Quotes about fear
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“This hill though high I covent ascend;
The difficulty will not me offend;
For I perceive the way of life lies here.
Come, pluck up, heart; let's neither faint nor fear.”

John Bunyan The Pilgrim's Progress

Source: The Pilgrim's Progress

Life, Way, Heart

“We are all the pieces of what we remember. We hold in ourselves the hopes and fears of those who love us. As long as there is love and memory, there is no true loss.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Hope, Love, Hope, Memory

“I've never minded it," he went on. "Being lost, that is. I had always thought one could not truly be lost if one knew one's own heart. But I fear I may be lost without knowing yours.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Heart

“Child, it's a very bad thing for a woman to face the worst that can happen to her, because after she's faced the worst she can't ever really fear anything again…. Scarlett, always save something to fear— even as you save something to love…”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

Love

“I never wanted to be feared. If I regret one thing, it is the fear I have caused. Fear is the tool of tyrants. Unfortunately, when the fate of the world is in question, you use whatever tools are available.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Final Empire

Fate, World, Question

“I used to think as I looked out on the Hollywood night — there must be thousands of girls sitting alone like me, dreaming of becoming a movie star. But I'm not going to worry about them. I'm dreaming the hardest.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Variant: I used to think as I looked at the Hollywood night, «There must be thousands of girls sitting alone like me, dreaming of becoming a movie star. But I'm not going to worry about them. I'm dreaming the hardest.

Dreams, Girl, Star, Thinking

“I know there isn't no beast—not with claws and all that, I mean—but I know there isn't no fear, either."
Piggy paused.
"Unless—"
Ralph moved restlessly.
"Unless what?"
"Unless we get frightened of people.”

William Golding book Lord of the Flies

Source: Lord of the Flies

People

“Torn between fear and something that resembled love, she wrestled with questions she never dreamed she would face: How could she leave? Then again, how could she stay?”

Jodi Picoult book Picture Perfect

Source: Picture Perfect

Love, Dreams, Question

“At the deepest level people are madder than they want to believe. You will find that they fear being eaten, and are alarmed by their desire to devour others.”

Hanif Kureishi (1954) English playwright, screenwriter, novelist

Source: Something to Tell You

People

“Most men fear getting laughed at or humiliated by a romantic prospect while most women fear rape and death.”

Gavin de Becker (1954) American engineer

Source: The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence

Death, Women, Men

“History always constitutes the relation between a present and its past. Consequently fear of the present leads to mystification of the past”

John Berger book Ways of Seeing

Source: Ways of Seeing

History, Past

“I want to know if you've touched the center of your own sorrow, if you've been opened by life's betrayals, or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.”

Oriah Mountain Dreamer (1954) Canadian author

Life, Pain, Betrayal

“Hello, fear. Thank you for being here. You’re my indication that I’m doing what I need to do.”

Cheryl Strayed (1968) author, memoirist, blogger

Source: Brave Enough

“Men are driven by two principal impulses, either by love or by fear.”

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) Italian politician, Writer and Author

Source: The Discourses

Love, Men

“I am in the middle of it: chaos and poetry; poetry and love and again, complete chaos. Pain, disorder, occasional clarity; and at the bottom of it all: only love; poetry. Sheer enchantment, fear, humiliation. It all comes with love”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Source: The Akhmatova Journals, Volume I: 1938-1941

Love, Pain

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night

Life, Hope

“Will we ever stop being afraid of nights and death?

When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Death, Star, Boy, Night

“As I fear not a child with a weapon he cannot lift, I will never fear the mind of a man who does not think.”

Brandon Sanderson book Words of Radiance

Source: Words of Radiance

Thinking

“Within its gates I heard the sound
Of winds in cypress caverns caught
Of huddling tress that moaned, and sought
To whisper what their roots had found.
(“A Dream of Fear”)”

George Sterling (1869–1926) American poet and playwright

Source: The Thirst of Satan: Poems of Fantasy and Terror

Dreams

“There are 6 reasons that a person does anything: Love, faith, greed, boredom, fear… revenge.”

Ally Carter book Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Source: Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Love, Faith, Revenge, Personality

“To acknowledge the presence of fear is to give birth to failure.”

