54 Angst-Inspiring Quotes

In the intricate tapestry of human emotions, angst stands as a poignant and often unsettling thread. It intertwines with our thoughts and experiences, surfacing in moments of uncertainty, existential dread, and deep introspection. Capturing this complex emotion in words has been an enduring challenge for writers, poets, and philosophers alike. In this post, we delve into a curated collection of the top 54 angst-inspiring quotes—each one a testament to the shared human experience of navigating the shadows within our minds. These quotes offer a profound glimpse into the depths of angst, resonating with our inner fears and insecurities while also providing a sense of solace in knowing that we are not alone in our struggles.

1. “Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else.” - Oscar Wilde

2. “I walk around the school hallways and look at the people. I look at the teachers and wonder why they're here. If they like their jobs. Or us. And I wonder how smart they were when they were fifteen. Not in a mean way. In a curious way. It's like looking at all the students and wondering who's had their heart broken that day, and how they are able to cope with having three quizzes and a book report due on top of that. Or wondering who did the heart breaking. And wondering why.” - Stephen Chbosky

3. “Angst macht süchtig nach Strafrecht.” - Heribert Prantl

4. “Der Mensch hat eine instinktive Angst vor Trieben, die stärker als er selbst erscheinen.” - Oscar Wilde

5. “Kein Mensch, der in Furcht oder Sorge oder Chaos lebt, ist frei, aber wer sich von Sorgen, Furcht und Chaos befreit, wird dadurch auch aus der Sklaverei befreit.” - Epictetus

6. “The young of the town, preoccupied with their own germinating angst, which each possessed in varying degree (though few were ever fully aware of its existence), felt no particular connection to the land, its people, its structures, or its history. As such, they had no inclination to defend its invisible borders from declared enemies within or without. They desired only escape from this small village, which each viewed as an existential prison built upon the antiquated expectations of their parents and their parents’ parents. And because of their invisible bondage, the young of this town were possessed by a quiet rage. But this rage laid torpid and inert within them, dulled to sleep by the tired repetition of nothing happening over and over and over again, day after day after day.This is the story of one of those young people, and the terrible things that happened to her, and the terrible things she did as a result.” - P.S. Baber

7. “Are these things really better than the things I already have? Or am I just trained to be dissatisfied with what I have now?” - Chuck Palahniuk

8. “When we pick up the newspaper at breakfast, we expect - we even demand - that it brings us momentous events since the night before...We expect our two-week vacations to be romantic, exotic, cheap, and effortless..We expect anything and everything. We expect the contradictory and the impossible. We expect compact cars which are spacious; luxurious cars which are economical. We expect to be rich and charitable, powerful and merciful, active and reflective, kind and competitive. We expect to be inspired by mediocre appeals for excellence, to be made literate by illiterate appeals for literacy...to go to 'a church of our choice' and yet feel its guiding power over us, to revere God and to be God. Never have people been more the masters of their environment. Yet never has a people felt more deceived and disappointed. For never has a people expected so much more than the world could offer.” - Daniel Boorstin

9. “Ich musste mich zusammennehmen! Ich wollte einfach keine Furcht mehr empfinden! Aber so fest ich mir's vornahm, immer regte sich ein zweites Ich, und dieses zweite Ich - hatte Furcht. Ich fragte mich, was es eigentlich zu fürchten gäbe. Mein tapferes Ich spottete über das feige Ich. Nie habe ich so wie an diesem Tage den Gegensatz der beiden Wesen verspürt, die in uns wohnen. Das eine will, das andere widerstrebt, und wechselnd haben sie die Oberhand.” - Guy de Maupassant

10. “It was February sixth: eight days until Valentine's Day. I was dateless, as usual, deep in the vice grip of unrequited love. It was bad enough not having a boyfriend for New Year's Eve. Now I had to cope with Valentine datelessness, feeling consummate social pressure from every retailer in America who stuck hearts and cupids in their windows by January second to rub it in.” - Joan Bauer

11. “She couldn’t get any farther away inside from her skin. She couldn’t get away.” - Cynthia Voigt

12. “She looked at her hand: Just some hand, holding a cheap pen. Some girls’ hand. She had nothing to do with that hand. Let that hand do whatever it wanted to.” - Cynthia Voigt

13. “Angst is not the human condition, it’s the purgatory between what we have and what we want but can’t get.” - Miguel Syjuco

14. “Stacey muttered, "But I hate this school, and this city, and the sooner I leave, the better. I want to start over in a new place. I haven't . . ." her voice trailed off and she looked away from Jason, hoping instead to find her words among the falling raindrops. "Do you ever feel like you aren't the person you're supposed to be? That you could be a different person - and have a better life - if things had been just a little different?” - J.M. Reep

