If you struggle with anxiety, these quotes will help put things into perspective.

1. "You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do." - Eleanor Roosevelt
   
   
2. "Today I escaped anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions-- not outside." - Marcus Aurelius
   
   
3. "Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength." - Charles Spurgeon
   
   
4. "Wild animals run from the dangers they actually see, and once they have escaped them worry no more. We, however, are tormented alike by what is past and what is to come. A number of our blessings do us harm, for memory brings back the agony of fear while foresight brings it on prematurely. No one confines his unhappiness to the present." - Seneca
   
   
5. "All this hurrying from place to place won't bring you any relief, for you're traveling in the company of your own emotions, followed by your troubles all the way." - Seneca
   
   
6. "What upsets people is not things themselves, but their judgments about these things." - Epictetus
   
   
7. "A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety." - Aesop
   
   
8. "People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them." - George Bernard Shaw
   
   
9. "Nothing diminishes anxiety faster than action." - Walter Anderson
   
   
10. "I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great distorted wall in front of them that hid the truth." - Daphne du Maurier
    
    
11. "When all by myself, I can think of all kinds of clever remarks, quick comebacks to what no one said, and flashes of witty sociability with nobody. But all of this vanishes when I face someone in the flesh: I lose my intelligence, I can no longer speak, and after half an hour I just feel tired. Talking to people makes me feel like sleeping. Only my ghostly and imaginary friends, only the conversations I have in my dreams, are genuinely real and substantial." - Fernando Pessoa
    
    
12. "Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all." - Ray Bradbury
    
    
13. "For someone like myself in whom the ability to trust others is so cracked and broken that I am wretchedly timid and am forever trying to read the expression on people's faces." - Osamu Dazai
    
    
14. "Life is made of fear. Some people eat fear soup three times a day. Some people eat fear soup all the meals there are. I eat it sometimes. When they bring me fear soup to eat, I try not to eat it, I try to send it back. But sometimes I'm too afraid to and have to eat it anyway." - Martin Amis
    
    
15. "All I fear are the assaults of apprehension and terror at the thought that I am the only one who is entirely unlike the rest. It is almost impossible for me to converse with other people. What should I talk about, how should I say it? - I don't know." - Osamu Dazai
    
    
16. "Suddenly he saw himself as others in the crowd must surely see him; a silent, solitary figure, standing apart from the rest. He looked out at the hordes of singing, laughing people and felt more alone than he'd ever felt in his life. Was this how it was going to be then? Was this who he was? A man apart from his fellows, making the journey through life alone?" - Mary Lawson
    
    
17. "There is a unique sort of agony to entering a party alone." - Mackenzi Lee
    
    
18. "All I wanted was to be left alone. They abhor a vacuum, other people. You find a quiet corner where you can hunker down in peace, and the next minute there they are, crowding around you in their party hats, tooting their paper whistles in your face and insisting you get up and join in the knees-up." - John Banville
    
    
19. "The constant vigilance and my heightened anxiety that I'd screw it up anyway exhausted me, but I persevered." - Tracey Garvis Graves
    
    
20. "He felt himself falling into a state, very common when he was younger, of being totally cut off from the society he was in." - Iris Murdoch
    
    
21. "My face is like some sort of bashful chameleon, flashing red at any sign of social interaction. Stupid face." - Allyson Kennedy
    
    
22. "She didn't understand how other people did it, how they just strolled right up to strangers and started conversations-- how they made themselves into people strangers would ever want to meet. She wasn't shy, not exactly. She was afraid." - Katie Cotugno
    
    
23. "I think the most important thing I've learned, however, is that being social is supposed to be fun. I tend to forget this when I'm curled up in a ball, alone in my room, avoiding everything." - Sarah Andersen
    
    
24. "I don't act weird because it's awesome. I act weird because I'm not used to normal people." - Dean Mackin
    
    
25. "I'm excellent at faking being okay at things, even when inside my brain there is a tiny screaming gnome who is definitely not okay." - Alice Oseman
    
    
26. "You are not weak. People like us, we're brave. We're the ones who get up and face our worst fears every day. We keep fighting." - Jen Wilde
    
