Quotations about Stress

The man who doesn't relax and hoot a few hoots voluntarily, now and then, is in great danger of hooting hoots and standing on his head for the edification of the pathologist and trained nurse, a little later on. ~Elbert Hubbard


There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them. ~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar


The time to relax is when you don't have time for it. ~Attributed to both Jim Goodwin and Sydney J. Harris


Stress is nothing more than a socially acceptable form of mental illness. ~Richard Carlson


Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live. ~Margaret Fuller


Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop. ~Ovid


For fast-acting relief, try slowing down. ~Lily Tomlin


No one can get inner peace by pouncing on it. ~Harry Emerson Fosdick


We live longer than our forefathers; but we suffer more from a thousand artificial anxieties and cares. They fatigued only the muscles, we exhaust the finer strength of the nerves. ~Edward George Bulwer-Lytton


Give your stress wings and let it fly away. ~Terri Guillemets


Sometimes it's important to work for that pot of gold. But other times it's essential to take time off and to make sure that your most important decision in the day simply consists of choosing which color to slide down on the rainbow. ~Douglas Pagels, These Are the Gifts I'd Like to Give to You


The mark of a successful man is one that has spent an entire day on the bank of a river without feeling guilty about it. ~Author Unknown


Maturity is achieved when a person accepts life as full of tension. ~Joshua L. Liebman


Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save. ~Will Rogers, Autobiography, 1949


There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want. ~Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes


There are an enormous number of managers who have retired on the job. ~Peter Drucker


One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. ~Bertrand Russell


Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. ~Natalie Goldberg, Wild Mind


Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering. ~Pooh's Little Instruction Book, inspired by A.A. Milne


Some of the secret joys of living are not found by rushing from point A to point B, but by inventing some imaginary letters along the way. ~Douglas Pagels, These Are the Gifts I'd Like to Give to You


To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring - it was peace. ~Milan Kundera


Sometimes it seems your ever-increasing list of things to do can leave you feeling totally undone. ~Susan Mitchell and Catherine Christie, I'd Kill for a Cookie



I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once. ~Jennifer Yane


There is more to life than increasing its speed. ~Mohandas K. Gandhi


The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work, stretch out in the sun, and scratch himself. ~H.L. Mencken


God didn't do it all in one day. What makes me think I can? ~Author Unknown


The field of consciousness is tiny. It accepts only one problem at a time. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery


A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
~William Henry Davies


A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety. ~Aesop, Fables


Slow down and everything you are chasing will come around and catch you. ~John De Paola


Releasing the pressure, it's good for the teapot and the water. Try it sometime. ~Jeb Dickerson, www.howtomatter.com


How beautiful it is to do nothing, and then to rest afterward. ~Spanish Proverb


To be "on edge," you are literally not centered - not being in your spiritual center. ~Carrie Latet


Each day should have a clearly marked emergency exit sign. ~Dr. SunWolf


Stress is poison. ~Agavé Powers


If your teeth are clenched and your fists are clenched, your lifespan is probably clenched. ~Terri Guillemets


When Mozart was composing at the end of the eighteenth century, the city of Vienna was so quiet that fire alarms could be given verbally, by a shouting watchman mounted on top of St. Stefan's Cathedral. In twentieth-century society, the noise level is such that it keeps knocking our bodies out of tune and out of their natural rhythms. This ever-increasing assault of sound upon our ears, minds, and bodies adds to the stress load of civilized beings trying to live in a highly complex environment. ~Steven Halpern


Loafing needs no explanation and is its own excuse. ~Christopher Morley


It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. ~Jerome K. Jerome, The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow


There is precious little hope to be got out of whatever keeps us industrious, but there is a chance for us whenever we cease work and become stargazers. ~H.M. Tomlinson


If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there'd be a shortage of fishing poles. ~Doug Larson


The healthy being craves an occasional wildness, a jolt from normality, a sharpening of the edge of appetite, his own little festival of Saturnalia, a brief excursion from his way of life. ~Robert Maclver


Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are. ~Chinese Proverb


Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time. ~J. Lubbock


A life spent in constant labor is a life wasted, save a man be such a fool as to regard a fulsome obituary notice as ample reward. ~George Jean Nathan


Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths. ~Etty Hillesum