Quotes About Stress and Coping

“If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?”–T.S. Eliot

“It’s funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools – friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty – and said ‘do the best you can with these, they will have to do’. And mostly, against all odds, they do.”–Annie Lamott

Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism.–Chuck Palahniuk

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.–William James

In times of great stress or adversity, it’s always best to keep busy, to plow your anger and your energy into something positive.–Lee Iacocca

“Stress is caused by being ‘here’ but wanting to be ‘there.’–Eckhart Tolle

“I was a little excited but mostly blorft. “Blorft” is an adjective I just made up that means ‘Completely overwhelmed but proceeding as if everything is fine and reacting to the stress with the torpor of a possum.’ I have been blorft every day for the past seven years.”–Tina Fey

“In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers.”–Fred Rogers

It’s not stress that kills us, it is our reaction to it.–Hans Selye

“We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.”-David Mamet 

“The only difference between a rut and a grave are the dimensions.”–Ellen Glasgow 

“The mind can go either direction under stress—toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyperconsciousness at the positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training.”–Frank Herbert

All the suffering, stress, and addiction comes from not realizing you already are what you are looking for.–Jon Kabat-Zinn

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 Burns