist, and I try to think that the light will always prevail in any situation, so it doesn’t really make me sad about humanity because I think, deep down, everybody is full of love and light.” Thomas Gibson

“Our thoughts really do create our lives. They’ve done a lot of research showing if you’re an optimistic, positive person you will be a healthier person than if you’re a sad, depressed, negative person.” Alana Stewart

“At the end of the day, I’m a person. I have feelings. I get tired. I get sad.” Summer Walker

“You have to really understand that although certain memories or stories make you sad, you are not sad. Pull yourself out from that emotion and remember that.” Rupi Kaur

“He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.” Voltaire

“I love sad. Sadness makes you feel more than anything.” Jeff Ament

“My experience, with both my parents, is that grief has a lot of down, sad things, but I was also really emotionally raw, in the first year after each of them passed. Flowers smelled more intensely, my relationships were hotter, and I was more willing to risk. I was going for it a lot more. I was ‘unsober’ and I wasn’t playing by my rules.” Mike Mills

“Even when I’m in quite a happy state of mind, I like writing really sad songs. I think a lot of people do.” Ellie Goulding

“Melancholy is a state that I very much enjoy being in, actually. It’s not the same as feeling sad. It’s a more complex emotion; it derives from a tragic view of the world, a tragic view of art.” Johann Johannsson

“I like to be sad once in a while. You need it for your equilibrium.” Marjane Satrapi

“My natural disposition is pretty joyful, but you know, I have bad days and sad moments like anybody else.” Tracee Ellis Ross

“What makes me sad about school is that the people who are unhappy are unhappy because they don’t believe it will change. And I just want to say: ‘It does! High school ends and it’s over.’ I will tell anyone that it’s OK to be unhappy at school, make lots of mistakes and then it will be over.” Alice Englert

“When you’re going through something, whether it’s a wonderful thing like having a child or a sad thing like losing somebody, you often feel like ‘Oh my God, I’m so overwhelmed; I’m dealing with this huge thing on my own.’ In fact, poetry’s a nice reminder that, no, everybody goes through it. These are universal experiences.” Caroline Kennedy

“I am essentially optimistic. Being alive is incredible. Life is extraordinary and beautiful. It can be hard and sad and terrifying, but it’s all we’ve got.” James Frey

“Everyone feels sad occasionally. A full range of emotions is part of what makes us human.” Michael Greger

“I’m naturally sort of a sad person, and that comes out in my music, but when I realized how many people were listening to it… I wanted to be a little more conscious about what I was putting out and what people were going to be taking from it.” Kali Uchis

“You listen to a piece of music and it will remind you of something – it might make you happy, it might make you sad, but it is very emotive. And I think that Duran Duran have always understood that.” Nick Rhodes

“It’s sad that we have become so accustomed to bad service that we’re shocked when we get good service.” Neil Cavuto

“Some really good things kind of swing both ways and I like to see people that can swing really, really, really sad and horrible and terrible and really, really, really beautiful and funny.” Beth Henley

“It’s much easier to write when you’re sad. But you can end up isolated and depressed because you almost need to put yourself in that situation to have that angst to write from.” Natalie Imbruglia

“If I was sad or afraid, I would sit in a corner and sing. If I was happy, I would jump into the middle of the room and sing. It was how I expressed my emotions.” Nana Mouskouri

“The question I love to get asked is: ‘What’s the hardest part of your job?’ And literally, the answer is probably real sad, but it’s to just to be me. Like, it’s really hard, because I think people, you know, have a set idea of what a pop star should be.” Kelly Clarkson

“People are so codified – it’s sad.” Jean Paul Gaultier

“It’s always sad if anybody you know has a personal problem.” Lee Child

“It’s very rare that things are true about yourself that are on the Internet. It’s just sad sometimes. So you definitely try and stay away from it as much as possible.” Taylor Lautner

“If you win all the time, you lose the drama in life. To make the happy moments happy, you need the sad moments too.” Doug Davidson

“It can be really powerful to write something when you’re sad.” Kathryn Stockett

“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say, ‘My tooth is aching’ than to say, ‘My heart is broken.‘ C.S. Lewis

“But probably my favorite music, believe it or not, is sad music.” Walton Goggins

“I was always depressed growing up. There wasn’t a reason for it, I just was. I was sad and morose. I cried a lot, I wrote a lot, and I read a lot; and that was how I dealt with it.” Amanda Hocking

“I’m not a sad person, upset the whole time, but I seem to be quite emotional.” Freddie Highmore

“I love the sad songs with their maudlin, self-deprecating, almost funny lyrics. As an Englishman, they make a lot of sense.” Teddy Thompson

“It’s a wonderful life if you can find it.” Nick Cave

“Two or three notes of music can instantly make you feel sad or tense or afraid or angry. To do that in words is much more difficult.” Anthony Daniels

“From the moment we are born, we begin to die.” Janne Teller

“I can’t think of anything more disheartening than living a life without a clear purpose.” Daniel Willey

In addition, reading these quotes can also help us to see the beauty in life, even when things are tough. They can give us hope when we are feeling down and help us to see the good in life again. Regardless, it’s important to always seek help if you’re struggling. Take care.

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