Quotes are great. A good quote can sum up a complex thought or feeling with just a few words. They have the power to inform, entertain, and inspire.
Many of the following quotes are directly about living with a chronic illness. Others aren’t specifically about having a chronic disease, but definitely apply. In the first section, you’ll find inspiring quotes about living with a chronic illness and life in general. In the second section, you’ll find quotes about living with an invisible illness. In the last section, you’ll find quotes about living with chronic pain.
Inspirational Chronic Illness Quotes
Table of Contents
Before we get to our 92 chronic illness quotes, I want to share with you my personal favorite quote of all time. It resonates so deeply with me that, not only did the quote inspire the name of my publishing company, I had it tattooed on the inside of my bicep. Here it is:
“In the midst of winter I found there was, within me, an infinite summer.” – Albert Camus
Even when things have been at their worst, I’ve always managed to find the strength to get through them. Even in the darkest of winters, if I dig deep enough, I’ll find my sunshine. Hopefully some of these quotes will inspire you to find yours.
1. “Behind every chronic illness is just a person trying to find their way in the world. We want to find love and be loved and be happy just like you. We want to be successful and do something that matters. We’re just dealing with unwanted limitations in our hero’s journey.” – Glenn Schweitzer
2. “The strongest people I’ve met have not been given an easier life. They’ve learned to create strength and happiness from dark places.” – Kristen Butler
3. “That is what chronic illness is – a disconnect between what our souls can do and what our bodies can do.” Barbara Lieberman
4. “It’s not selfish to love yourself, take care of yourself, and to make your happiness a priority.” – Mandy Hale
5. “If opening your eyes, or getting out of bed, or holding a spoon, or combing your hair is the daunting Mount Everest you climb today, that is okay.” – Carmen Ambrosio
6. “A positive attitude gives you power over your circumstances instead of your circumstances having power over you.” – Joyce Meyer
7. “Sometimes you will be in control of your illness and other times you’ll sink into despair, and that’s okay! Freak out, forgive yourself, and try again tomorrow.” – Kelly Hemingway
8. “Do not spend your precious energy worrying about how others view your medical condition.” – Toni Bernhard
9. “As twisted as it sounds, I was so happy that I had received a diagnosis.” – Bethany Stahl
10. “Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go; they merely determine where you can start.” – Nido Qubein
11. “Sometimes the people around you won’t understand your journey. They don’t need to, it’s not for them.” Joubert Botha
12. “Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” – Joshua J. Marine
13. “It is a perfectly normal side effect for someone to have depression because he cannot move or function in his job. That is all that it is: a side effect. Those with disabilities and debilitating illnesses probably have more to get depressed about than others.” – Dominic Hubbard
14. “Self-stigma can be just as big a problem as the negative attitudes of others.” – Megan Arroll
15. “I hope you are not saying that (ME) CFS patients are not as ill as HIV patients. I split my clinical time between the two illnesses, and I can tell you that if I had to choose between the two illnesses, I would rather have HIV.” – Nancy Klimas
16. “Surrender is an incredibly difficult topic in light of chronic illness, because loss is often continued and sustained.” – Cindee Snider Re
17. “I’m tired of things I love being gone forever. I didn’t think there was room in me for any more holes, but that’s all I am now, a collection of empty spaces where things were ripped away.” – Laura Tims
18. “Don’t be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
19. “Hard times don’t create heroes. It is during the hard times when the ‘hero’ within us is revealed.” – Bob Riley
20. “Courage does not always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’” – Mary Anne Radmacher
21. “In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.” – Francis Bacon
22. “When things are bad, we take comfort in the thought that they could always get worse. And when they are, we find hope in the thought that things are so bad they have to get better.” – Malcom Forbes
23. “It is when I struggle that I strengthen. It is when challenged to my core that I learn the depth of who I am.” – Steve Maraboli
