#anxiety

Chronic anxiety is a state more undesirable than any other, and we will try almost any maneuver to eliminate it. Modern man is living in anxious anticipation of destruction. Such anxiety can be easily eliminated by self-destruction. As a German saying puts it: 'Better an end with terror than a terror without end. ↗

— Robert E. Neale

#death #suicide #art

Underneath my imagination there didn't seem to be anything solid except for the space where I shoved my pain and sadness. Besides that, there were only twisted steel threads of axiety, woven through my body and brain, wired into me like a constant warning. Watch out, stay still, move away, stay silent, fight back, run and hide. Even when I was dreaming, but more so when I was awake, there was the constant fear of being caught off-guard, or by the wrong person at the wrong time. ↗

— Jane Devin

#sadness #self #self-awareness #dreams

While fear depletes power, faith gives wings for the soul’s elevation. ↗

— T.F. Hodge

#believe #elevation #faith #fear #power

The way to misuse our possessions is to use them as an insurance against the morrow. Anxiety is always directed to the morrow, whereas goods are in the strictest sense meant to be used only for to-day. ↗

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

#dependence-on-god #faith #insurance #material-goods #possessions

We imagine that a little anxiety and worry is an indication of how wise we really are; it may be an indication of how wicked we really are. ↗

— Oswald Chambers

#idolatry #worry #imagination

The pleasure of living and the pleasure of the orgasm are identical. Extreme orgasm anxiety forms the basis of the general fear of life. ↗

— Wilhelm Reich

#fear-of-life #orgasm #pleasure #psychoanalysis #psychology

Meditation did not relieve me of my anxiety so much as flesh it out. It took my anxious response to the world, about which I felt a lot of confusion and shame, and let me understand it more completely. Perhaps the best way to phrase it is to say that meditation showed me that the other side of anxiety is desire. They exist in relationship to each other, not independently. ↗

— Mark Epstein

#buddhism #desire #psychology #spirituality #life

All the greatest blessings are a source of anxiety, and at no time should fortune be less trusted than when it is best; to maintain prosperity there is need of other prosperity, and in behalf of the prayers that have turned out well we must make still other prayers. For everything that comes to us from chance is unstable, and the higher it rises, the more liable it is to fall. Moreover, what is doomed to perish brings pleasure to no one; very wretched, therefore, and not merely short, must the life of those be who work hard to gain what they must work harder to keep. By great toil they attain what they wish, and with anxiety hold what they have attained; meanwhile they take no account of time that will never more return. ↗

— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

#blessings #chance #good-fortune #life #luck

We live in the hope that life will be different. Just a little more substance perhaps in the intrinsic frailty of the days. Such resignation frightens me. Between gunshots I get drunk. In secret, all knowledge becomes anxiety. ↗

— Floriano Martins

#knowledge #life #life

The search for Nirvana, like the search for Utopia or the end of history or the classless society, is ultimately a futile and dangerous one. It involves, if it does not necessitate, the sleep of reason. There is no escape from anxiety and struggle. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#class #irrationality #nirvana #reason #society