Depressing Quotes & Sayings

I don't hate you for loving you. I just hate my heart for choosing someone like you. — Jim Carrey

It is rather depressing to think that one will still be oneself when one is dead, but I dare say one won't be so critical then. — Angela Thirkell

People aren't born sad; we make them that way. — Nikita Gill

An old Gordita reflex, dating back to shortly after the Second World War, when a black family had actually tried to move into town and the citizens, with helpful advice from the Ku Klux Klan, had burned the place to the ground and then, as if some ancient curse had come into effect, refused to allow another house ever to be built on the site. The lot stood empty until the town finally confiscated it and turned it into a park, where the youth of Gordita Beach, by the laws of karmic adjustment, were soon gathering at night to drink, dope, and fuck, depressing their parents, though not property values particularly. — Thomas Pynchon

Larry: She doesn't want to be happy.
Dan: Everybody wants to be happy.
Larry: Depressives don't. They want to be unhappy to confirm they're depressed. If they were happy they couldn't be depressed anymore. They'd have to go out into the world and live. Which can be depressing. — Patrick Marber

The end of a wedding reception is always so depressing. And only the bride and groom are spared, jetting off into the sunset while the rest of us wake up the next morning to just another day. — Sarah Dessen

By the Angel, Bridget's depressing," said Henry, setting down his newspaper directly on his plate and causing the edge to soak through with egg yolk. Charlotte opened her mouth as if to object, and closed it again. "It's all heartbreak, death and unrequited love."
"Well, that is what most songs are about," said Will. "Requited love is nice, but it doesn't make much of a ballad. — Cassandra Clare

Our coach was absolutely out of his head. He must have read Bear Bryant's book. We had 78 players out. The first day 35 quit. Twenty quit the second day. We ended with 17 players. It was depressing. — Merlin Olsen

Here I sit with my three old cats, getting closer to eternity all the time, on a twine chair - (Van Gogh) and me too - and it gets very depressing. What can I do? I had high hopes. We all did. Remember just outside the Tangier Consulate: "Have you met the Skipper yet?" Later I did. And now no skipping, no transport anywhere, except to a cut-rate mortuary. Where were you when I wasn't there? "Hound of Hell!!" screamed the Pop Star, and kicked the fink dog in the nuts. "Only decent thing I done." "Forget the whole thing. I have." Great gasp at this point. How much time? have I left? Not much it seems. — William S. Burroughs

Now I'm searching for a slightly overweight, single, childless woman who doesn't have a date and isn't too depressing to be around. It's getting harder to find a girlfriend than a boyfriend. — Cathy Guisewite

These thoughts are depressing I know. They are depressing,
I wish I was more cheerful, it is more pleasant,
Also it is a duty, we should smile as well as submitting
To the purpose of One Above who is experimenting
With various mixtures of human character which goes best,
All is interesting for him it is exciting, but not for us.
There I go again. Smile, smile, and get some work to do
Then you will be practically unconscious without positively having to go. — Stevie Smith

Matt would stare at Andrew for 10 minutes. It's depressing that people are different. Everyone should be one person, who should then kill itself in hand-to-hand combat. — Tao Lin

Guns aren't lawful; nooses give; gas smells awful. So you might as well live. — Dorothy Parker

The service in L.A. is the best. You don't get sarcastic, surly, fed-up waiters and waitresses like you do in England. They're good at their job and they're there for the customer. The only depressing thing is a lot of them have written more screenplays than me. — Ricky Gervais

What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter - a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue. — Henri Matisse

That an entire industry could float in a mist of illusion and false confidence is depressing but true, and better to learn earlier than later. — Jason Kelly

The costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life. — Oscar Wilde

Some people say my work is often depressing and pessimistic, with the emphasis on death, blood, overcrowding, strange beings and so on, but I don't really think it is. — H.R. Giger

Every video from Russia is depressing, it's like they have their cameras set to sad. — Daniel Tosh

Accept that you're just a product, not a gift. — Konrad

The life of a chess master is much more difficult than that of an artist - much more depressing. An artist knows that someday there'll be recognition and monetary reward, but for the chess master there is little public recognition and absolutely no hope of supporting himself by his endeavors. If Bobby Fischer came to me for advice, I certainly would not discourage him - as if anyone could - but I would try to make it positively clear that he will never have any money from chess, live a monk-like existence and know more rejection than any artist ever has, struggling to be known and accepted. — Marcel Duchamp

