50 Inspirational Quotes to Help You Overcome Feeling Overwhelmed

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Be strong enough to stand alone, smart enough to know when you need help, and brave enough to ask for it."

- Ziad K. Abdelnour

"If you're going through hell, keep going."

- Winston Churchill

"If you can’t fly, run. If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl. But by all means, keep going"

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength."

- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

"Anxiety happens when you think to have to figure out everything all at once. Breathe. You’re strong. You got this. Take it day by day."

- Karen Salmansohn

"Life is short. Stop worrying about what might happen. Live in the moment. Follow your heart. Be with good people. Forget what hurt you – but never forget what it taught you."

- Karen Salmansohn

"You are more than the mistakes you’ve made. Instead you’re the wisdom, love, strength, and compassion you’ve gained from all you’ve been through."

- Karen Salmansohn

"Stop living in the land of why. There are no happy answers to “why me?” “why didn’t I?” “Why did I?” If you must ask any questions, ponder: “How can I grow?” “What’s in my control to change?” “What’s a gain in my pain?”"

- Karen Salmansohn

"You have dealt with so much, and done the best that you can. So, take a moment now to appreciate how strong you are."

- Karen Salmansohn

"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

"A woman who lives with the stress of an overwhelmed schedule will often ache with the sadness of an underwhelmed soul."

- Lysa TerKeurst

"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

"Don’t believe every worried thought you have. Worried thoughts are notoriously inaccurate."

- Renee Jain

"Now and then for no good reason a man can figure out, life will just haul off and knock him flat, slam him agin’ the ground so hard it seems like all his insides is busted. But it’s not all like that. A lot of it’s mighty fine, and you can’t afford to waste the good part frettin’ about the bad. That makes it all bad…. Sure, I know – sayin’ it’s one thing and feelin’ it’s another. But I’ll tell you a trick that’s sometimes a big help. When you start lookin’ around for something good to take the place of the bad, as a general rule you can find it."

- Jim Coates, Old Yeller

"Everything you’ve ever done, every person you’ve ever met, every experience you’ve ever had is a part of who you are today, adding interesting layers to your being, and colorful depths to your soul. Everything needed to be as it was, so you could grow as you did and do."

- Karen Salmansohn

"What is coming is better than what is gone. Let this belief aim you in the direction you need to go."

- Karen Salmansohn

"Make sure your worst enemy is not living between your ears."

- Laird Hamilton

"In order to move on you must understand why you felt how you did and why you no longer need to feel it."

- Mitch Albom

"If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person."

- Seneca

"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness, that is life."

- Jean-Luc Picard

"When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own – not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural."

- Marcus Aurelius

"For fast-acting relief, try slowing down."

- Lily Tomlin

"Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday."

- Dale Carnegie

"Ring the bells that still can ring forget your perfect offering there is a crack in everything that's how the light gets in"

- Leonard Cohen

"I survived because the fire inside burned brighter than the fire around me. I fell down into that dark chasm, but the flame burned on and on."

- Joshua Graham

"I’m not yet where I want to be. But thank goodness I’m not where I used to be. Onward and upward."

- Karen Salmansohn

"Sometimes when I’m not feeling so happy, I do something to make someone else happy. Afterwards I find I’m suddenly feeling happy again."

- Karen Salmansohn

"If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”"

- Rudyard Kipling

"Relax. No one else knows what they’re doing, either."

- Ricky Gervais

"Reality is the leading cause of stress for those in touch with it."

- Jane Wagner

"When you hate someone makes them important. When you forgive them, you make them obsolete."

- Karen Salmansohn

"I tried to drown my sorrows, but the bastards learned how to swim, and now I am overwhelmed by this decent and good feeling."

- Frida Kahlo

"We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of pie."

- David Mamet

"Pride is not the opposite of shame, but it's source. True humility is the only antidote to shame"

- Uncle Iroh to Zukko

"If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint’, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced."

- Vincent van Gogh

"When the going gets tough, the tough get going."

- Timon

"Discipline is making the choice between what you want now and what you want most"

- Augusta F. Kantra

"Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom."

- Theodore Isaac Rubin

"At the end of the game, the pawn and the king go into the same box"

- Italian Proverb

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

- Oscar Wilde

"Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul."

"Start where you are, Use what you have, Do what you can"

"So do I. And so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

"This too shall come to pass. Just hold on."

"You can't skip chapters, that's not how life works. You have to read every line, meet every character. You won't enjoy all of it. Hell, some chapters will make you cry for weeks. You will read things you don't want to read, you will have moments when you don't want the pages to end. But you have to keep going. Stories keep the world revolving. Live yours, don't miss out."

"Don’t let people pull you into their storm. Instead, pull them into your peace."

"Before something great happens, everything falls apart"

"In the midst of winter, I found within me an invincible summer"

"The darkest nights, produce the brightest stars"

"Not everything is a lesson, Ryan. Sometimes you just fail."

"Freud's favourite quote for rough times is from Milton's Paradise Lost: '[Let us consult] what reinforcement we may gain from hope, if not what resolution from despair.' Not exactly punchy but it's got some proper psychological heft."

"To make something special, you just have to believe it's special."

"I try to do good in the world not out if fear for hell or reward in heaven, but because it feels better not to be an asshole."

- Unknown

"people don’t care about what you do right or what you do wrong….everyone is so wrapped up in themselves, they will forget about your triumphs and your mistakes way before you do."

"Harder the struggle, more glorious the triumph!!!"

"This too shall pass"

"It is what it is but it will become what you make it"

"They don't think it be like it is but it do."