Angst Life Quotes & Sayings

Compare the emotional vocabulary available to a leader (confidence, satisfaction, indignation) with the emotions not permitted (regret, embarrassment, dread, angst, mortification, anger, surprise, wonder, doubt), and it becomes apparent why perfectly normal people, upon entering public life, transform into cartoons - because they are not free to express what a normal person would feel in their situation. — John MacLachlan Gray

An utter success,' her stepdaughters confided to
Margaret as they prepared to take their leave. 'The handsome king! That spoof!' Still the rain persisted, and the bishop had lost his hat. Maids danced in and out. Where was the bishop's hat? Alone at the window, Margaret didn't hear. The reflection of the parlor was yellow and warm. She watched it empty out. Then, an interruption. A voice came at her side: 'What do you look at with such interest, Lady Cavendish?' What did she see in the glass? She saw the Marchioness of Newcastle. She saw the aging wife of an aged marquess, without even any children to dignify her life. — Danielle Dutton

What if there is no dirt on Merjack?
Oh, I can answer this one. (Omari raised his hand like he was in a classroom, then dropped it to his side.) We all die. (Omari)
I just love teenage angst. By the way, chip, there are worse things in life than dying. (Nero)
Like what? (Omari)
Living as a slave. (Alix) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I walk around the school hallways and look at the people. I look at the teachers and wonder why they're here. If they like their jobs. Or us. And I wonder how smart they were when they were fifteen. Not in a mean way. In a curious way. It's like looking at all the students and wondering who's had their heart broken that day, and how they are able to cope with having three quizzes and a book report due on top of that. Or wondering who did the heart breaking. And wondering why. — Stephen Chbosky

I definitely still have ... angst but I also wrote some songs that say it's okay to love, now. I'm happy in my life, and it's a bit easier to write happy songs when you are actually happy. — Miranda Lambert

I wrenched myself free and stumbled away. This wasn't happening. My life was not becoming one of those torrid teen-angst shows on cable. — Kathleen Peacock

At the heart of existentialist philosophy is the premise that all existence is absurd. Life has no meaning and death is the ultimate absurdity, But in the course of this absurd existence, man is forced to make choices, even if those choices may be about absurd issues. But man abhors this freedom of choice, a condition called 'existential angst'. Until we reach a time when most of our life lies behind us, we second guess ourselves interminably. 'What if I had done done this?' 'What if I had done that?' 'Could I have learnt from what others before me have done?' But that is a futile endeavor. It is just not possible to pass on the burden of decision-making to someone else, nor is it possible to learn from other's experiences. Every man has to make choices by falling back on his own experience. In short, man is condemned to be free. — Duvvuri Subbarao

I have a very good life, so I have nothing to complain about. Sometimes, I just have existential angst. — Meg Ryan

When I view motherhood not as a gift from God to make me holy but rather as a role with tasks that get in my way, I am missing out on one of God's ordained means of spiritual growth in my life. Not only that, but I am missing out on enjoying God. No amount of mommy angst can compare to the misery that comes from a life devoid of the comforting, encouraging, guarding, providing, satisfying presence of our holy God. — Gloria Furman

I couldn't tell anyone how I felt because I knew they wouldn't understand. Oh, poor little Christina, falling for the bad man who treats her like dirt because she didn't know any better. And isn't it a pity that they don't still teach sex-ed in schools? Or, oh, Christina, that filthy slut, if she puts out for a man like that, I imagine she puts out for anyone. You stay away from her. It wasn't like that at all. Maybe it would have been easier if it was, just like ticking a box. Are you the Madonna, or the whore? The victim, or the vixen? The Sabine, or the skank?
But nothing in life is ever that simple. — Nenia Campbell

Teen angst is so boring, isn't it? I try so hard not to be a cliche, but it's like written in my DNA to hate my parents and be totally unsatisfied with everything. I wonder if there's anyone our age who actually likes their life. — Amy Reed

He felt himself to be one of them, who can live neither in the world nor out of it. They are a kind of sick people, whose desire for God makes them unsatisfactory citizens of an ordinary life, but whose strength or temperament fails them to surrender the world completely; and present-day society, with its hurried pace and its mechanical and technical structure, offers no home to these unhappy souls. — Iris Murdoch

