50 Numbness Quotes to Tickle Your Senses

By Norbert Juma

Master quote curator and editor on a mission to inspire

Published April 13, 2023

If you are in search of the best possible list of numbness quotes, you have landed on the right page.

Here, we have created a compilation of the best quotes about numbness.

Apart from this, we have also discussed numbness and its causes.

So, let’s dive in!

What is Numbness?

The term numbness refers to a loss of feeling or sensation in any part of a body.

Usually, a person with this problem experiences a pricking, tingling, or needle-like sensation.

The feeling of numbness might be long-lasting or temporary.

Causes of Numbness

There are numerous reasons for feeling numbness.

A few of these causes include:

Nerve damage
Poor circulation
Effect of medication
Exposure to extreme temperatures

In addition to the above causes, a person might feel numbness due to an underlying medical condition such as:

Multiple sclerosis
Diabetes
CTS (Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

What is meant by Numbness of Emotions?

The numbness of emotions usually relates to a lack of feeling or minimized intensity of emotions.

It is a symptom associated with a specific mental condition such as anxiety or depression.

In addition, it can also be a side effect of other types of medications.

This issue is usually described as a sense of disconnection or a general feeling of emptiness.

Numbness of emotions also lowers the ability to experience joy or happiness.

How to Deal with Numbness of Emotions

When it comes to dealing with numbness, it is essential to know its underlying cause.

If you are feeling a sensation of numbness due to an injury or medical condition, it is imperative to visit a medical practitioner.

However, if you are suffering from emotional numbness, the following strategies could help.

Take part in new activities
Take care of yourself
Try meditation
Expressing yourself

Participate in new activities

When struggling with numbness of emotions, think about engaging in new activities.

For instance, you can take part in activities that you love to do, such as participating in social gatherings or starting a new hobby.

This can help to stimulate your emotions and regain your lost sense of joy.

Take Care of Yourself

Even if you are feeling low, don’t forget self-care.

By practicing the self-care routine, it is possible to keep your mind active and free from negative thoughts.

For example, you must get enough sleep and perform a regular workout.

Try Meditation

Meditation is a great way to know one’s inner self.

Hence, it can strengthen your ability to regulate or tolerate your emotions.

Expressing Yourself

You can improve your emotional health by expressing yourself through creativity.

For this purpose, you can try a variety of creative things like art, music, or writing.

Top 10 Numbness Quotes

Here are the top 10 numbness quotes by famous personalities around.

1. “A lazy frost, a numbness of the mind.” — John Dryden

2. “When I look at a pie chart, I just go numb.” — Aaron Koblin

3. “Discomfort is always preferable to numbness.” — Scott Anderson

4. “You can only get hurt so much before you get numb.” — Teresa Giudice

5. “He was numb except for dreading the loss of numbness.” — Thomas Harris

6. “The military and the Marine Corps prepared me to be numb to the stress.” — Lacey Evans

7. “There’s a numbness in our culture to the continuing horrors of genocide.” — Anne Waldman

8. “One must go through periods of numbness that are harder to bear than grief.” — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

9. “But what would that be like feeling the tide rise out of the numbness inside.” — David Whyte

10. “Violence is its own anesthetist. The numbness it induces feels very much like calm.” — Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Body Numbness Quotes

The body sometimes gets numb due to various reasons. The following numbness quotes are about the numbness of the body.

11. “In real life, I don’t cry too easily. I go numb.” — Kay Kay Menon

12. “I am probably a bit numb upstairs, which is sometimes a good thing.” — Alun Wyn Jones

13. “If people can’t deal with their problems, they numb themselves a little bit.” — Kevin Nealon

14. “I grow numb; I grow stiff. How shall I break up this numbness which discredits my sympathetic heart?” — Virginia Woolf

15. “I had nothing, and I was still changed. Like a costume, my numbness was taken away. Then hunger was added.” — Louise Glück

16. “I have carpal tunnel, so I can’t write more than four hours total without tingling numbness. I take a lot of breaks and do stretches.” — Eden Robinson

