Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
Barbara KingsolverRead
There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, 'There now, hang on, you'll get over it.' Sadness is more or less like a head cold- with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
Interpretation
What this quote means
It emphasizes the difference between sadness and depression, advocating for a deeper understanding and empathy towards those struggling with mental health issues.
In this quote, Barbara Kingsolver urges us to recognize the severity of depression compared to ordinary sadness. While sadness can be transient and may pass with time, depression is a profound and often debilitating condition that requires compassion and support. By likening depression to cancer, she highlights that it is a serious illness that cannot simply be wished away, underscoring the need for understanding and proper treatment.
Themes
DepressionSadnessMental HealthEmpathyUnderstanding
In practice
Example use cases
In a mental health awareness event, you can use this quote to highlight the importance of recognizing the seriousness of depression.
More from Barbara Kingsolver
All quotes →Children can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them . . . it works out.
Barbara KingsolverRead
I'm of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.
Barbara KingsolverRead
I did it to win love, and to prove myself capable. Not to move mountains. In my opinions, mountains don't move. They only look changed when you look down on them from great height.
Barbara KingsolverRead
Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.
Barbara KingsolverRead
Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else's pain is as meaningful as your own.
Barbara KingsolverRead
Similar quotes
I am unable to describe exactly what is the matter with me; now and then there are horrible fits of anxiety, apparently without cause, or otherwise a feeling of emptiness and fatigue in the head.
Vincent Van GoghRead
Just as our parents quieted us when we were noisy by putting us in front of the television set, maybe we're now learning to quiet our own adult noise with Prozac.
Elizabeth WurtzelRead
You are no less or more of a man or a woman or a human for having depression than you would be for having cancer or cardiovascular disease or a car accident.
Matt HaigRead
Negative thinking patterns can be immensely deceptive and persuasive, and change is rarely easy. But with patience and persistence, I believe that nearly all individuals suffering from depression can improve and experience a sense of joy and self-esteem once again.
David D. BurnsRead
When I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder the year I turned 50, it was certainly a shock. But as a journalist, knowing a little bit about a lot of things, I didn't suffer the misconception that depression was all in my head or a mark of poor character. I knew it was a disease, and, like all diseases, was treatable.
Jane PauleyRead
Depression is a prison where you are both the suffering prisoner and the cruel jailer.
Dorothy RoweRead