I seem to have come out of the womb with existential angst and wasn't a happy kid, so I've been on a lifelong search trying to discover how to live the best life possible. I committed my life to doing what I could to experience greater happiness, which ultimately led me to write a book on the subject called Happy for No Reason. — Marci Shimoff

The path you create for yourself is the mark you leave behind when you're gone from this world. All beauty and angst is stopped by the grave. But your words, your laughter, your faith, and spirit, refuse to die with you. They remain in the hearts and minds of those you touched. — Eric Onyango Otieno

I should move away from his touch. But he's a constant storm in my life, clouding my head, ensuring I make bad decisions. He doesn't do it on purpose, he knows we're not good for each other, but there's something about us that makes us fight back harder, thinking we can overcome it. — Brittany Butler

Tranquilizers to overcome angst, pep pills to wake us up, life pills to ensure blissful sterility. I will lift up my ears unto the pills whence cometh my help. — Malcolm Muggeridge

To live every day as if it had been stolen from death, that is how I would like to live. To feel the joy of life, as Eve felt the joy of life. To separate oneself from the burden, the angst, the anguish that we all encounter every day. To say I am alive, I am wonderful, I am. I am. That is something to aspire to. — Garth Stein

When I talk about the pain and hardship of a scientist's life, I'm speaking of more than existential angst. Galileo's work was condemned by the Church; Madame Curie paid with her life, a victim of leukemia wrought by radiation poisoning. Too many of us develop cataracts. None of us gets enough sleep. Most of what we know about the universe we know thanks to a lot of guys (and ladies) who stayed up late at night. — Leon M. Lederman

To will the obligatory in relation to death is to fall in line with the major immutable cycles of Nature, especially human nature, and to understand that (whether or not there is a purpose or meaning to life or a life of the spirit beyond the life of the body) no one, absolutely no one, escapes being finite and mortal. And knowing this, and then to accept it, to will it, and not to be in an unnecessary state of angst or rebellion or terror over it. — Edwin S. Shneidman

Mel rolled her eyes. "You can't live your life based on 'what-ifs,' Liv. And change is inevitable. It's the one thing you can always count on. Stop worrying about what might or not happen and follow your heart. How can you expect to ever be happy if you don't? — Alicia Kobishop

It made sense, Amanda decided. People thrived on the misfortunes of others: her mother was the perfect example of that. Can't see a car accident, she thought, for wanting to climb inside and join in. — Danika Stone

I still read a lot about teenage angst! Of course, any kind of mourning CAN become pathological and then it 'has to stop', but to move through life untouched by the loss of hopes, beliefs and aspirations once cherished is also questionable. — George Pattison

My life," she said dramatically, with her eyes closed, "is one heaping bowl of warmed-over despair, seasoned with equal dashes of aggravation and angst! — Rick Detorie

The angst of adolescence is the fear the pretty Italian girls across the street will never come over. The crisis of mid-life is learning they never will. — Mark Darrah

Books make the best ersatz friendships. — Nenia Campbell

To live everyday as if it has been stolen by death, that is how I would like to live. To feel the joy of life, as Eve felt the joy of life. To separate oneself from the burden, the angst, the anguish that we all encounter every day. To say I am alive, I am wonderful, I am. I am. That is something to aspire to. When I am a person, that is how I will live my life. — Garth Stein

Writers are people who write. By and large, they are not happy people. They're not good at relationships. Often they're drunks. And writing - good writing - does not get easier and easier with practice. It gets harder and harder - so that eventually the writer must stall out into silence. The silence that waits for every writer and that, inevitably, if only with death, the writer must fall into is angst-ridden and terrifying - and often drives us mad. So if you're not a writer, consider yourself fortunate. — Samuel R. Delany

Her entire life, she'd been told sin was wrong, a black and white interpretation of what is evil and what is holy in the world - colored like a priest's robe and collar - but she never believed it to be true. Sin was colorful: scarlet like rose blood, azure like skin deprived oxygen, violet as bruises, jade as rot; a colorful contradiction to the darkness and blinding light all are taught sin and holiness to be. — Madi Merek

All my life I've felt like there was something wrong with me. Something missing or damaged."
"Every teenager in the world feels like that, feels broken or out of place, different somehow, royalty mistakenly born into a family of peasants. — Cassandra Clare

