
Chap. 5 : Become an Elusive Object of Desire
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)
Source: Wolf Hall
Chap. 5 : Become an Elusive Object of Desire
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)
Signs of Change (1888), How We Live And How We Might Live
Context: The word Revolution, which we Socialists are so often forced to use, has a terrible sound in most people's ears, even when we have explained to them that it does not necessarily mean a change accompanied by riot and all kinds of violence, and cannot mean a change made mechanically and in the teeth of opinion by a group of men who have somehow managed to seize on the executive power for the moment. Even when we explain that we use the word revolution in its etymological sense, and mean by it a change in the basis of society, people are scared at the idea of such a vast change, and beg that you will speak of reform and not revolution. As, however, we Socialists do not at all mean by our word revolution what these worthy people mean by their word reform, I can't help thinking that it would be a mistake to use it, whatever projects we might conceal beneath its harmless envelope. So we will stick to our word, which means a change of the basis of society; it may frighten people, but it will at least warn them that there is something to be frightened about, which will be no less dangerous for being ignored; and also it may encourage some people, and will mean to them at least not a fear, but a hope.
“Nothing is more frightening than a fear you cannot name.”
Variant: Nothing is more terrifying than fearlessness.
Source: Inkheart
“All love is probationary, a fact which frightens women and exhilarates men.”
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Women & men
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.”
“She could not understand why people feared new ideas. She was frightened by the old ones.”
Source: Short fiction, Vortex, p. 111