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author

Journal entry, "Reading Notes" (1905-1907), quoted in Ruth Elvish Mantz and John Middleton Murry, The Life of Katherine Mansfield (1933), p. 212

Birth, Failure

“Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

“Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends.”

Shirley MacLaine (1934) American actress

Don't Fall Off the Mountain http://books.google.com/books?id=f6yc35pUhEwC&q=%22The+more+I+traveled+the+more+I+realized+that+fear+makes+strangers+of+people+who+should+be+friends%22&pg=PA160#v=onepage (1970) <br class="br">Variant: The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.

People

“Buried beneath disappointment and fear, anger and pride, I just might find it in my heart to forgive.”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

Source: Heart of the Matter

Disappointment, Forgiveness, Heart, Anger

“My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning. I wanted my death to be something the people could relate to, a basis for further mobilization of the community.”

Huey P. Newton book Revolutionary Suicide

Source: Revolutionary Suicide (1973), p. 190

Death, People, Communication

“I'm going to end up like one of those old weirdos who lives in a network of tunnels burrowed through trash - yet I do not fear this.”

Will Self (1961) English writer and journalist

“Courage is strength in the face of knowledge of what is to be feared or hoped. Wisdom is prudent strength.”

Atul Gawande book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

Source: Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

Wisdom, Hope, Courage, Knowledge

“I dropped all the guards. All the leashes, all the chains, everything that ever restrained me through the discipline and fear of discovery, I let it all go. No need to hide.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Burns

“Go to hell," he said, but there was a desolate fear in his eyes and I couldn't look away.
"Been there. Trust me. It's so overrated.”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

Hell

“Also, Ares developed a serious fear of jars. I think I'm going to get him a nice one for Christmas.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Source: Percy Jackson's Greek Gods

Thinking, Christmas

“Fear tends to come from ignorance. Once I knew what the problem was, it was just a problem, nothing to fear.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 32, “Coppers, Cobblers and Crowds” (p. 227)

Problem

“Peace, if it ever exists, will not be based on the fear of war, but on the love of peace. It will not be the abstaining from an act, but the coming of a state of mind.”

Herman Wouk book The Winds of War

Source: The Winds of War

Love, War, Peace

“Everything has boundaries. The same holds true with thought. You shouldn't fear boundaries, but you should not be afraid of destroying them. That's what is most important if you want to be free: respect for and exasperation with boundaries.”

Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“He folded his fear into a perfect rose. He held it out in the palm of his hand. She took it from him and put it in her hair.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

Perfection

“He who lets fear rule him, has fear for a master [Acheron]”

Sherrilyn Kenyon Night Embrace

Source: Night Embrace

“When you make friends with fear, it can’t rule you.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

“Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear.”

Umberto Eco book The Name of the Rose

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

Courageous, Courage

“False fears are a plague, a modern plague!”

Michael Crichton book State of Fear

Source: State of Fear

Falseness

“Look right at it. Know you can." Dad said. "Look right at that fear. Fear is the biggest bullshitter.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: Stay

“But I fear that I also underestimate the stupidity of the rest of mankind. Are we absolutely sure that we ought to win this war?”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

War, Stupidity

“The important task of literature is to free man, not to censor him, and that is why Puritanism was the most destructive and evil force which ever oppressed people and their literature: it created hypocrisy, perversion, fears, sterility.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947

People, Literature, Evil

“If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.”

Natalie Goldberg (1948) American writer

Source: Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them, do not. Miss them, do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is. Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose”

George Lucas (1944) American film producer

Jealousy, Training

“The fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)
Source: Why I Am An Agnostic and Other Essays

Death, Wisdom, God, Study

“A part of us stayed like that: fearful of the world around us, and-no matter how much we despised ourselves for it-unable quite to let each other go.”

Kazuo Ishiguro book Never Let Me Go

Source: Never Let Me Go

World, Parting

“Mortal fear is as crucial a thing to our lives as love. It cuts to the core of our being and shows us what we are. Will you step back and cover your eyes? Or will you have the strength to walk to the precipice and look out?”

Marisha Pessl (1977) American writer

Source: Night Film

Love

“I had forgotten to fear him, from too much time spent too close.”