You hear some people saying, 'I'm alive on stage; it's where I feel most complete ... ' I don't understand that at all; I find that weird and depressing. I don't dislike the audience; it's just when I'm up there, they're in the darkness. There's just a sound of laughing or not. They're not 'people,' they're this big organism. — Stephen Merchant

One of the things I find depressing about some of the upper echelons of Anglicanism on both sides of the Atlantic is that it's sort of taken for granted that we all basically know what's in the Bible, and so we just glance at a few verses for devotional purposes and then get on to the real business. — N. T. Wright

Danish. I'd come to believe there was no food more depressing than Danish, a pastry that seemed stale upon arrival. — Gillian Flynn

A Hallmark card with paragraphs about my beauty written by a stranger is vaguely depressing. — Emma McLaughlin

For many people it is depressing even to move house. A lost fragment of life always remains. To move to another town, settle in a foreign country, is for everyone a major decision. But, to be suddenly driven forth, within twenty-four hours, from one's home, one's work, the reward of years of steady industry. To become a helpless prey of help. To be sent defenceless out to Asiatic highroads, with several thousand miles of dust, stones, and morass before one. To know that one will never again find a decently human habitation, never again sit down to a proper table. Yet this is all nothing. To be more shackled than any convict. To be counted as outside the law, a vagabond, whom anyone has the right to kill unpunished. — Franz Werfel

I have absolutely no interest in creating depressing images. — Ryan McGinley

You know what is a nice thought? Retirement. — Keanu Reeves

Indeed, an astoundingly small proportion of arguments 'for free speech' and 'against censorship' or 'banning' are, in fact, about free speech, censorship or banning. It is depressing to have to point out, yet again, that there is a distinction between having the legal right to say something & having the moral right not to be held accountable for what you say. Being asked to apologise for saying something unconscionable is not the same as being stripped of the legal right to say it. It's really not very f-cking complicated. Cry "free speech" in such contexts, you are demanding the right to speak any bilge you wish without apology or fear of comeback. You are demanding not legal rights but an end to debate about and criticism of what you say. When did bigotry get so needy? This assertive & idiotic failure to understand that juridical permissibility backed up by the state is not the horizon of politics or morality is absurdly resilient. — China Mieville

In our marriage it was our practice not to share anything that was upsetting, depressing, demoralizing, tedious - unless it was unavoidable. Because so much in a writer's life can be distressing - negative reviews, rejections by magazines, difficulties with editors, publishers, book designers - disappointment with one's own work, on a daily/hourly basis! - it seemed to me a very good idea to shield Ray from this side of my life as much as I could. For what is the purpose of sharing your misery with another person, except to make that person miserable, too? — Joyce Carol Oates

Atheism, which is mere emptiness and too depressing for words, and leads to socialism. — Julian Barnes

All alone! Whether you like it or not, alone is something you'll be quite a lot! — Dr. Seuss

The most depressing thing is the political slogan: there is no alternative. But there is. — Ken Loach

Fourth, you learn how to distract yourself from depressing thoughts. — Martin E.P. Seligman

He tried to disguise how tired and ill he was, how depressing the thought of death was to him and how he spent his days and nights thinking up schemes of living beyond what the prognosis said. His hope, if not his heart, would find a way. — Noorilhuda

This whole issue of limits to growth, which provides a psychological, as well as a physical, cap on potential expansion of activity and awareness, has had a very depressing effect on many people ... I don't for a moment think that there's any concept which anyone's working with now which will be followed as a straightforward scenario. But the idea embodied in concepts such as space colonization or space industrialization, or availability of nonterrestrial resources, is fundamental, and it will change the way in which people look at the future. — Rusty Schweickart

The simplest comment on my book came from my ballet teacher. She said, I wish you hadn't made every line funny. It's so depressing. — Quentin Crisp

What moron said that knowledge is power? Knowledge is power only if it doesn't depress you so much that it leaves you in an immobile heap at the end of your bed. — Paula Poundstone

If Hitch were a person, he'd be Mother Theresa or Gandhi or someone who treated all living creatures with the respect they deserve. It's depressing how my dog is a better human being than I am. — McCall Hoyle

Scorn also to depress thy competitor by any dishonest or unworthy method; strive to raise thyself above him only by excelling him; so shall thy contest for superiority be crowned with honour, if not with success. — Akhenaton

When I see a cheerful young man shrieking about how full of life he is, banging on a drum, and blowing on a tin trumpet, and speaking of his good spirits, it depresses me, since naturally it gives the contrary impression. It can't be real. It ought to be but it isn't. If the noisy person meant what he said, he wouldn't say it. — Ada Leverson

If social security depresses savings rates, it is only because it is unfunded. — Robert Kuttner

In town, there's a tiny beach that's never busy, not even in the summer.