15. “I once spoke to someone who had survived the genocide in Rwanda, and she said to me that there was now nobody left on the face of the earth, either friend or relative, who knew who she was. No one who remembered her girlhood and her early mischief and family lore; no sibling or boon companion who could tease her about that first romance; no lover or pal with whom to reminisce. All her birthdays, exam results, illnesses, friendships, kinships—gone. She went on living, but with a tabula rasa as her diary and calendar and notebook. I think of this every time I hear of the callow ambition to 'make a new start' or to be 'born again': Do those who talk this way truly wish for the slate to be wiped? Genocide means not just mass killing, to the level of extermination, but mass obliteration to the verge of extinction. You wish to have one more reflection on what it is to have been made the object of a 'clean' sweep? Try Vladimir Nabokov's microcosmic miniature story 'Signs and Symbols,' which is about angst and misery in general but also succeeds in placing it in what might be termed a starkly individual perspective. The album of the distraught family contains a faded study of Aunt Rosa, a fussy, angular, wild-eyed old lady, who had lived in a tremulous world of bad news, bankruptcies, train accidents, cancerous growths—until the Germans put her to death, together with all the people she had worried about.” - Christopher Hitchens

16. “I love you."Z squeezed his eyes shut. "Don't be a tragedy, Bella.” - J.R. Ward

17. “The letter had been crumpled up and tossed onto the grate. It had burned all around the edges, so the names at the top and bottom had gone up in smoke. But there was enough of the bold black scrawl to reveal that it had indeed been a love letter. And as Hannah read the singed and half-destroyed parchment, she was forced to turn away to hide the trembling of her hand. —should warn you that this letter will not be eloquent. However, it will be sincere, especially in light of the fact that you will never read it. I have felt these words like a weight in my chest, until I find myself amazed that a heart can go on beating under such a burden. I love you. I love you desperately, violently, tenderly, completely. I want you in ways that I know you would find shocking. My love, you don't belong with a man like me. In the past I've done things you wouldn't approve of, and I've done them ten times over. I have led a life of immoderate sin. As it turns out, I'm just as immoderate in love. Worse, in fact. I want to kiss every soft place of you, make you blush and faint, pleasure you until you weep, and dry every tear with my lips. If you only knew how I crave the taste of you. I want to take you in my hands and mouth and feast on you. I want to drink wine and honey from you. I want you under me. On your back. I'm sorry. You deserve more respect than that. But I can't stop thinking of it. Your arms and legs around me. Your mouth, open for my kisses. I need too much of you. A lifetime of nights spent between your thighs wouldn't be enough. I want to talk with you forever. I remember every word you've ever said to me. If only I could visit you as a foreigner goes into a new country, learn the language of you, wander past all borders into every private and secret place, I would stay forever. I would become a citizen of you. You would say it's too soon to feel this way. You would ask how I could be so certain. But some things can't be measured by time. Ask me an hour from now. Ask me a month from now. A year, ten years, a lifetime. The way I love you will outlast every calendar, clock, and every toll of every bell that will ever be cast. If only you—And there it stopped.” - Lisa Kleypas

18. “I wonder how you say goodbye to someone forever?” - Ann M. Martin

19. “It's my duty as a human being to be pissed off” - Eric Bogosian

20. “The yellow commuter train ran through canal-crossed fields as dull as graph paper. Always one saw evidence of the tiny brick houses that the incontinent municipalities, Voorschoten and Leidschendam and Rijswijk and Zoetermeer, pooped over the rural spaces surrounding The Hague.” - Joseph O'Neill

21. “As women glide from their twenties to thirties, Shazzer argues, the balance of power subtly shifts. Even the most outrageous minxes lose their nerve, wrestling with the first twinges of existential angst: fears of dying alone and being found three weeks later half-eaten by an Alsatian.” - Helen Fielding

22. “Seems," madam? Nay, it is; I know not "seems."'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,Nor customary suits of solemn black, Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, That can denote me truly: these indeed seem, For they are actions that a man might play: But I have that within which passeth show; These but the trappings and the suits of woe.” - William Shakespeare

23. “Just friends, just friends. Standing there in the bookstore, watching Seth walk away, I half wondered how anyone could still use that line. But I knew why, of course. It was used because people still believed it. Or at least they wanted to.” - Richelle Mead

24. “If being queer meant loving Aaron, then he'd own the label, at least internally.” - Tibby Armstrong

25. “Tasting what could have been—what should have been—didn't make it easier.” - Kele Moon

26. “Was it all in my head? A Lunar trick?”Her stomach twisted. “No.” She shook her head, fervently. How to explain that she hadn’t had the gift before? That she couldn’t have used it against him? “I would never lie—”The words faded. She had lied. Everything he knew about her had been a lie.“I’m so sorry,” she finished, the words falling lamely in the open air.Kai peeled his eyes away, finding some place of resignation off in the glistening garden. “You’re even more painful to look at than she is.” - Marissa Meyer

