Anxiety Quotes to Help You Relax and Lift Your Spirit

“He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.” – Shannon L. Alder

“Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.” – William Shakespeare

“You have dug your soul out of the dark, you have fought to be here; do not go back to what buried you.” – Bianca Sparacino

“Hey you, keep living. It won’t always be this overwhelming.” – Jacqueline Whitney

“Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest taken between two deep breaths.” – Etty Hillesum

“When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened.” – Winston Churchill

“If you treat every situation as a life and death matter, you’ll die a lot of times.” – Dean Smith

“Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.” – Henry Ward Beecher

“Rule number one is, don’t sweat the small stuff. Rule number two is, it’s all small stuff.” – Robert Eliot

“Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry. Worry never fixes anything.” – Mary Hemingway

“If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got.” – Steven Hayes

“What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.” – Martha Graham

“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If you can’t fly then run; if you can’t run then walk; if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” – Wayne Dyer

“Is this stress I’m feeling mine, or someone else’s?— Matt Purcell

“At the end of the day, tell yourself gently: ‘I love you, you did the best you could today, and even if you didn’t accomplish all you had planned, I love you anyway.” – Anonymous

“[Slow breathing] is like an anchor in the midst of an emotional storm: The anchor won't make the storm go away, but it will hold you steady until it passes.” – Russ Harris

“You must learn to let go. Release the stress. You were never in control anyway.” – Steve Maraboli

“Good humor is a tonic for mind and body. It is the best antidote for anxiety and depression. It is a business asset. It attracts and keeps friends. It lightens human burdens. It is the direct route to serenity and contentment.” – Grenville Kleiser

“Life is 10% of what you experience and 90% of how you respond to it.” – Dorothy M. Neddermeyer

“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.” – Virginia Woolf

“I will breathe. I will think of solutions. I will not let my worry control me. I will not let my stress level break me. I will simply breathe. And it will be okay because I don't quit.” – Shayne McClendon

“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.” – Epictetus

“Stand up to your obstacles and do something about them. You will find that they haven’t half the strength you think they have.” – Norman Vincent Peale

“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” – Anne Lamott

“Take chances, make mistakes. That’s how you grow. Pain nourishes your courage. You have to fail in order to practice being brave.” – Mary Tyler Moore

“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.— Martin Luther King

“An untamed mind is usually engaged in the pursuit of unhappiness.— Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Stress is an confused state. It believes that everything is an emergency.— Natalie Goldberg

“Procrastination is the lazy cousin of fear. When we feel anxiety around an activity, we postpone it.— Noelle Hancock

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Don’t be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“An anxious heart is like a string that’s out of tune.— Naguib Mahfouz

“Self-inflation and conceit are generally the external signs of inner emptiness and self-doubt; a show of pride is one of the most common covers for anxiety.— Rollo May

“Thanks to the imagination, there’s no end to things in this world that can trigger anxiety.— Ryū Murakami

“It can be a good thing, too, to learn to sit in your own weirdness.— Sarah Wilson

“You’re worried about what-ifs. Well, what if you stopped worrying?— Shannon Celebi

“You must learn to let go. Release the stress. You were never in control anyway.— Steve Maraboli

“Just when the caterpillar thought the world was ending, he turned into a butterfly.

— Proverb

“If a problem is fixable, if a situation is such that you can do something about it, then there is no need to worry. If it’s not fixable, then there is no help in worrying. There is no benefit in worrying whatsoever.— The Dalai Lama

“Do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are.— Theodore Roosevelt

“Smile, breathe, and go slowly.— Thich Nhat Hanh

“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” – Maya Angelou

“In order to move on, you must understand why you felt what you did and why you no longer need to feel it.” – Mitch Albom

“Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.” – Eckhart Tolle

“When you walk through a storm hold your head up high and don’t be afraid of the dark. At the end of the storm is a golden sky And the sweet silver song of a lark.” – Oscar Hammerstein II

“People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.— Thich Nhat Hanh

“Tomorrow will take care of itself, so take care of today.— Tiisetso Maloma

“Rule number one is, don’t sweat the small stuff. Rule number two is, it’s all small stuff.— Robert Eliot

“Fear is the paralyzing emotion that inhibits or restricts normal feelings of love, confidence, and well-being.— Tim LaHaye

“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.— Jon Kabat Zinn

“Anxiety is having to remind myself that being afraid of things going wrong isn’t the way to make things go right.— Unknown

“Today I will not stress over things I can’t control.— Lori Deschene

“Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.— Lee Brown

“To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one’s self.— Søren Kierkegaard

“Note to self: I don’t have to take this day all at once, but rather, one step, one breathe, one moment at a time. I am only one person. Things will get done when they get done.— Unknown