24. “Courage isn’t having the strength to go on – it is going on when you don’t have strength.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
25. “We don’t develop courage by being happy every day. We develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.” – Barbara De Angelis
26. “There is no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bear witness that a man has the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.” – Victor Frankl
27. “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” – Kahlil Gibran
28. “I am learning every day to allow the space between where I am and where I want to be inspire me and not terrify me.” – Tracee Ellis Ross
29. “Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.” – Wayne Dyer
30. “You wake up every morning to fight the same demons that left you so tired the night before and that, my love, is bravery.” – Unknown
31. “Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.” – Bernice Reagon
32. “You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you.” – Mary Tyler Moore
33. “Nothing is more beautiful than the smile that has struggled through the tears.” – Demi Lovato
34. “Acceptance doesn’t mean resignation; it means understanding that something is what it is and that there’s got to be a way through it.” – Michael J. Fox
35. “We do not heal the past by dwelling there; we heal the past by living fully in the present.” – Marianne Williamson
36. “It has been said that time heals all wounds. The truth is that time does not heal anything. It merely passes. It is what we do during the passing of time that helps or hinders the healing process.” – Jay Marshall
37. “Self-forgiveness is essential to self-healing.” – Ruth Carter Stapleton
38. “You either get bitter or you get better. It’s that simple. You either take what has been dealt to you and allow it to make you a better person, or you allow it to tear you down. The choice does not belong to fate, it belongs to you.” – Josh Shipp
39. “Resting is not laziness, it’s medicine!” – Glenn Schweitzer
40. “Never let the things you cannot do prevent you from doing the things you can.” – John Wooden
41. “So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad, and I’m still trying to figure out how that could be.” – Stephen Chbosky
42. “Do not believe the things you tell yourself when you’re sad and alone.” – Unknown
43. “Maybe life isn’t about avoiding the bruises. Maybe it’s about collecting the scars to prove that we showed up for it.” – Hannah Brencher
44. “If you can’t fly then run. If you can’t run then walk. If you can’t walk then crawl. But, whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
45. “The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have.” – Vince Lombardi
46. “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” – Napoleon Hill
47. “Believe in yourself and all that you are. Know that there is something inside of you that is greater than any obstacle.” – Christian Larson
48. “Sometimes the smallest step in the right directions ends up being the biggest step of your life. Tip toe if you must, but take a step.” – Naeem Callaway
49. “Those who have a why to live can bear with almost any how.” – Victor Frankl
50. “There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors.” – Adrienne Rich
51. “There is hope, even when your brain tells you there isn’t.” – John Green
52. “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on.” – Robert Frost
53. “Healing takes courage and we all have courage, even if we have to dig a little to find it.” – Tori Amos
54. “We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.” – Carlos Castaneda
55. “I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.” – Maya Angelou
56. “You shouldn’t focus on why you can’t do something, which is what most people do. You should focus on why perhaps you can and be one of the exceptions.” – Steve Case
57. “The truth is we’re all a little bit broken. We must learn to love the broken pieces of ourselves – be gentle and empathetic with ourselves and others.” – Karen Salmansohn
58. “Some days are better, some days are worse. Look for the blessing instead of the curse. Be positive, stay strong, and get enough rest. You can’t do it all, but you can do your best.” – Doe Zantamata
59. “The reason why people give up so fast is because they tend to look at how far they still have to go instead of how far they have gotten.” – Unknown
60. “If you stumble, make it part of the dance.” – Unknown
Invisible Illness Quotes
A lot of us are living with invisible illnesses. But just because you can’t see our suffering doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Here are some great quotes about living with an invisible illness.