I used to like walking there, looking for stuff.

Like old fireworks.

Or kelp.

A hat knocked off someone's head by the wind.

You basically never find what you were expecting to.

And maybe you weren't expecting to find anything right from the start... — Inio Asano

I couldn't find any meaning for my life when I was out there, I'm sure as hell not going to find it in here. This is the grand finale of a life poorly spent and the end result is just overwhelmingly depressing ... it's just a sick, pathetic, wretched, miserable life story, that's all it is. How it can help anyone, I've no idea. — Jeffrey Dahmer

Because life's too short to read depressing books. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

I remember a rainy, depressing afternoon when she remarked 'What a pity we can't make love, there's nothing else to do,' and he agreed that it was and there wasn't. — Christopher Isherwood

When we concentrate on preaching what people WANT to hear we will only succeed in exciting their flash and depressing their spirit. — Olabisi Obideyi

it's depressing
what a man
can get used to — Raegan Butcher

Of course, all of the coolest icons overdosed and died years ago, which is just as well. How depressing would it be to see a gray-haired Jimi Hendrix wearing a cardigan sweater and reminiscing about the soundtrack of the Summer of Love? — Wally Lamb

Exercise is nothing more than a depressing reminder that one is not a god — Rick Riordan

Fiction should be a place of lollipops and escape. Real life is depressing enough
I, for one, don't want to read about make believe misery, too. — Nicole Christie

So you mean to tell me you won't fuck anyone you don't share some kind of deep emotional connection with? What a sad, depressing, truly horrible life you must lead ... — Dave Matthes

What happened in the 80's was that all the men died of AIDS. That was a particularly depressing time because so many people passed away and it was a very desperate and lonely time, so I think a lot of people felt that we were somehow, unreceived. Not only by the disease but also by the public image of the disease. It really gave homophobia a real shot in the arm and changed the way people viewed gays, queers. It became an entirely different atmosphere. — Margaret Cho

The thing that's depressing is teaching graduate students today and discovering that they don't know simple elemental facts of grammar. They really do not know how to scan a line; they've never been taught to scan a line. Many of them don't know the difference between 'lie' and 'lay,' let alone 'its' and 'it's.' And they're in graduate school! — Maxine Kumin

It's a little sobering to think that everyone we have ever seen, or will ever see, will someday be dead. And it's depressing to consider that this may mean absolutely nothing. — Wayne Holland

Tell me a story, Wilson. It can even be a long, boring, dusty English tome."
"Wow! Tome. Learn a new word, Echohawk?" Wilson wrapped his arms around me as I sagged against him.
"I think you taught me that one, Mr. Dictionary." I tried not to whimper as the pain swept through me.
"How about Lord of the Flies?"
"How about you just kill me now?" I ground out, my teeth gritted against the onslaught, appreciative of Wilson's diversionary tactics if not his choice in stories.
Wilson's laughter made his chest rumble against my cheek. "Hmm. Too realistic and depressing, right? Let's see . . . dusty tomes . . . how about Ivanhoe?"
"Ivan's Ho'? Sounds like Russian p**n ," I quipped tiredly. Wilson laughed again, a sputtering groan. He was practically carrying me at this point and looked almost as exhausted as I felt.
"How about I tell you one — Amy Harmon

My parents wanted me to be a doctor. So I took up science, but then realised that my heart was not in it at all. The thought of treating ailing people was very depressing. — Kangana Ranaut

I'm just happy to be a film where for once I don't have to worry about my hair, because my managers are always complaining about my hair looking depressing in my movies. Which is true. I mean, it's true. — Emily Mortimer

