“Nothing is more ridiculous than a tyrant, whose fear is gradually losing itself.”

The Well-Spoken Thesaurus (2011)

Maxim 511
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

Source: 1910s, Why Men Fight https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Why_Men_Fight (1917), pp. 178-179
Context: Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth – more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. It sees man, a feeble speck, surrounded by unfathomable depths of silence; yet it bears itself proudly, as unmoved as if it were lord of the universe. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

Variant: Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear.”" -
Source: The Name of the Rose

Letter to Lord Grenville (25 May 1809) on the Duke of Wellington's successes in the Peninsular War, quoted in Rory Muir, Britain and the Defeat of Napoleon, 1807-1815 (Yale University Press, 1996), p. 94.
1800s

Source: Parable of the Sower (1993), p. 65