    
27. "I'd never been great at meeting people. I wasn't shy or anything. It was only that sometimes, with new people, I didn't know exactly how to start a conversation. I liked to listen first. You could learn a lot about someone that way." - Robin Talley
    
    
28. "I've found out that I may be more awkward than I thought I was, but then I never saw anyone because I was in my room a lot. It's fine not to speak when you're on your own and to stammer and to not have eye contact, but outside, it's frowned upon." - Richard Ayoade
    
    
29. "Sometimes I see people at the supermarket or somewhere else, smiling and cheerfully making small talk with strangers and not looking tense or uncomfortable at all, and I just want to go up and ask them how they do it. How did they manage to do everything they need to do and go out in the world and be human without feeling the weight of it all questioning them into oblivion." - Jen Wilde
    
    
30. "That nervousness that makes your palms sweat and your heart race before you get up and make a speech in front of an audience? That's what I feel in a normal conversation at the dinner table. Or just thinking about having a conversation at the dinner table." - Jen Wilde
    
    
31. "Though I am naturally curious about people, I'm also naturally uneasy when they are right in front of me; when I am right in front of them." - Sara Baume
    
    
32. "...he was quite consciously afraid of society, which he knew by instinct to be a malevolent, partly insane beast." - D.H. Lawrence
    
    
33. "Paul walked with something screwed up tight inside him. He would have suffered much physical pain rather than his unreasonable suffering at being exposed to strangers." - D.H. Lawrence
    
    
34. "I always called back to cancel, which I hated doing because I hated talking to people." - Ottessa Moshfegh
    
    
35. "Introverts may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves in writing better than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions." - Susan Cain
    
    
36. "I realized I was really shy. And once I was in it, I couldn't escape. I'd go to talk and find my face was made of cement. Nothing would come out. On winter days, I'd feel myself turning grey at the edges and fading into the walls." - Janet E. Cameron
    
    
37. "Worry is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere." - Erma Bombeck
    
    
38. "I fear others will discover that I am not only imperfect; I'm not even okay. I fear that I truly am not okay. But most people who meet me never know that I am struggling. On the outside I am smiling. I am juggling all the balls of okayness: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, existential. Underneath, I am suffocating." - Melissa Broder
    
    
39. "All day, every day, life is like this. Fear. Apprehension. Avoidance. Pain. Anxiety about what you said. Fear that you said something wrong. Worry about others' disapproval. Afraid of rejection, of not fitting in. Anxious to enter a conversation, afraid you'll have nothing to talk about. Hiding what's wrong with you deep inside, putting up a defensive wall to protect your 'secret'." - Thomas A. Richards
    
    
40. "Anxiety is waking up with a pit in your stomach for no understandable reason. Anxiety is hiding and burying parts of yourself for fear someone, someone like you, won't get it." - Kris Miller
    
    
41. "People with social anxiety know that others are really not critically judging or evaluating them all the time. They understand that people are not trying to embarrass or humiliate them. They realize that their thoughts and feelings are somewhat irrational. Yet, despite this rational knowledge, they still continue to feel this way." - Thomas A. Richards
    
    
42. "You've spent a lifetime stuck in silence, afraid you'll say something wrong." - Emeli Sande
    
    
43. "As I sit on the folding metal chair I begin to fear getting up. As the finale approaches, I experience outright panic. What if my feet no longer move? What if my muscles lock?" - Joan Didion
    
    
44. "I need you to understand that I am not being dramatic, but I make myself believe I am offending you or bothering you." - Stefanie Manzi
    
    
45. "You don't have to control your thoughts. You just have to stop letting them control you." - Dan Millman
    
    
46. "Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal." - Albert Camus
    
    
47. "He who fears he will suffer, already suffers from his fear." - Michel de Montaigne
    
    
48. "Real difficulties can be overcome; it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable." - Theodore Newton Vail
    
    
49. "Someone's opinion of you does not have to become your reality." - Les Brown
    
    
50. "It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing-- they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me." - Stephen Fry