It's depressing to be so depressed. — Marshall Thornton

A lot of people think the blues is depressing but that's not the blues I'm singing. When I'm singing blues, I singing life. People can't stand to listen to the blues, they've got to be phonies. — Etta James

Everyone carries an atmosphere about him. It may be healthful and invigorating, or it may be unwholesome and depressing. It may make a little spot of the world a sweeter, better, safer place to live in; or it may make it harder for those to live worthily and beautifully who dwell within its circle. — J.R. Miller

Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening. — Willa Cather

People say that I am always serious and depressing, but it seems to me that the English are never serious - they are flippant, complacent, ineffable, but never serious, which is sometimes maddening. — Anita Brookner

You should never pick up a newspaper when you're feeling good, because every newspaper has a special department, called the Bummer Desk, which is responsible for digging up depressing front-page stories. — Dave Barry

The chief problem about death ... is the fear that there may be no afterlife - a depressing thought. — Woody Allen

(Note curtailment. Not conclusion.) 7. Dementing boredom. (I found small children brutally dull. I did, even at the outset, admit this to myself.) 8. Worthless social life. (I had never had a decent conversation with a friend's five-year-old in the room.) 9. Social demotion. (I was a respected entrepreneur. Once I had a toddler in tow, every man I knew - every woman, too, which is depressing - would — Lionel Shriver

I want to be part of movies that have important and interesting subjects but are not depressing and are rather satirical and funny. — Terence Lewis

Of course there are depressing periods when nothing appears to be happening. But whenever anything was happening, and even when nothing was happening, it was fun just to do phage experiments. — Alfred Hershey

Wallowing was for elephants, depressing people and depressing elephants — Cassandra Clare

I always like junkyards. All this metal piled up - they're filled with pathos, those places. Much more pathos than most of the music I've heard. You look at it, and there's more feeling, even though it's depressing, than there is in a lot of music I hear these days. A junkyard is what it is, whereas listening to a record by, say, Styx, is something else. — Tom Verlaine

I am informed that 5,000 cockroaches were used in the filming of Joe's Apartment. That depresses me, but not as much as the news that none of them were harmed during the production. — Roger Ebert

As music became more profitable in the 1990s, it seemed like it attracted a lot of people who were just interested in the financial aspect of it, which is depressing. — Moby

A dull, dark, depressing day in Winter: the whole world looks like a Methodist church at Wednesday night prayer meeting. — H.L. Mencken

Life is only logical, and to think it's a gift is depressing. — Konrad

Black is not sad. Bright colors are what depresses me. They're so ... empty. Black is poetic. How do you imagine a poet? In a bright yellow jacket? Probably not. — Ann Demeulemeester

I don't really like hospitals that much. People are sick; sometimes it can be depressing. There's people going through a lot of pain in there. It has that funny smell. — Mekhi Phifer

It is always good to strive to be like people whom you respect. Conversely, I also feel that there are not many things more depressing than finding out that you have things in common with people you detest. — Sean Patrick Flanery

I try not to watch the news. Too depressing. — J.A. Konrath

That's an incredibly depressing thought," I said "that if you're in a room and at one end lies madness and at the other end lies sanity it is human nature to veer towards the madness end. — Jon Ronson

And there you have it, another body on the floor surrounded by things that don't mean much to anyone except to the one who can't take any of them along. — Mark Z. Danielewski

I've just made a cancer drama, called 'Now Is Good,' directed by Ol Parker and starring Dakota Fanning. We filmed in Brighton and it's about a girl dying of leukemia, although it's not as depressing as it sounds. — Kaya Scodelario

On the floor of a lofty portico. It made you feel very small, very lost, and yet it was not altogether depressing, that feeling. After all, if you were small, the grimy beetle crawled on - which was just what you wanted it to do. Where the pilgrims imagined it crawled to I don't know. To some place where they expected to get something, — Joseph Conrad

I have nothing against people getting their band back together, but the artists I love marked a time in my life, and to merge that time with now can be personally depressing. — Babatunde Adebimpe

I'm busy saving everybody else when I can't even save myself — Rajesh

The sun was directly overhead, but blotted out by low storm clouds as depressing as suicide. — Keith C. Blackmore

