Quotes about fear

page 14

“The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.”

“No man is so dangerous as the man who cannot decide what he fears.”

“A charm invests a face
Imperfectly beheld,—
The lady dare not lift her veil
For fear it be dispelled.

But peers beyond her mesh,
And wishes, and denies,—
Lest interview annul a want
That image satisfies.”

“I have always felt that doubt was the beginning of wisdom, and the fear of God was the end of wisdom.”

“When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears.”

“I fear you may become a lonely man, even in the company of others.”

“Feeling in love (or lust) and fear feel a lot alike. They both give you that anxious butterfly feeling in your stomach, a sense of excitement, and a general unease physically and mentally. It's easy to confuse love with fear.”

“He wore his fear on his skin for everyone to see.”

“How does fear become so powerful? We can’t see it. We can’t touch it, yet it gets its claws in us and begins to control us. Sigh. I hate feeling afraid, and I hate, hate, HATE feeling out of control.”

“I fear I will always have to chase the things I want. I'll always have to wonder whether I'm truly wanted or whether I've just been settled for.”

“It's alright to feel fear, but sometimes a very bad idea to show it.”

“I wasn't afraid of him anymore, because I could smell his fear. You never had to be afraid of anything that was afraid of you.”

“Do not fear so, here is one who would be a blade at your back. A shield across your breast. Here is kin, here is strength to lean upon, to share as you share in need.”

“The thing I fear most is fear.”

“Fear is stupid, so are regrets.”

“Because letting someone in close meant they could hurt you. I knew all about that kind of fear. I lived with it.”

“The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down.”

“I suddenly realized. The zebra. It is not something outside of us. The zebra is something inside of us. Our fears. Our own self-destructive nature. The zebra is the worst part of us when we are face-to-face with our worst times. The demon is us!”

“I learned not to fear infinity,
The far field, the windy cliffs of forever,
The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow,
The wheel turning away from itself,
The sprawl of the wave,
The on-coming water.”

“There are no guarantees. But there is also nothing to fear. We come from oblivion when we are born. We return to oblivion when we die. The astonishing thing is this period of in-between.”

“It's all very romantic," Gabriel said, and then frowned. "Or it would be, if my brother could get a word out without sounding like a choking frog. I fear he will not go down in history as one of the world's greatest wooers of women.”

“Courage is fear that has said its prayers and decided to go forward anyway.”

“Fear tries to get us to give up but faith takes us all the way through to victory”

“I did not myself know what I wanted: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it.”

“I'm still going to love you, always. And in the rock-paper-scissors of life, love is rock. fear, anger, everthing else… no contest.”

“Most hatred is based on fear, one way or another. Yeah. I wrapped myself in anger, with a dash of hate, and at the bottom of it all was an icy center of pure terror.”

“If I write something, I fear it will happen, and if I love too much, I fear I will lose that person; nevertheless, I cannot stop writing or loving…”

“If I wanted death, Edward would give it to me. Because we both understand that it isn't death that we fear. It's living.”

“I'm ruined beyond repair, is what I fear… And if so, in time we'd both be wretched and bitter."
"I know people can be mended. Not all, and some more immediately than others. But some can be. I don't see why not you."
"Why not me?”

“I'm starting to understand that fear is like cancer - you can beat it back, but if it returns, it can be worse than ever.”

“There are rocks deep enough in this earth that no matter what the rupture, they will never see the surface.

There is, I think, a fear of love.

There is a fear of love.”

“Perchance you who pronounce my sentence are in greater fear than I who receive it.”
Maiori forsan cum timore sententiam in me fertis quam ego accipiam.

“Good words," I replied. "But deeds must prove it also; and after he is well, remember you don't forget resolutions formed in the hour of fear.”

“I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love rather than what I fear. And at the end of my prayers, they teach me how to listen.”

“It's wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears”

“You want safe? Find a nice puppy you can train to come heel. Love's supposed to be scary. Because if there's no fear, there's no thrill.”

“You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.”

“Somewhere between fear and sex passion is. The way there is sudden. The way out is worse.”

“The caged bird sings with a fearful trill,
of things unknown, but longed for still,
and his tune is heard on the distant hill,
for the caged bird sings of freedom.”

“We have nothing to fear but our mothers.”

“Be a hero. Always say, “I have no fear.” Tell this to everyone—“Have no fear.””

“A generous heart is always open, always ready to receive our going and coming. In the midst of such love we need never fear abandonment. This is the most precious gift true love offers - the experience of knowing we always belong.”

“If I look upon my whole life, I cannot think of another time when I felt more comfortable: when I had no worries, fears, or desires, when my life seemed as soft and lovely as lying inside a cocoon of rose silk.”

“April 27. Incapable of living with people, of speaking. Complete immersion in myself, thinking of myself. Apathetic, witless, fearful. I have nothing to say to anyone - never.”

“Faith is to fear nothing, to stand unswayed, the power to surmount any obstacle.”

“Some people are afraid of what they might find if they try to analyze themselves too much. But you have to crawl into your wounds to discover where your fears are. Once the bleeding starts, the cleansing can begin.”

“Shake paws, count your claws,
You steal mine, I'll borrow yours.
Watch my whiskers, check both ears.
Robber foxes have no fears.”

“It isn't the desire to abide by the law that makes everyone behave as society requires, but the fear of punishment. Each one of us carries a gallows inside us.”