27. “But even if we were to disappear, people would still be divided into people and Others. No matter how those Others were different.People can't get by without Others. Put two people on an uninhabited island, and you'll have a human being and an Other. And the difference is that an Other is always tormented by his differentness. It's easier for people. They know they're people, and that's what they ought to be. And they all have no choice but to be that way. All of them, forever.” - Sergei Lukyanenko

28. “Every sacred mission, every hunt for hidden relics, every pilgrimage from one end of the earth to the other … I was looking for you.” - Dianna Hardy

29. “She wanted, with her fickleness, to make my destruction constant; I want, by trying to destroy myself, to satisfy her desire.” - Miguel de Cervantès

30. “Was man über Angst erreichte, das wurde stets auch mit Angst bezahlt. Die Mächtigen fielen irgendwann genauso der Hybris der Macht zum Opfer, wie die Ohnmächtigen dem Zorn über ihre Machtlosigkeit.” - David Gray

31. “There are questions Kyungsoo doesn’t ask Jongin. He doesn’t ask Jongin if they can stay together forever, or how many tomorrows are really left, because sometimes the truth is too bright. He can only hold onto the seconds, each gesture, each contact, each syllable. Jongin comes in seconds. Everything comes in seconds.If only the seconds could last long enough.” - Changdictator

32. “Because I can't help doing it," he said with a shrug. "And hey, if I keep loving you, maybe you'll eventually crack and love me too. Hell, I'm pretty sure you're already half in love with me.""I am not! And everything you just said is ridiculous. That's terrible logic."Adrian returned to his crossword puzzle. "Well, you can think what you want, so long as you remember-no matter how ordinary things seem between us-I'm still here, still in love with you, and care about you more than any other guy, evil or otherwise, ever will.""I don't think you're evil.""See? Things are already looking promising.” - Richelle Mead

33. “...the words I can't say are the holes I punch in the walls of my psyche...” - John Geddes

34. “Jack: "..You were the on­ly one I saw when I closed my eyes"Lexi: "Then why wasn't I enough when they were open?” - K.A. Linde

35. “I couldn't tell anyone how I felt because I knew they wouldn't understand. Oh, poor little Christina, falling for the bad man who treats her like dirt because she didn't know any better. And isn't it a pity that they don't still teach sex-ed in schools? Or, oh, Christina, that filthy slut, if she puts out for a man like that, I imagine she puts out for anyone. You stay away from her. It wasn't like that at all. Maybe it would have been easier if it was, just like ticking a box. Are you the Madonna, or the whore? The victim, or the vixen? The Sabine, or the skank?But nothing in life is ever that simple.” - Nenia Campbell

36. “A united front announcing a split.” - Sarah Dessen

37. “I am hell with a knife and there is nothing I can really do about it but try and keep my mouth shut and try not to let it show.” - Lynda Barry

38. “That's not cruel. This is. You come here in the middle of the night, expecting me to be awake, and ask—no, demand—me to give you things that belong to me as much as they belong to you. Never mind what it does to me. Never mind that each time I see you, I wonder if I'll ever hold you in my arms again, or be able to touch you without you cringing away like I'm a monster. I think it's fair to ask if there's an 'us,' my dear, because I suspect you're trying to use me just now. Tell me that's not cruel, and I'll let you go.” - Nenia Campbell

39. “You don’t have to have had something to want it or need it but when you have something you liked… very much… and it is taken away, and you want it back, it can become a hunger.” - Kristen Ashley

40. “What were you doing with her?” The words burst from my lips. Before I can take them back, he stares at me.I stare back at him as the silence stretches onwards.We’re both stiff. He says nothing. “Maybe I should ask you the same thing.”I shake my head, my nails digging into my palms.Then before I can react, he has pushed me roughly up the wall, his eyes now dark and fiery, like a storm ready to unleash itself. Good. He’s mad too. His hands force me to the wall as he presses his body against mine. The intensity of the move, the feel of him makes my breath hitch.“Get off me,” I seethe, pounding my fists into his chest but Adrian keeps me locked in place, so that his breath caresses my ear.“Were you guys too rushed?’ He mocks. “Too desperate to book a hotel room?”I can barely stifle a disgusted snort. “What are you talking about?” Fury pumps through my head. “A hotel room? What kind of girl do you think I am—mmf?”He moves against me, moving to kiss me. The moment where his lips meet mine hard and unyielding. He tastes of smoke and lipgloss—and I’m reminded of the scene earlier where he and Lauren got out of the closet together. Disgust fills me as I squirm in his arms.He groans, fire burning in his voice. “You want me, you’re trying to hide from it.” “No,” I try to bite the words at him but it comes out strangled.I try to push him away but before I have to, he releases me.I try to put as much distance between him and myself, shaking. Loathing is my voice. "Get away from me. I hate you."He swallows and looks away, his breathing slowing. He pushes himself from the wall, still very pale.Then closing his eyes and turning, he starts walking away, heading towards the parking lot. "I hate you!" I scream again behind him.Adrian stops for a moment, his back to me. “I’ve told you from the very beginning. You should.”He keeps on walking, never glancing back.” - L. Jayne