Naomi Novik book Uprooted

Source: Uprooted

Time

“Just as when we come into the world, when we die we are afraid of the unknown. But the fear is something from within us that has nothing to do with reality. Dying is like being born: just a change”

Isabel Allende book The House of the Spirits

Variant: Just as when we come into the world, when we die we are afraid of the unknown. But the fear is something from within us that has nothing to do with reality. Dying is like being born: just a change.
Source: The House of the Spirits

World, Reality, Change

“The most unfortunate thing that happens to a person who fears failure is that he limits himself by becoming afraid to try anything new.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

Failure, Personality

“Really, it was difficult to determine which I had most reason to fear—dogs, alligators or men!”

Solomon Northup book Twelve Years a Slave

Source: Twelve Years a Slave

Men, Dogs

“Worry is fear in disguise. And fear will eat you from the inside out if you let it.”

Jim Butcher Captain's Fury

Source: Captain's Fury

“Worry is the secret weapon perpetrated upon us by the dark forces of the world that lurk in the shape of fear, uncertainty, confusion, and loss.

We, on the other hand, have our own secret weapon against these incorporeal fiends.

It is laughter.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

Secret, World, Laughter, Loss

“Never miss an opportunity to show your love, especially to those close to you, because we are always at our most cautious with them for fear of being hurt.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra

Love, Hurt

“Because fear kills everything," Mo had once told her. "Your mind, your heart, your imagination.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkheart

Imagination, Heart

“The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Death, Dead

“She wanted to bottle how safe she felt in this moment, so she could drink of it later when loneliness and fear left her parched.”

Kristin Hannah book The Nightingale

Source: The Nightingale

Drink, Loneliness

“Fear is often disguised as moral outrage.”

Judy Blume (1938) American children's writer

“Terrible thing to live in fear. Brooks Hatlen knew it. Knew it all too well. All I want is to be back where things make sense. Where I won't have to be afraid all the time.”

Stephen King book Different Seasons

Source: Different Seasons

Sense, Time

“The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.”

Thomas Merton book The Seven Storey Mountain

Source: The Seven Storey Mountain (1948)
Context: Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers the most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture.

Suffering, Hurt

“There is nothing more liberating than having your worst fear realized.”

Conan O'Brien (1963) American television show host and comedian

“we grow fearless when we do the things we fear”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Source: The Secret Letters of the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

“A MAN FEARED

A man feared that he might find an assassin;
Another that he might find a victim.
One was more wise than the other.”

Stephen Crane (1871–1900) American novelist, short story writer, poet, and journalist

“The only angels we need invoke are those of our better nature: reason, honesty, and love. The only demons we must fear are those that lurk inside every human mind: ignorance, hatred, greed, and, which is surely the devil's masterpiece.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Source: The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

Love, Angels, Nature

“There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Variant: There can be no hope without fear, and no fear without hope.

Hope, Hope

“All human behavior, all human motivations, all man’s hopes and fears, were heavily colored and largely controlled by mankind’s tragic and oddly beautiful pattern of reproduction.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Stranger in a Strange Land

Source: Stranger in a Strange Land

Beauty, Hope, Color, Behavior

“I would rather you love me, but if not love, fear will do.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Skin Trade

Source: Skin Trade

Love

“The journey I'm taking is inside me. Just like blood travels down veins, what I'm seeing is my inner self and what seems threatening is just the echo of the fear in my heart.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Travel, Heart

“Fear you?" she said without thinking. "Good God, I would never do that."

Easing her head back, Westcliff looked at her while a slow smile spread across his face. "No, you wouldn't," he agreed. "You'd spit in the devil's eye if it suited you.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: It Happened One Autumn

God, Smile, Thinking

“My fear of abandonment is exceeded only by my terror of intimacy.”

Ethlie Ann Vare (1953) American journalist

“Love and I once had a great relationship, but I fear we've broken up. It cheated on me, wrecked my heart, and then went on to date other people. A lot of other people. And I can't stand to watch it, since love's going to cheat on them too.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Love, People, Heart, Cheating

“This, she realizes, is the basis of all fear. That a light you are powerless to stop will turn on you and usher a bullet to its mark.”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

Light

“To be loved because of one's merit, because one deserves it, always leaves doubt; maybe I did not please the person whom I want to love me, maybe this, or that - there is always a fear that love could disappear.”