Philosophically I am, or at least have been, a follower of Sartre. I am very interested in the choices we make, or don't make, in life-defining matters. That moment of 'angst' and its consequences can be such a cruel thing. — Per Petterson

Passing Time was a show that captured all the angst of high school life - all the highs and lows, all the absurdities - and then made them higher and lower and more absurd. — Rainbow Rowell

I've been acting for so long it's more like - I won't say easy, exactly, but there's not the same angst with writing that comes about with acting. Writing - particularly when you're writing yourself, when it's you, when it's your life, you really can't hide. — Molly Ringwald

perhaps, all these years, historians had been unwilling to recognize history as a spiral because a spiral was so difficult to describe. was war, then, the big solution after all? war the great aphrodisiac, the great source of world adrenalin, the solvent of ennui, angst, melancholia, accidia, spleen? war itself a massive sexual act. -war, finally, the controller, the trimmer & excisor; the justifier of fertility?" --the Wanting Seed/Burgess — Tony Burgess

It reached a point where the paranoia was getting to me. Everywhere I looked, it seemed like people were hanging out, wanting to date, hooking up, wanting to hook up - it was relationships, relationships, relationships everywhere. Guys checking out girls, girls checking out guys. Dudes checking out dudes, chicks checking out chicks. Fuck! That's what being a teenager was all about. — Jess C. Scott

An unbridled pursuit of justice will never stand on moral pillars but will eventually sink to the same morally-bankrupted motive which caused the need for justice in the first place. At that point, the pursuit becomes nothing but a personal quest to justify one's own anger and refusal to live life once again. This became the reality of the shell of a man known as Thuy's father. Thang stood firmly on a collision course with death. Nothing else could satisfy the bitterness. Neighbors, once sympathetic, backed away, frightened that his angst might engulf and destroy — Mark W. Sasse

I find some small, twisted comfort in thinking that perhaps we used each other. Him, for a glimpse into what it would be like to live a life entirely different from the one he'd been raised to desire, and me for the steady diet of angst and emotional damage that seemed to make me better, sharper, like a sword against a whetstone.
I was his intellectual escape from a long parade of pretty, empty girls... and he was my drug of choice -- unhealthy, probably lethal, but ultimately so addictive it was hard to turn away.
The problem, of course, with this theory of mutual exploitation, is that it is the deepest of lies. There was nothing equal or mutual about the way we used each other. I barely scratched his surface while he sliced me limb from limb.
There's no comfort in that. None at all. — Julie Johnson

When you're young, you always feel that life hasn't yet begun - that "life" is always scheduled to begin next week, next month, next year, after the holidays - whenever. But then suddenly you're old and the scheduled life didn't arrive. You find yourself asking, 'Well then, exactly what was it I was having - that interlude - the scrambly madness - all that time I had before? — Douglas Coupland

After the gratifications of brutish appetites are past, the greatest pleasure then is to get rid of that which entertained it. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

I'm in my junior year but I can't take it anymore. The beige walls, the scent of linoleum and used lockers, the shrill bell between classes. High school is sucking the life out of me. — Diana Abu-Jaber

A person experiences anxiety when they realize their insignificance in the cosmic field, which present state of angst can exacerbated by other confusing life questions. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Among people I have met, the few whom I would term "great" all share a kind of unquestioned, fierce dedication; an utter lack of doubt about the value of their activities (or at least an internal impulse that drives through any such angst); and above all, a capacity to work (or at least to be mentally alert for unexpected insights) at every available moment of every day of their lives. — Stephen Jay Gould

I was filled with angst in college, that I struggled with the question of my future, the meaning of my life - spoiled sheltered rich girl collides with great books and is devastated by her own banality. — Elizabeth Kostova

Your desires are immense, almost infinite. Because of your desires life becomes a competition, and wherever there is competition, there is anxiety and angst; and at the end everybody is aware deep down there is death. — Rajneesh

As soon as I decided I'd have to dig down still deeper to uncover the root of my listless withdrawal from life, I became aware of some interference from the past distracting and confusing my thoughts, causing me a sensation that was at the same time oppressive, expectant and empty. In these somewhat contradictory feelings, I came to recognize my childish sense of having run down like a clock that needed someone to wind it before it could go again; and saw that I was now no less helpless than in those far-off days when I waited for somebody to take me by the hand and tell me what to do. On my own initiative I could do nothing, take no responsibility, make no decisions only watch my existence unroll. — Anna Kavan