“I am a coward, damn you! I couldna tell ye, for fear ye would leave me, and unmanly thing that I am, I thought I couldna bear that!”

“Closing the gate on her oldest fears as she had closed the gate of her own fenced yard, she discovered the wings she'd always wished she had.”

“The opposite of fear is love - love of the challenge, love of the work, the pure joyous passion to take a shot at our dream and see if we can pull it off.”

“If you make my children, make any child, feel bad for who they are, I will teach you why people fear mama grizzlies more than papa grizzlies.”

“Supposedly, dreams reflect our hidden fears and secret desires, all clamoring for attention.”

“I admit it: above all things, I fear absurdity.”

“But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, compared to what the immigrant fears - dissolution”

“Feed your fears and your faith will starve. Feed your faith, and your fears will.”

“…. maybe fear is God's way of saying, "Pay attention, this could be fun.”

“Love is random; fear is inevitable.”

“She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. She was indispensable to high generation, feared at tea-parties, hated in shops, and loved at crises.”

“Fear is good. In the right degree it prevents us from making fools of ourselves. But in the wrong measure it prevents us from fully living. Fear is our boon companion but never our master.”

“It's better to die laughing than to live each moment in fear.”

“I believe that words are strong, that they can overwhelm what we fear when fear seems more awful than life is good.”

“The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome. He knows there is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a dread-free artist.”

“I have such a fear of finding another like myself, and such a desire to find one! I am so utterly lonely, but I also have such a fear that my isolation be broken through, and I no longer be the head and ruler of my universe.”

“Friends you will have need of, for in you two worlds meet. There is no one on both sides with you, so you must learn to take your own counsel; and not to fear what is strange, if you know it also to be true.
—Luthe”

“She married the prince
and all went well
except for the fear —
the fear of sleep.

Briar Rose
was an insomniac…
She could not nap
or lie in sleep
without the court chemist
mixing her some knock-out drops
and never in the prince's presence.”

“I suppose that we women are such cowards that we think a man will save us from fears, and we marry him.”

“I was with the boy that monsters should fear.”

“Anger prepares us to fight and fear prepares us to flee.”

“Fear urged him to go back, but growth drove him on.”

“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you
want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”

“Fear has no brains; it is an idiot. The dismal witness that it bears and the cowardly counsel that it whispers are unrelated.”

“I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art.”

“Death isn't peaceful; it is just nothing. Everything is gone. No more sunrises, no more hopes, no more fears. Nothing.”

“The opposite of fear," Dienekes said, "is love.”

“At some point I believe one has to stop holding back for fear of alienating some imaginary reader or real relative or friend, and come out with personal truth.”

“There are six reasons anyone does anything: Love. Faith. Greed. Boredom. Fear…" he said, ticking them off on his fingers; but he lingered on the last, drawing a deep breath before he said, "Revenge.”

“People are supposed to fear the unknown, but ignorance is bliss when the knowledge is so damn frightening.”

“When we're afraid, we lose all sense of analysis and reflection. Our fear paralyzes us. Besides, fear has always been the driving force behind all dictators' repression.”

“Only those who have never known fear are allowed to think less of others for being afraid. Frankly, I think anyone who has never been afraid of anything in their entire life is either a liar or lacks imagination.”

“In my madness I was actually in love with her for the few hours it all lasted; it was the same unmistakable ache and stab across the mind, the same sighs, the same pain, and above all the same reluctance and fear to approach.”

“True success is overcoming the fear of being unsuccessful.”

“In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation.”

“But victimhood was seductive, a release from responsibility and caring. Fear would be transmuted into weary resignation; failure would no longer generate guilt but, instead, would spawn a comforting self-pity.”

“No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

“Study nothing except in the knowledge that you already knew it. Worship nothing except in adoration of your true self. And fear nothing except in the certainty that you are your enemy's begetter and its only hope of healing.”

“I understood finally that the thing I
should have feared most was not loss, but
never loving. The price for safety was the regret
I felt at this moment. And yet I would
have to live with it for the rest of my life”

“Fear not, nor be dismayed at the appearance that is darkness, at the disguise that is evil, at the empty cloak that is death, for you have picked these for your challenges. They are stones on which you choose to whet the keen edge of your spirit.”

“Death really did not matter to him but life did, and therefore the sensation he felt when they gave their decision was not a feeling of fear but of nostalgia.”

“Only love heals. Anger, guilt, and fear can only destroy and separate you from your true capabilities.”

“I must have no fear of failure. It was my fear of failure that first kept me from attempting the Master Work.”

“What he could bear in the waking world he could not by night and he sat awake for fear the dream would return.”

“We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings.”

“I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.”

“Though surely to avoid attachments for fear of loss is to avoid life.”

“Kindness eases change
Love quiets fear”

“I will practice coming back to the present moment… not letting regrets and sorrow drag me back into the past or letting anxieties, fears, or cravings pull me out…”

“Their oldest child, James, had spoken laughingly about Will's unrelenting fear of ducks and his continual battle to keep them out of the pond at the family home in Yorkshire.”

“The sorrow of God lies in our fear of Him, our fear of life, and our fear of ourselves. He anguishes over our self-absorption and self-sufficiency… God's sorrow lies in our refusal to approach Him when we sinned and failed.”