17. “Her heart began to ache, and she felt the numbness slip away. Misery welled up inside her. She clamped down on it, trying to hold onto the deadness that had blanketed her emotions for the past few days.” — Lili Wilkinson

18. “I felt a kind of numbness, an enervation, but more particularly an odd fragility – as if my body had actually become frail, hypersensitive, and somehow disjointed and clumsy, lacking normal coordination. And soon I was in the throes of a pervasive hypochondria.” — William Styron

19. “I was not allowed to think of him. That was something I tried to be very strict about. Of course, I slipped; I was only human. But I was getting better, and so the pain was something I could avoid for days at a time now. The trade-off was the never-ending numbness. Between pain and nothing, I’d chosen nothing.” — Stephenie Meyer

20. “Every parent who has ever said a few words over a goldfish in a toilet bowler felt the numbness of an unexpected diagnosis in a pediatrician’s office will appreciate the heartfelt wisdom in It’s Okay to Cry. Norm Wright tenderly and skillfully equips parents to help children cultivate a healthy response to life’s many pains and sorrows.” — Lori Borgman

Numbness Quotes to Deal with Despair

Due to despair, people get numb and don’t know what to do. Following numbness quotes will help you in dealing with despair.

21. “People talk about the pain of grief, but I don’t know what they mean. To me, grief is a devastating numbness; every sensation dulled.” — Veronica Roth

22. “You’ve faced horrors in these past weeks… I don’t know which is worse. The terror you feel the first time you witness such things, or the numbness that comes after it starts to become ordinary.” — Tasha Alexander

23. “Grief, as I read somewhere once, is a lazy Susan. One day it is heavy and underwater, and the next day it spins and stops at loud and rageful, and the next day at wounded keening, and the next day numbness, silence.” — Anne Lamott

24. “The numbness of his loss had passed, and the pain would hit me out of nowhere, doubling me over, racking my body with sobs. Where are you? I would cry out in my mind. Where have you gone? Of course, there was never any answer.” — Suzanne Collins

25. “And though the coldness I have always felt leaves me, the numbness doesn’t and probably never will. this relationship will probably lead to nothing… this didn’t change anything. I imagine her smelling clean, like tea.” — Bret Easton Ellis

26. “There is a level of grief so deep that it stops resembling grief at all. The pain becomes so severe that the body can no longer feel it. The grief cauterizes itself, scars over, and prevents inflated feelings. Such numbness is a kind of mercy.” — Elizabeth Gilbert

27. “When we look squarely at injustice and get involved, we actually feel less pain, not more, because we overcome the gnawing guilt and despair that festers under our numbness. We clean the wound – our own and others – and it can finally heal.” — Desmond Tutu

28. “You know, I think the people I feel saddest for are the ones who once knew what profoundness was but who lost or became numb to the sensation of wonder, who felt their emotions floating away and just didn’t care. I guess that’s what’s scariest: not caring about the loss.” — Douglas Coupland

29. “I lay and cried and began to feel again, to admit I was human, vulnerable, sensitive. I began to remember how it had been before, how there was that germ of positive creativeness. Character is fate, and damn, I’d better work on my character. I had been withdrawing into a retreat of numbness: it is so much safer to NOT feel, NOT to let the world touch one.” — Sylvia Plath

30. “There are those, however, that are not frightened of grief: dropping deep into the sorrow, they find therein a necessary elixir to the numbness. When they encounter one another, when they press their foreheads against the bark of a centuries-old tree…their eyes well with tears that fall easily to the ground. The soil needs this water. Grief is but a gate, and our tears a kind of key opening a place of wonder that’s been locked away. Suddenly we notice a sustaining resonance between the drumming heart within our chest and the pulse rising from the ground.” — David Abram

Navigate social numbness with these inspiring quotes on the human condition.