I'm Allen Walker!"
My life....is over...I'm going to die.... — Katsura Hoshino

I've always wanted to be liked. It grieved me that I was treated with indifference. Left an orphan by Fortune, I wanted - like all orphans - to be the object of someone's affection. This need has always been a hunger that went unsatisfied, and so thoroughly have I adapted to this inevitable hunger that I sometimes wonder if I really feel the need to eat.
Whatever be the case, life pains me. — Fernando Pessoa

A year earlier my parents had moved us out of the city to a split-level on Long Island, their idea of the American dream, which meant it as now an hour-and-a-half commute via the 7:06 Hicksville to Penn Station every morning. (Dark City Lights) — Jonathan Santlofer

If the one who gave me life wants the real me to die ... then all I can do is die. — Setona Mizushiro

Real-life teens wish they could live like the teens Hollywood promotes. Everyone has sex, and relationships are deep and meaningful, even if they only last a couple episodes. There are never any consequences to any action, except for experiencing the angst of teenage life alongside the characters. When a generation becomes desensitized to the ramifications of the culture around them, it's natural to seek out any sort of feeling, even angst. — Ben Shapiro

He rolled the other way and watched the digital display of his alarm ticking seconds off he'd never get back. This is the life we're given. One life. One opportunity to be happy, to make others happy, and I'm letting it slip through my fingers because I'm afraid. — Barbara Elsborg

Words have power, and sometimes, they stay with
you for life. It's up to you to allow those words to define who you become. — Daniele Lanzarotta

I've lived my life devoid of the whole teenage angst for so long, I'm not sure I can handle all this. I'm not built dor it. — Lindsey Ouimet

I shall have to miss forever some beautiful, wonderful things because of that wretched, lonely childhood. There will always be a lacking, a wanting -- some dead branches that never grew leaves. It is not deaths and murders and plots and wars that make life tragedy. It is day after day, and year after year, and Nothing. It is a sunburned little hand reached out and Nothing put into it. — Mary MacLane

If you are truly in love with this world and your life, then you will lose the sense of angst. — Debasish Mridha

Three, 300, or 3,000 - these are the number of unknown days, a week, a year, or a decade, each far too precious little and yet, poignantly too much at the same time, to see an irrevocably declined loved one languish and suffer. That fear-ridden, irreversible release lingers in the doorway, but hesitates for reasons we don't understand, leaving us to weep with a mixture of angst and gratitude all at the same time. It is finally ushered all the way in, to comfort and carry our loved one to that Better Place. When the time finally comes, we can be enveloped in a warm cloak of long-awaited acceptance and peace that eases our own pain. It quiets the grief which has moaned inside of us, at least some, every single one of those bittersweet days, weeks... or years. — Connie Kerbs

I want so much not to do the teenage angst thing, but I have to tell you that I hate the life that, according to my mother, I'm not actually having. — Melina Marchetta

Ricky was a young boy, he had a heart of stone./Tequila in his heartbeat, his veins burned gasoline./18 and life you got it. — Skid Row

If I could have chosen a flag back then, it would have been embroidered with a portrait of Malcolm X, dressed in a business suit, his tie dangling, one hand parting a window shade, the other holding a rifle. The portrait communicated everything I wanted to be - controlled, intelligent, and beyond the fear. I would buy tapes of Malcolm's speeches - "Message to the Grassroots," "The Ballot or the Bullet" - down at Everyone's Place, a black bookstore on North Avenue, and play them on my Walkman. Here was all the angst I felt before the heroes of February, distilled and quotable. "Don't give up your life, preserve your life," he would say. "And if you got to give it up, make it even-steven." This was not boasting - it was a declaration of equality rooted not in better angels or the intangible spirit but in the sanctity of the black body. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Life is full of conflict. Every damn day. Waking up is conflict. — Madi Merek

I have angst in my life, but I'm like anybody. We all have angst in our lives that we pick up and fidget with and then we put down and look at some other things that make us feel good or enjoy our lives. — Dave Chappelle