61. “You are so brave and quiet I forget you are suffering.” – Earnest Hemmingway
62. “I often wished that more people understood the invisible side of things. Even the people who seemed to understand, didn’t really.” – Jennifer Starzec
63. “People who don’t see you every day have a hard time understanding how on some days – good days – you can run three miles, but can barely walk across the parking lot on other days.” – Jennifer Starzec
64. “When you have an invisible disease, your sickness isn’t your biggest problem. What you end up battling more than anything else, every single day, is other people.” – Heidi Cullinan
65. “I had learned quickly that life doesn’t always go the way I want it to, and that’s okay. I still plod on.” – Sarah Todd Hammer
66. “Because doctors can’t name the illness, everyone – the patient’s family, friends, health insurance and, in many cases, the patient – comes to think of the patient as not really sick and not really suffering. What the patient comes to require in these circumstances, in the absence of help, are facts – tests and studies that show that they might ‘in fact’ have something.” – Joseph Dumit
67. “Invisible illnesses exist – within body and min (you just don’t always see the patients taking their pills).” – Andy Carrington
68. “The strongest people are not those who show strength in front of us, but those who win battles we known nothing about.” – Unknown
69. “You just do it. You force yourself to get up. You force yourself to put one foot before the other and you refuse to let it get to you. You fight. You cry. Then you go about the business of living. That’s how I’ve done it. There’s no other way.” – Elizabeth Taylor
Chronic Pain Quotes
70. “Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there are no heroes.” – George Orwell
71. “If I only could explain how much I miss that precious moment when I was free from the shackles of chronic pain.” – J.J. Toivonen
72. “People assume you aren’t sick unless they see the sickness on your skin like scars forming a map of all the ways you’re hurting.” – Emm Roy
73. “Few things a doctor does are more important than relieving pain… pain is soul destroying. No patient should have to endure intense pain unnecessarily. The quality of mercy is essential to the practice of medicine; here, of all places, it should not be strained.” – Marcia Angell
74. “The erosion of an effective patient-physician relationship has no place when dealing with chronic pain. Worst of all, dismissing the patient’s pain is as devastating as crushing a patient’s hope.” – Melissa Cady
75. “The stigma of chronic pain is one of the most difficult aspects of living with chronic pain.” – Murray McAlister
76. “I’m in pain all the time. And, if I gave into it, then I’d do nothing.” – Bernard Cornwell
77. “A common misconception is that some people are only in pain because they are weak, anxious, depressed, or do not deal well with stress. This is not correct.” – Tasha Stanton
78. “What a person did when they were in pain said a lot about them.” – Veronica Roth
79. “It is like walking down a street and, every so often, someone beats the shit out of you. You mostly heal, but some injuries just don’t. And then you go out and walk some more, and someone comes by and beats the shit out of you again.” – Jade Sharma
80. “Sometimes I wonder how I could have been so oblivious to the fact that proper treatment for pain is, well, not a bad thing.” – Anna Hamilton
81. “I started feeling afraid of my own body, like it was a torture chamber I’d been trapped inside.” – Talia Hillbert
82. “Pain is a portal to transformation. It does not knock politely.” – Lucy Pearce
83. “I am not hurt. I am in pain.” – Talia Hibbert
84. “Living with long-term suffering in American culture feels like being off key. Suffering quiets and slows, but our culture prefers a crescendo.” – K.J. Ramsey
85. “It’s burning, but it’s not burning me up. I’m feeling it, but it’s not killing me. I think about how powerful it is, and how strong that must mean that I am.” – Laura Tims
86. “It’s so hard to watch the person you love be in pain. It’s a natural impulse to want to fix it, and not being able to is uncomfortable.” – Karen Havelin
87. “I’ve learned more from pain than I could’ve ever learned from pleasure.” – Unknown
88. “I don’t want my pain and struggle to make me a victim. I want my battle to make me someone else’s hero.” – Unknown
89. “Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal sweetness. Take pride that, even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.” – Lain Thomas
90. “It is not an easy reality to face but, just as your chronic pain did not develop overnight, neither will the solution to finding relief develop in a day or two.” – Mel Pohl
91. “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” – Kahlil Gibran
92. “Often the pain that makes us feel most stuck is not our suffering; it is experiencing distress in the presence of people who expect us to get better faster than we can.” – K.J. Ramsey
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed reading these quotes as much as I did. A lot of them, I’d heard before. But many of them were new to me. Hopefully you’ve found some new quotes to help inspire you.
Quotes are awesome. They can inspire, motivate, and even change lives. I told you my favorite quote at the beginning of this post. Now I want to hear yours. Please leave your favorite quote in the comments section at the bottom of the page.
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