“Be gentle with yourself you’re doing the best you can.— Vanguard Stationery

“Anxiety is one little tree in your forest. Step back and look at the whole forest.— Unknown

“Anxiety happens when you think you that have to figure everything out.— Karen Salmansohn

“Worry pretends to be necessary, but serves no useful purpose.— Eckhart Tolle

“Your fear is 100% dependent on you for its survival.— Steve Maraboli

“Worrying is like walking around with an umbrella waiting for it to rain.— Wiz Khalifa

“Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future, but from wanting to control it.— Khalil Gibran

“Slow breathing is like an anchor in the midst of an emotional storm: the anchor won’t make the storm goes away, but it will hold you steady until it passes.— Russ Harris

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“Worry does nothing but steal your joy and keep you very busy doing nothing.— Unknown

“No amount of anxiety makes any difference to anything that is going to happen.— Alan Watts

“There is great beauty in going through life without anxiety or fear. Half our fears are baseless, and the other half discreditable.— Christian Nestell Bovee

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.— Mark Twain

“Even if you fall on your face, you’re still moving forward.— Victor Kiam

“Nothing diminishes anxiety faster than action.— Walter Anderson

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.— Wayne Dyer

“Peace is the result of retraining your mind to process life as it is, rather than as you think it should be.— Wayne W. Dyer

“Let whatever you do today be enough.— Daniell Koepke

“Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations. The best is yet to come.— Zig Ziglar

“If you don’t like something change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.— Mary Engelbreit

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.— Lao tzu

“Act the way that you want to feel.— Gretchen Rubin

“What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.— Martha Graham

“Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.” – William S. Burroughs

“How can a person deal with anxiety? You might try what one fellow did. He worried so much that he decided to hire someone to do his worrying for him. He found a man who agreed to be his hired worrier for a salary of $200,000 per year. After the man accepted the job, his first question to his boss was, ‘Where are you going to get $200,000 per year?’ To which the man responded, ‘That's your worry’” – Max Lucado

“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” – Maya Angelou

“Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you because it will.” – Cheryl Strayed

“We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.” – Mother Teresa

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I want to be.” - Lao Tzu

“Worry is a down payment on a problem you may never have.— Joyce Meyer

“To change ourselves effectively, we first had to change our perceptions.— Stephen R. Covey

“A positive attitude gives you power over your circumstances instead of your circumstances having power over you.— Joyce Meyer

“It’s not stress that kills us, it is our reaction to it.— Hans Selye

“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.— Pema Chodron

“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.— William James

“In the end, just three things matter: How well we have lived. How well we have loved. How well we have learned to let go.— Jack Kornfield

“Believe in yourself and all that you are. Know that there is something inside of you that is greater than any obstacle.— Christian D. Larson

“Every moment is a fresh beginning.— T.S. Eliot

“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.— Confucius

“Limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless.— Jamie Paolinetti

“The way you tell your story to yourself matters.— Amy Cuddy

“I promise you nothing is as chaotic as it seems. Nothing is worth diminishing your health. Nothing is worth poisoning yourself into stress, anxiety, and fear.— Steve Maraboli

“Trust yourself. You’ve survived a lot, and you’ll survive whatever is coming.— Robert Tew

“Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.— Thich Nhat Hanh

“Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.— Plato

“Keep walking through the storm. Your rainbow is waiting on the other side.— Heather Stillufsen

“Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.— Swedish Proverb

“Today’s a perfect day for a whole new start. Let go of fear and free your mind. It’s time to open your heart.— Chris Butler

“We must be willing to let go of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.— Joseph Campbell

“He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Stop asking: Why is this happening to me? Start asking: How might I learn & grow from this?— Karen Salmansohn

“Everything good that has ever happened in your life happened because something changed. So don’t be so fearful of change, ok?— Karen Salmansohn

“Surrender to what is. Let go of what was. Have faith in what will be.— Sonia Ricotte

“Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.— Hermann Hesse

“Whatever has happened, has happened for good. Whatever is happening is also for good. Whaterver will happen, shal also be good.— The Bhagavad Gita

“When you realize how perfect everything is, you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky.— Buddha

“It is better to travel well than to arrive.— Buddha

“Life is ten percent what you experience and ninety percent how you respond to it.— Dorothy Neddermyer

Moving forward

After reading all of these wise quotations, how do you feel now?

Do you have a better notion of what needs to change to deal with dread, agitation, and anxiety?

I hope this compilation of thoughts has been helpful for you. As you can see, certain ideas keep coming up: mindfulness, shifting your perspective, letting go, selecting one thought over another, etc.