A camel in distress isn't a shy creature. It doesn't hang around in bars, nursing a solitary drink. It doesn't phone up old friends and sob at them. It doesn't mope, or write long soulful poems about Life and how dreadful it is when seen from a bedsitter. It doesn't know what angst is. — Terry Pratchett

The true danger of romanticism is that the principles through which it rules itself are of such nature that everybody can invoke them to grant themselves the category of artist. Taking the anxiety of an unreachable happiness, the angst of unrealized dreams, the indifference towards action and life, as the defining criteria of genius or talent, immediately facilitates everyone who feels or has felt that same anxiety, suffers that same angst and is prey of that particular indifference, to feel themselves convinced that they themselves are an interesting individuality, and that Destiny, granting them that longing, suffering and dreams, implicitly bestowed on them intellectual greatness. — Fernando Pessoa

I'm inspired by this tumultuous world we live in. Each day is full of angst and conflict and hope. It's a beautiful thing, this vicious, swirling life, and each of us find our truest selves in its earnest insanity. From roses weeping blood of loss, to mountains towering as thrones above us, this is where I find my inspiration. This is the paint brush of my writing. — Madi Merek

I don't relate to that angst-y kid who hates their parents because they were horrible. It's just not my life and it's not the life of a lot of my friends. — Ana Ortiz

I've been angst-ridden all my life, but finally I'm in a place where things don't matter so much. — Kate Dickie

Stacey muttered, "But I hate this school, and this city, and the sooner I leave, the better. I want to start over in a new place. I haven't ... " her voice trailed off and she looked away from Jason, hoping instead to find her words among the falling raindrops. "Do you ever feel like you aren't the person you're supposed to be? That you could be a different person - and have a better life - if things had been just a little different? — J.M. Reep

Existential anguish derives from the human freedom to think and act, experience love for life, and fear death. We must decide whether we wish to embrace all experience and encounters in life or seek escape from various aspect of human nature. How we resolve to address existential anguish becomes a large part of our personal story. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Whatever you do, don't feel sorry for me. I know it's the best you can do. Life hasn't hit you in your perfect little bubble yet. Please don't try to understand. Nobody can. No one knows what it's like to be me, except others like me. You're making me pissed. You're making me feel bad. Stop reminding me that I have no life. I don't care about your prom. Yes, I know I haven't talked to you in a while. NO, I'm not ignoring you, but it's not exactly like you've been calling me either. I just haven't been feeling well lately. I'm tired and my body is aching all over. It's hurting all the time. I can barely move when it rains, and some days I just don't want to do anything. SHUT UP. — Jacquelyn Nicole Davis

Finally told her son the gruesome truth about his life. I could have told them about the feeling of not knowing your roots, and about the angst you suffer when you discover you will be forever denied access to it. It's a feeling we know better than anyone else. — Erik Valeur

You loved me."
It wasn't a question, but he answered it readily. "I do. More than life. My heart. I didn't just pick a sweet turn of phrase to name you, but spoke from my soul when I named you thus. Without my heart I couldn't live. And I couldn't breathe without you."
"Are you a man who has more than one heart?"
"Nay. Only this one. But it's bitter and dark now from the pain I've brought you. — Karen Marie Moning

While much psychology emphasizes the familial causes of angst in humans, the cultural component carries as much weight, for culture is the family of the family. If the family of the family has various sicknesses, then all families within that culture will have to struggle with the same malaises. There is a saying cultura cura, culture cures. If the culture is a healer, the families learn how to heal; they will struggle less, be more reparative, far less wounding, far more graceful and loving. In a culture where the predator rules, all new life needing to be born, all old life needing to be gone, is unable to move and the soul-lives of its citizenry are frozen with both fear and spiritual famine. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

If a society is to preserve stability and a degree of continuity, it must learn how to keep its adolescents from imposing their tastes, values, and fantasies on everyday life. — Eric Hoffer

I think that the thing is, all those years of creating music or trying to express something of a dark shadow, an existential angst that I have felt most of my life and still feel today, to not be overwhelmed by it. Music, in a way, is a great vehicle, a means by which one can express all these somewhat contradictory feelings. — Annie Lennox

What do you want to do with your life, then? is often the question I'm asked.
To be honest, I don't know. I really don't.
Mainly because I don't see myself living long enough for that to make much of a difference. — Nenia Campbell