31. “Winning intoxicates you and numbs you to the sufferings of others.” — Margaret Atwood

32. “Personal voice- prophesy- disrupts the state of communal numbness in which most of us exist.” — Walter Brueggemann

33. “I think there’s a certain numbness in modern society that accepts certain kinds of violence but represses other kinds of violence.” — Nick Cave

34. “Very depressed today. Unable to write a thing. Menacing gods. I feel outcast on a cold star, unable to feel anything but an awful helpless numbness.” — Sylvia Plath

35. “The primary dues a writer or any artist pays is to remain sentient and to forfeit the illusionary luxury of such anesthetics as avoidance, numbness, and denials.” — Vanna Bonta

36. “Writers matter in a society to the extent that we can help that society hear its unvoiced longing, encounter its erased and disregarded selves, break with complacency, numbness, despair.” — Adrienne Rich

37. “In general, it’s not too hard to corrupt an American; mostly a matter of supply to their demand. Supply should be variegated to encourage the Illusion of Choice. Other than that, they’re looking for numbness, so be ready to sedate. Drugs, booze, television, shopping, etc.” — Geoffrey Wood

38. “It was too much. The comfortable people made comfortable jokes about weather and things, but I sat mostly silent, saying a word or so when necessary a word or so trying to hide from them the fact that I was a fool and feeling terrible, And I was numb, numb again, numb again and again, numbness and pain swelling in me.” — Charles Bukowski

39. “Torture presupposes, it requires, it craves the abrogation of our capacity to imagine others suffering, dehumanizing them so much that their pain is not our pain. It demands this of the torturer, placing the victim outside and beyond any form of compassion or empathy, but also demands of everyone else the same distancing, the same numbness.” — Ariel Dorfman

40. “Great potential for personal empowerment can be found in attending to our awareness of global problems and to our understanding of how they connect with each other and with our personal lives. The process of naming the danger, saying aloud that the threats to life on earth are real, moves us from the numbness of denial to the aliveness that makes action possible.” — Sarah Connor

Numbness Quotes to Deal with Depression

You can overcome numbness in the face of anxiety and depression with the following list of empowering quotes.

41. “Absent the edge, we drown in numbness.” — David Whyte

42. “I felt deeply tricked. Stunned. And furious. I also felt my default emotion: numbness.” — Augusten Burroughs

43. “He wondered if this was what clinical depression felt like, a total numbness, a weary lack of hope.” — Dennis Lehane

44. “Wasn’t it time she risked getting hurt again, instead of just accepting the numbness of never letting anyone in?” — Jeaniene Frost

45. “Great potential for personal empowerment can be found in attending behavior may…counteract feelings of ‘numbness’ and depersonalization that arise during periods of extreme stress.-153 Girl, Interrupted.” — Susanna Kaysen

46. “She still felt shell-shocked by all of it, numb. Beneath the numbness, though, was a raw and terrible anger that was unlike anything she’d felt before. She had so little experience with genuine anger that it scared her. She actually worried that if she started screaming, she’d never stop.” — Kristin Hannah

47. “I am gay on the outside, especially among my own folk (I count Poles my own); but inside something gnaws at me; some presentiment, anxiety, dreams – or sleeplessness – melancholy, indifference – the desire for life, and the next instant, desire for death; some kind of sweet peace, some kind of numbness, absent-mindedness.” — Frederic Chopin

48. “I wish I could explain it so someone could understand it. I’m afraid it’s something I can’t put into words. There’s just this heavy, overwhelming despair – dreading everything. Dreading life. Empty inside, to the point of numbness. It’s like there’s something already dead inside. My whole being has been pulling back into that void for months.” — Kay Redfield Jamison

49. “All the same, my depression and self-hatred, my desire to mutilate myself with broken bottles, my numbness and crying fits, my inability to get out of bed for days and days, the feeling of the world moving in to crush me, went on and on. But I knew I wouldn’t go mad, even if that release that letting go was a freedom I desired. I was waiting for myself to heal.” — Hanif Kureishi

50. “There is a curious comfort in letting go. After the agony, letting go brings numbness, and after the numbness, clarity. As if I can see the world for the first time and my place in it, independent of you, a whole vista of what may be. Even if it is not grand or inspiring, it is real and solid, unlike the fantasy I’ve built around you. I will do this. I will triumph over you.” — Julie Berry