16 Uplifting Quotes That Help Us When We’re Feeling Down

Wednesday, January 24, 2024

How do you cope when you’re feeling blue? Many of us turn to loved ones for reassurance, advice, and a shoulder to cry on. Others may use physical activity as a way to regulate and reset our minds.

But there’s something particularly comforting about having a quote to hold on to in our darkest hours and to use as our mantra as we press on into the future. Whether it comes from a beloved song, movie, book, or public figure, sometimes a phrase just reaches out and grabs us, almost as if it were crafted specifically for the exact moment we find ourselves in.

In that spirit, the Inspiring Quotes team has banded together to offer you the quotes we personally refer back to when we’re facing a particularly daunting, stressful, or disheartening situation. We hope these words can act as a kind of emotional life raft, and that they prompt you to consider all the ways words have helped you through difficult times in your own life.

Brooke Robinson, Associate Editor

When one can see no future, all one can do is the next right thing.

Pabbie (Ciarán Hinds) in “Frozen II”

Life has many ways of testing a person’s will, either by having nothing happen at all or having everything happen all at once.

Paulo Coelho

You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select what clothes you’re gonna wear every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That’s the only thing you should be trying to control.

Elizabeth Gilbert

Bennett Kleinman, Writer

Thankfully, dreams can change. If we’d all stuck with our first dream, the world would be overrun with cowboys and princesses.

Stephen Colbert

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it come to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

Henry David Thoreau

Melanie Davis-McAfee, Writer

You don’t have to understand life. You just have to live it.

Matt Haig

L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N. / What you don’t have now will come back again / You’ve got heart and you go in your own way.

Noah and the Whale

Jordan Amchin, Managing Photo Editor

If I lose my direction, I have to look for the North Star, and I go to the north. That does not mean I expect to arrive at the North Star. I just want to go in that direction.

Thích Nhất Hạnh

It is a serious thing / just to be alive / on this fresh morning / in this broken world.

Mary Oliver

Nicole Villeneuve, Writer

The best way out is always through.

Robert Frost

The Sun himself is weak when he first rises, and gathers strength and courage as the day gets on.

Charles Dickens

Zoie Griffin, Staff Photo Editor

Stop making excuses, you’re the only one stopping you.

Issa Rae

Meghan Neal, Senior Editor

Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves.

Cheryl Strayed

If you want something you have never had, you must be willing to do something you have never done.

Unknown (often misattributed to Thomas Jefferson)

Tony Dunnell, Writer

Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.

Sylvia Plath

Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life.

Marcel Proust

Featured Image Credit: Bettmann via Getty Images

About the Author

Brooke Robinson

Inspiring Quotes editor, bibliophile, cinephile, and curry enthusiast based in Cleveland, Ohio.