Personally, I was never more passionate about manga than when preparing for my college entrance exams. It's a period of life when young people appear to have a great deal of freedom, but are in many ways actually opressed. Just when they find themselves powerfully attracted to members of opposite sex, they have to really crack the books. To escape from this depressing situation, they often find themselves wishing they could live in a world of their own - a world they can say is truly theirs, a world unknown even to their parents. To young people, anime is something they incorporate into this private world.
I often refer to this feeling as one yearning for a lost world. It's a sense that although you may currently be living in a world of constraints, if you were free from those constraints, you would be able to do all sorts of things. And it's that feeling, I believe, that makes mid-teens so passionate about anime. — Hayao Miyazaki

One of the questions I have been asked many times since this story broke is this: Now that the facts are out there, what can we do? My answer, depressing and cynical as it may be, is always the same. Not much. Not now. And certainly not until the American public and its Congressional representatives regain control of the CIA and shred the curtain of secrecy that keeps us from discovering these crimes of state until its too late.
Perhaps when the government officials who presided over these outrages are safely in their crypts, and their apologists and cheerleaders are buried woth them, future historians can finally call these men to account for the miseries they caused. Even if that's all that ever happens, it will be fitting and just, because the favorable judgment of history is ultimately what they craved. — Gary Webb

The ordinary, utterly mundane reason behind the massacre makes it somehow more terrible, and far more depressing. The word 'senseless' springs to mind, and Idris thwarts it. It's what people always say. A senseless act of violence. A senseless murder. As if you could commit sensible murder. — Khaled Hosseini

Having no expectations for some people in your life can be depressing, if not devastating. But with others, it's what is necessary. The hard part is not just figuring out which one applies, but accepting it. — Sarah Dessen

As it happens I am comfortable with the Michael Laskis of this world, with those who live outside rather than in, those in whom the sense of dread is so acute that they turn to extreme and doomed commitments; I know something about dread myself, and appreciate the elaborate systems with which some people manage to fill the void, appreciate all the opiates of the people, whether they are as accessible as alcohol and heroin and promiscuity or as hard to come by as faith in God or History.

But of course I did not mention dread to Michael Laski, whose particular opiate is History. I did suggest "depression," did venture that it might have been "depressing" for him to see only a dozen or so faces at his last May Day demonstration, but he told me that depression was an impediment to the revolutionary process, a disease afflicting only those who do not have ideology to sustain them. — Joan Didion

I can't think of anything more disheartening than living a life without a clear purpose. — Daniel Willey

Lately, a study has suggested that depressed people have a more accurate view of reality, though this accuracy is not worth a bean because it is depressing, and depressed people live shorter lives. Optimists and believers are happier and healthier in their unreal worlds. — Anna Funder

Real Understanding manifests itself as spontaneous natural and simple action, free of the depressing process of choice, pure without indecisions of any type. — Samael Aun Weor

When we come to [work] we bring an attitude. We can bring a moody attitude and have a depressing day. We can bring a grouchy attitude and irritate our coworkers and customers. Or we can bring a sunny, playful, cheerful attitude and have a great day. — Stephen C. Lundin

Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism. — Leslie Fiedler

Economist Frederick Thayer has studied the history of our balanced-budget crusades and has come up with some depressing statistics. We have had six major depressions in our history (1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893 and 1929); all six of them followed sustained periods of reducing the national debt. We have had almost chronic deficits since the 1930s, and there has been no depression since then - the longest crash-free period in our history. — Molly Ivins

With the final onset of dark the iron cold locked down and the boy by now was shuddering violently. No moon rose beyond the murk and there was nowhere to go. — Cormac McCarthy

In the history of the world many souls have been, are, and will be, and with a little reflection this is marvelous and not depressing. Many jerks are made gloomy about it, for they think quantity buries them alive. That's just crazy. Numbers are very dangerous, but the main thing about them is that they humble your pride. And that's good. — Saul Bellow

The world dotes on its lunatics, whether saintly or sadistic, and commemorates their careers. Psychopaths make terrific material for news agencies and movie studios; their exploits always draw a crowd. But the moment a discouraging word is spoken, some depressing knowledge, that crowd either disperses or goes on the attack. It is depression not madness that cows us, demoralization not insanity that we dread, disillusionment of the mind not its derangement that imperils our culture of hope. — Thomas Ligotti

Today we are here, and tomorrow we are gone, amounted to a handful of memories. It's freaking depressing. — Tarryn Fisher