#depression

The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling. ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#suicide #death

If you want to understand geology, study earthquakes. If you want to understand the economy, study the Depression. ↗

— Ben Bernanke

#earthquakes #economy #geology #study #understand

Many people think that depression is something you just have to live with when you get older, but it's not. ↗

— Tom Bosley

#get #just #live #many #older

Depression can seem worse than terminal cancer, because most cancer patients feel loved and they have hope and self-esteem. ↗

— David D. Burns

#cancer #depression #feel #hope #loved

For this will cure him that is sick, and rouse him that is in dumps; one that has loved, it will remember of it; one that has not, it will instruct. For there was never any yet that wholly could escape love, and never shall there be any, never so long as beauty shall be, never so long as eyes can see. But help me that God to write the passions of others; and while I write, keep me in my own right wits. ↗

— Longus

#depression #god #inspiration #instruction #love

In religious circles, depression is often deemed to be a spiritual condition that can be cured with prayer. ↗

— Tony Campolo

#condition #cured #deemed #depression #often

When I was in Philadelphia during the Depression in 1930 or '31, I got a very sad job as a night watchman in a garage. The cars in the garage had been abandoned by their owners, since they had lost their jobs and couldn't keep up the payments. ↗

— Tom Glazer

#been #cars #depression #during #garage

Enthusiasm is followed by disappointment and even depression, and then by renewed enthusiasm. ↗

— Murray Gell-Mann

#disappointment #enthusiasm #even #followed #renewed

We were in the heart of the ghetto in Chicago during the Depression, and every block - it was probably the biggest black ghetto in America - every block also is the spawning ground practically for every gangster, black and white, in America too. ↗

— Quincy Jones

#america #biggest #black #black and white #block

In the last 5 years, American employers have lost over $150 billion of productivity to depression alone. That is more than the GDP of 28 different States during the same period. ↗

— Patrick J. Kennedy

#american #billion #depression #different #during