When it comes to stress relief we are only human. It may feel cheesy but inspirational quotes for stress can always lift us up and give us positive stress examples.

Can stress be positive? I hear you ask. Yes! And coping with stress is totally normal. So let’s find a harbor in the storm with these inspirational quotes for stressful times.

“Who ARE You?”

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly,

“I--I hardly know, sir, just at present-- at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”

‍From Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Author

‍

“It is not daily increase but daily decrease, hack away the unessential. The closer to the source, the less wastage there is.” 

Bruce Lee, Actor

"Success, victory and happiness are all to be found in forward motion." 

Daisaku Ikeda, Buddhist leader

“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, Author of Dune 

“I only achieve simplicity with enormous effort”

Clarice Lispector, novelist

“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosopher 

“Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.”

Winnie the Pooh

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”

Albert Einstein

“Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness. Not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.”

Aristotle

“Relax. No one else knows what they’re doing either.”

Ricky Gervais

“What you’re supposed to do when you don’t like a thing is change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it. Don’t complain.”

Maya Angelou

“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

Martin Luther King

“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, Bossypants

“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.”

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

‍

“How well I know with what burning intensity you live. You have experienced many lives already, including several you have shared with me - full rich lives from birth to death, and you just have to have these rest periods in between.”

Anais Nin

“There are times when I long to sweep away half the things I am expected to learn; for the overtaxed mind cannot enjoy the treasure it has secured at the greatest cost. ... When one reads hurriedly and nervously, having in mind written tests and examinations, one's brain becomes encumbered with a lot of bric-a-brac for which there seems to be little use. At the present time my mind is so full of heterogeneous matter that I almost despair of ever being able to put it in order. Whenever I enter the region of my mind I feel like the proverbial bull in the china shop. A thousand odds and ends of knowledge come crashing about my head like hailstones, and when I try to escape them, theme goblins and college nixies of all sorts pursue me, until I wish – oh, may I be forgiven the wicked wish! – that I might smash the idols I came to worship.”

Helen Keller