#depression

The depressed person was in terrible and unceasing emotional pain, and the impossibility of sharing or articulating this pain was itself a component of the pain and a contributing factor in its essential horror. Despairing, then, of describing the emotional pain itself, the depressed person hoped at least to be able to express something of its context, its shape and texture, as it were-by recounting circumstances related to its etiology. ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#men

Whenever a state or an individual cited 'insufficient funds' as an excuse for neglecting this important thing or that, it was indicative of the extent to which reality had been distorted by the abstract lens of wealth. During periods of so-called economic depression, for example, societies suffered for want of all manner of essential goods, yet investigation almost invariably disclosed that there were plenty of goods available. Plenty of coal in the ground, corn in the fields, wool on the sheep. What was missing was not materials but an abstract unit of measurement called 'money.' It was akin to a starving woman with a sweet tooth lamenting that she couldn't bake a cake because she didn't have any ounces. She had butter, flour, eggs, milk, and sugar, she just didn't have any ounces, any pinches, any pints. The loony legacy of money was that the arithmetic by which things were measured had become more valuable than the things themselves. ↗

— Tom Robbins

#economic-depression #money #recessions #wealth #money

Roosevelt spoke eloquently, in his penetrating tenor, of those 'who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life . . . I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished,' he told the audience, '. . . The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. ↗

— Susan Quinn

#government #inauguration #progress #roosevelt #wpa

Perfume was first created to mask the stench of foul and offensive odors... Spices and bold flavorings were created to mask the taste of putrid and rotting meat... What then was music created for? Was it to drown out the voices of others, or the voices within ourselves? I think I know. ↗

— Emilie Autumn

#disguise #masks #music #perfume #spices

If I can't feel, if I can't move, if I can't think, and I can't care, then what conceivable point is there in living? ↗

— Kay Redfield Jamison

#depression #mood-disorders #care

Everyone's a liar. Everyone I've ever known. ↗

— Julie Anne Peters

#sad #suicide #suicide

I can feel the hurt. There's something good about it. Mostly it makes me stop remembering. ↗

— Albert Borris

#self-harm #self-injury #suicide #suicide

Sometimes," says a fellow depressive, "I wish I was in a full body cast, with every bone in my body broken. That's how I feel anyway. Then, maybe, people would stop minimising my illness because they can actually see what's wrong with me. They seem to need physical evidence. ↗

— Sally Brampton

#physics

Whomsoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce and when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate. ↗

— James Garfield

#control #depression #economy #finances #government

Since you act as though God is dead, I wanted to join you in the mourning." The reply of Martin Luther's wife, in full funeral regalia, in trying to illustrate the folly of his depressed state. ↗

— Mark Driscoll

#faith #humor #faith