80+ English Quotes about Anxiety

Overcoming Anxiety:

  1. “You don’t have to control your thoughts. You just have to stop letting them control you.” – Dan Millman
  2. “Nothing diminishes anxiety faster than action.” – Walter Anderson
  3. “Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.” – Benjamin Franklin
  4. “Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength.” – Charles Spurgeon
  5. “You can’t always control what goes on outside. But you can always control what goes on inside.” – Wayne Dyer
  6. “The only way out is through.” – Robert Frost
  7. “Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.” – Natalie Goldberg
  8. “Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.” – Swedish Proverb
  9. “Act the way that you want to feel.” – Gretchen Rubin
  10. “Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future, but from wanting to control it.” – Kahlil Gibran

Understanding Anxiety: 

11. “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” – Søren Kierkegaard

12. “People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.” – George Bernard Shaw

13. “The largest part of what we call ‘personality’ is determined by how we’ve opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness.” – Alain de Botton

14. “Anxiety is love’s greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you.” – Anaïs Nin

15. “The thing about anxiety is that you have to move at the pace you can handle.” – Anne Hathaway

16. “Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.” – Arthur Somers Roche

17. “Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity.” – T.S. Eliot

18. “Anxiety is not being able to sleep because you said something wrong two years ago and can’t stop thinking about it.” – Unknown

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

20. “Anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity.” – Thomas Merton

Coping with Anxiety: 

21. “The way you tell your story to yourself matters.” – Amy Cuddy

22. “Smile, breathe, and go slowly.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

23. “Physical exercise can be an excellent initial treatment for mild to moderate depression and is an excellent supportive treatment for severe depression.” – John J. Ratey

24. “Each moment of worry, anxiety or stress represents lack of faith in miracles, for they never cease.” – T.F. Hodge

25. “Breathe in the future, breathe out the past.” – Unknown

26. “It’s OK to feel unstable. It’s OK to disassociate. It’s OK to hide from the world. It’s OK to need help. It’s OK not to be OK. Your mental illness is not a personal failure.” – Unknown

27. “The best way out is always through.” – Robert Frost

28. “Don’t believe every worried thought you have. Worried thoughts are notoriously inaccurate.” – Renee Jain

29. “Limit your ‘always’ and your ‘nevers’.” – Amy Poehler

30. “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Philosophical Insights on Anxiety: 

31. “Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.” – Epictetus

32. “Anxiety is the essential condition of intellectual and artistic creation.” – Charles Frankel

33. “He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.” – Michel de Montaigne

34. “The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” – Elbert Hubbard

35. “The mind that is anxious about the future is miserable.” – Seneca

36. “If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath.” – Amit Ray

37. “Anxiety is a lot like a toddler. It never stops talking, tells you you’re wrong about everything, and wakes you up at 3am.” – Unknown

38. “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” – Mark Twain

39. “Worry is a misuse of imagination.” – Dan Zadra

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

Quotes from Literature: 

41. “My anxiety doesn’t come from thinking about the future but from wanting to control it.” – Hugh Prather

42. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

43. “There is no illusion greater than fear.” – Lao Tzu

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

45. “Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.” – Aristotle

46. “Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.” – Jesus Christ

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

48. “A warrior does not give up what he loves, he finds the love in what he does.” – Dan Millman

49. “Anxiety’s like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you very far.” – Jodi Picoult

50. “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

Modern Views on Anxiety: 

51. “The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.” – Anna Quindlen

52. “Stress is caused by being ‘here’ but wanting to be ‘there’.” – Eckhart Tolle

53. “Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.” – Arthur Somers Roche

54. “You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

55. “It’s not time to worry yet.” – Harper Lee, “To Kill a Mockingbird”

56. “Anxiety is the gap between the now and the later.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

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

58. “The presence of anxiety is unavoidable, but the prison of anxiety is optional.” – Max Lucado

59. “I’ve developed a new philosophy. I only dread one day at a time.” – Charlie Brown (Charles Schulz)

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

Inspirational Quotes on Anxiety: 

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

62. “Life is ten percent what you experience and ninety percent how you respond to it.” – Dorothy M. Neddermeyer

63. “Panic at the thought of doing a thing is a challenge to do it.” – Henry S. Haskins

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

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

66. “Do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are.” – Theodore Roosevelt

67. “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” – Søren Kierkegaard

68. “There is no need to be perfect to inspire others. Let people get inspired by how you deal with your imperfections.” – Ziad K. Abdelnour

69. “The only journey is the journey within.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

70. “It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.” – Sir Edmund Hillary

Empowering Quotes on Anxiety: 

71. “Do not let your difficulties fill you with anxiety; after all, it is only in the darkest nights that stars shine more brightly.” – Ali Ibn Abi Talib

72. “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” – Ambrose Redmoon

73. “To be anxious is to be human.” – Paul Tillich

74. “Anxiety is the rust of life, destroying its brightness and weakening its power.” – Horace Bushnell

75. “Worrying is like sitting in a rocking chair. It gives you something to do but it doesn’t get you anywhere.” – English Proverb

76. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

77. “Anxiety is a sign that you are moving outside of your comfort zone; it’s growth disguised as discomfort.” – Beau Taplin

78. “The mind can go either direction under stress—toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyperconsciousness at the positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training.” – Frank Herbert, “Dune”

79. “Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.” – Arthur Somers Roche

80. “Fear is only as deep as the mind allows.” – Japanese Proverb

Quotes on Anxiety and Mindfulness: 81. “Mindfulness isn’t difficult, we just need to remember to do it.” – Sharon Salzberg

82. “The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” – Elbert Hubbard