41. “When merely meeting someone is ridden with angst and open to misinterpretation, is it any wonder she is so hopeless at relationships.” - Sarah Rayner

42. “Why does it hurt so much? Why does it have to hurt?” - Zoë Marriott

43. “Do you know what I see in you now? The usual aura. A steady golden yellow, healthy and strong, with spikes of purple here and there. But when I do this. . . .”He rested a hand on my hip, and my whole body tensed up. That hand moved around my hip, slipping under my shirt to rest on the small of my back. My skin burned where he touched me, and the places that were untouched longed for that heat.“See?” he said. He was in the throes of spirit now, though with me at the same time. “Well, I guess you can’t. But when I touch you, your aura . . . it smolders. The colors deepen, it burns more intensely, the purple increases. Why? Why, Sydney?” He used that hand on me to pull me closer. “Why do you react that way if I don’t mean anything to you?” There was a desperation in his voice, and it was legitimate.” - Richelle Mead

44. “Consciously, she thought she had her feelings for him licked; subconsciously, every time she thought about him, it was as though someone stumbling around inside her head had kicked over a bucket of electric eels.” - John Ramsey Miller

45. “Back then, come July, and the blazers would again make their way out of the steel trunks and evenings would be spent looking at snow-capped mountains from our terrace and spotting the first few lights on the hills above. It was the time for radishes and mulberries in the garden and violets on the slopes. The wind carried with it the comforting fragrance of eucalyptus. It was in fact all about the fragrances, like you know, in a Sherlock Holmes story. Even if you walked with your eyes closed, you could tell at a whiff, when you had arrived at the place, deduce it just by its scent. So, the oranges denoted the start of the fruit-bazaar near Prakash ji’s book shop, and the smell of freshly baked plum cake meant you had arrived opposite Air Force school and the burnt lingering aroma of coffee connoted Mayfair. But when they carved a new state out of the land and Dehra was made its capital, we watched besotted as that little town sprouted new buildings, high-rise apartments, restaurant chains, shopping malls and traffic jams, and eventually it spilled over here. I can’t help noticing now that the fragrances have changed; the Mogra is tinged with a hint of smoke and will be on the market tomorrow. The Church has remained and so has everything old that was cast in brick and stone, but they seem so much more alien that I almost wish they had been ruined.’('Left from Dhakeshwari')” - Kunal Sen

46. “Chrystle? I'm back!" I refused to say that I was home because Cassie was my home. But I'd lost that, and her, forever, so I'd never truly be home again.” - J. Sterling

47. “„Wer die Hölle übersteht, lässt sich auch vom Paradies nicht unterkriegen.” - David Gray

48. “Nicht immer brauchst du Zellen, Gitter oder Stacheldraht, um Menschen gefangen zu halten. Meistens tut es auch Angst.” - David Gray

49. “Masken sind eigensinnig. Trägst Du sie nur um einen Tick zu lange, wirst du sie nie wieder vollständig los. Etwas von ihnen bleibt an dir hängen.” - David Gray

50. “Was wahre Sadisten ausmacht ist nicht Blutdurst, sondern Fantasie” - David Gray

51. “Liebe macht nicht blind. Es ist viel schlimmer - sie gaukelt Dir vor der einzig Sehende unter lauter Blinden zu sein.” - David Gray

52. “Mostly she just missed Vaughn. Missed all those quiet, unspectacular moments that, when added up, showed how entwined their lives had become. And right now, she missed being able to phone him, because it would be so easy to tap in the eleven digits that would put his voice on the line. ‘Grace, about bloody time,’ he’d say, and make it sound like an endearment.But she couldn’t call Vaughn, because she’d left him. Which was a novelty, until Grace remembered that he’d have left her eventually if she hadn’t done it first. She was never the one. She was never even the one before the one. She was the girl who seemed like a good idea at the time, but ultimately was just a phase that people went through.That was the way it had always been. Friends and lovers came and went because there was something about her which repelled them, and she didn’t have a clue what it was. It was a mystery that she couldn’t solve on her own, and there wasn’t a single person in the world who could help . . .” - Sarra Manning

53. “The honeymoon phase was over. He still called me his girl, still held me like I meant everything and I really wanted to believe he was still completely here with me. I looked over his body and at his sleeping face. I slowly moved out of his bed, and tip toed to the bathroom where I fell to the tiled floor and sobbed.” - Mercy Cortez

54. “Mothers! They promise you they'll never get married again, and next thing you know you're a bridesmaid.” - Mindy Schanback