Sometimes a few worry quotes can help me gain a perspective on things. Because I am a natural worrier, I have been told , “Don’t worry about it, things will work out,” that I often think it should be a personal mantra. Personally, I have decided to dispense with any worries that I cannot do anything about. The senselessness of worrying about things you cannot change should not be rocket science. Life is too short to spend it worrying, so I decided to compile a few quotes on worrying here, for my benefit and yours.
“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.”
~ Leo F. Buscaglia
“Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.”
~ Swedish Proverb
“If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.”
~ E. Joseph Cossman
“People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.”
~ George Bernard Shaw
“Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment.”
~ Dale Carnegie
“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.”
~ Elbert Hubbard
“If you ask what is the single most important key to longevity, I would have to say it is avoiding worry, stress and tension. And if you didn’t ask me, I’d still have to say it.”
~ George F. Burns
“When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened.”
~ Winston Churchill
“Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.”
~ Arthur Somers Roche
“If you treat every situation as a life and death matter, you’ll die a lot of times.”
~ Dean Smith
“When one has too great a dread of what is impending, one feels some relief when the trouble has come.”
~ Joseph Joubert
“That the birds of worry and care fly over your head, this you cannot change, but that they build nests in your hair, this you can prevent.”
~ Chinese Proverb
“Worry compounds the futility of being trapped on a dead-end street. Thinking opens new avenues.”
~ Cullen Hightower
“Worry is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere”
~ Erma Bombeck
“There is a great difference between worry and concern. A worried person sees a problem, and a concerned person solves a problem.”
~ Harold Stephen
“People get so in the habit of worry that if you save them from drowning and put them on a bank to dry in the sun with hot chocolate and muffins they wonder whether they are catching a cold.”
~ John Jay Chapman
“Somehow our devils are never quite what we expect when we meet them face to face.”
~ Nelson DeMille
“The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.”
~ Robert Frost
“Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.”
~ Henry Ward Beecher
“We can easily manage if we will only take, each day, the burden appointed to it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday’s burden over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow before we are required to bear it.”
~ John Newton
“If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.”
~ Dale Carnegie
“I never worry about action, but only about inaction.”
~ Winston Churchill
“Rule number one is, don’t sweat the small stuff. Rule number two is, it’s all small stuff.”
~ Robert Eliot
“A day of worry is more exhausting than a day of work.”
~ John Lubbock
“Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry. Worry never fixes anything.”
~ Mary Hemingway
“If a problem is fixable, if a situation is such that you can do something about it, then there is no need to worry. If it’s not fixable, then there is no help in worrying. There is no benefit in worrying whatsoever. “~ His Holiness The Dalai Lama XIV
“Whatever is going to happen will happen, whether we worry or not. ” ~ Ana Monnar
“Drag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it. ”
~ Mark Twain
“If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep. ”
~ Dale Carnegie
“Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight. ”
~ Benjamin Franklin
“Worry is a misuse of the imagination. ”
~ Dan Zadra
“You can’t wring your hands and roll up your sleeves at the same time. ”
~ Pat Schroeder
“Some men storm imaginary Alps all their lives, and die in the foothills cursing difficulties which do not exist. ”
~ Edgar Watson Howe
“My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened. ”
~ Michel de Montaigne
“I am reminded of the advice of my neighbor. “Never worry about your heart ’til it stops beating.” ”
~ E.B. White
“Fear can keep us up all night long, but faith makes one fine pillow. ”
~ Philip Gulley
“Worry is interest paid on trouble before it comes due. ”
~ William Ralph Inge
“It is not the cares of today, but the cares of tomorrow, that weigh a man down. ”
~ George MacDonald
“Rule number one is, don’t sweat the small stuff. Rule number two is, it’s all small stuff. ”
~ Robert Eliot
“When one has too great a dread of what is impending, one feels some relief when the trouble has come. ” ~ Joseph Joubert
“We have to fight them daily, like fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies. ”
~ Etty Hillesum
“How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened. ”
~ Thomas Jefferson
“A day of worry is more exhausting than a day of work. ”
~ John Lubbock
“Worry ducks when purpose flies overhead. ”
~ Terri Guillemets