Erich Fromm book The Art of Loving

Source: The Art of Loving

Love, Personality

“Each time he suggested they get married, she said no. They were too happy, precariously so, and she wanted to guard that bond; she feared that marriage would flatten it into a prosaic partnership.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book Half of a Yellow Sun

Source: Half of a Yellow Sun

Marriage, Time, Partnership, Happiness

“This feeling will pass. The fear is real but the danger is not.”

Cammie McGovern

Source: Say What You Will

Feeling

“I wanted to read immediately. The only fear was that of books coming to an end.”

Eudora Welty (1909–2001) American author

Books, Reading

“Fear is the greatest form of oppression.
The best way to rise up in protest is to live your life to
its fullest!”

Megan McCafferty (1973) American novelist

Source: Second Helpings

Life, Way

“People living deeply have no fear of death.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

Death, People

“My view is that it is desirable to be both loved and feared; but it is difficult to achieve both and, if one of them has to be lacking, it is much safer to be feared than loved.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince

Love

“Courage is not the absence of fear but the awareness that something else is more important.”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Foreword to Prisoners of our Thoughts : Viktor Frankl's Principles at Work (2004), by Alex Pattakos, p. x
This statement has also been attributed to James Neil Hollingsworth (AKA: Ambrose Redmoon) in an article entitled "No Peaceful Warriors!" for Gnosis Magazine #21, in 1991.
Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

Courage

“We're hallucinating. And that's what this world is: a mass hallucination, where fear seems more real than love. Fear is an illusion. Our craziness, paranoia, anxiety and trauma are literally all imagined.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

Love, World, Imagination

“Forest, I fear you! In my ruined heart your roaring wakens the same agony as in cathedrals when the organ moans and from the depths I hear that I am damned.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Heart

“I have survived. I am here. Confused, screwed up, but here. So, how can I find my way? Is there a chain saw of the soul, an ax I can take to my memories or fears?”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Way, Soul, Memory

“I am really much more afraid of those people who have so great a fear of the devil, than I am of the devil himself. Satan can do me no harm whatever, but they can trouble me very much, particularly if they be confessors.”

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint

Source: The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus (c.1565), Ch. XXV. "Divine Locutions. Discussions on That Subject" ¶ 26 & 27
Variant translation: I do not fear Satan half so much as I fear those who fear him.
Source: The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila by Herself
Context: May it please His Majesty that we fear Him whom we ought to fear, and understand that one venial sin can do us more harm than all hell together; for that is the truth. The evil spirits keep us in terror, because we expose ourselves to the assaults of terror by our attachments to honours, possessions, and pleasures. For then the evil spirits, uniting themselves with us, — we become our own enemies when we love and seek what we ought to hate, — do us great harm. We ourselves put weapons into their hands, that they may assail us; those very weapons with which we should defend ourselves. It is a great pity. But if, for the love of God, we hated all this, and embraced the cross, and set about His service in earnest, Satan would fly away before such realities, as from the plague. He is the friend of lies, and a lie himself. He will have nothing to do with those who walk in the truth. When he sees the understanding of any one obscured, he simply helps to pluck out his eyes; if he sees any one already blind, seeking peace in vanities, — for all the things of this world are so utterly vanity, that they seem to be but the playthings of a child, — he sees at once that such a one is a child; he treats him as a child, and ventures to wrestle with him — not once, but often.
May it please our Lord that I be not one of these; and may His Majesty give me grace to take that for peace which is really peace, that for honour which is really honour, and that for delight which is really a delight. Let me never mistake one thing for another — and then I snap my fingers at all the devils, for they shall be afraid of me. I do not understand those terrors which make us cry out, Satan, Satan! when we may say, God, God! and make Satan tremble. Do we not know that he cannot stir without the permission of God? What does it mean? I am really much more afraid of those people who have so great a fear of the devil, than I am of the devil himself. Satan can do me no harm whatever, but they can trouble me very much, particularly if they be confessors. I have spent some years of such great anxiety, that even now I am amazed that I was able to bear it. Blessed be our Lord, who has so effectually helped me!

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