Quotes about fear
page 15

“The tiger lies low not from fear, but for aim.
~Wren”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Unleash the Night

“We are fated to love one another; we hardly exist outside our love, we are just animals without it, with a birth and a death and constant fear between. Our love has lifted us up, out of the dreadfulness of merely living.”

John Updike Brazil

Source: Brazil

Love, Death, Fate, Birth

“Holding people away from you, and denying yourself love, that doesn't make you strong. if anything, it makes you weaker. Because you're doing it out of fear.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

Love, People, Strong

“For your life to be great, your faith must be bigger than your fear.”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Source: The Saint, the Surfer, and the CEO: A Remarkable Story about Living Your Heart's Desires

Life, Faith

“I’m afraid of everything. Fear of being alone, fear of being hurt, fear of being made a fool of, fear of failure… Still, I think all my fears bleed from one big one…”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: God-Shaped Hole

Fools, Failure, Thinking, Hurt

“Some people say that you shouldn't operate from a place of fear but if there is no fear, how is there a challenge?”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: One Hundred Names

People

“The only thing that gets me high is the musky scent of my enemy's fear”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

“What would killing the Elders result in?"
"Panic? Fear? Three empty parking spaces in the Sanctuary?”

Derek Landy Skulduggery Pleasant

Source: Skulduggery Pleasant

“When I got to the street, I walked boldly. But I was always accompanied by an agonizing thought: the fear that honest people may be thieves who have chosen a cleverer and safer way of stealing.”

Jean Genet (1910–1986) French novelist, playwright, poet and political activist

Source: Miracle of the Rose

People, Way

“The pleasure of living and the pleasure of the orgasm are identical. Extreme orgasm anxiety forms the basis of the general fear of life.”

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) Austrian-American psychoanalyst

Source: The Function of the Orgasm (1927), Ch. V : The Development of the Character-Analytic Technique
Context: Sexual anxiety is caused by the external frustration of instinctual gratification and is internally anchored by the fear of the dammed-up sexual excitation. This leads to orgasm anxiety, which is the ego's fear of the over-powering excitation of the genital system due to its estrangement from the experience of pleasure. Orgasm anxiety constitutes the core of the universal, biologically anchored pleasure anxiety. It is usually expressed as a general anxiety about every form of vegetative sensation and excitation, or the perception of such excitation and sensations. The pleasure of living and the pleasure of the orgasm are identical. Extreme orgasm anxiety forms the basis of the general fear of life.

Life, Pleasure

“We are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

Source: The Descent of Man

Truth, Hope

“Where there had been only fearful emptiness or equally frightening grandiose fantasies, an unexpected wealth of vitality is now discovered. This is not a homecoming, since this home has never before existed. It is the creation of home.”

Alice Miller (1923–2010) Swiss psychologist

Source: The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

Home, Wealth

“Man staggers through life yapped at by his reason, pulled and shoved by his appetites, whispered to by fears, beckoned by hopes. Small wonder that what he craves most is self-forgetting.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Life, Hope, Forgetting

“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of trauma, I will fear no concussion.”

Jim Butcher Proven Guilty

Source: Proven Guilty

“If Evil exists, it’s to be found in our fears”

Paulo Coelho book Adultery

Source: Adultery

Evil

“The Shell

The sea fills my ear
with sand and with fear.

You may wash out the sand,
but never the sound
of the ghost of the sea
that is haunting me.”

Ted Hughes (1930–1998) English poet and children's writer

Source: The Mermaid's Purse: poems by Ted Hughes

Sea

“So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear, Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost; Evil, be thou my good.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Hope, Evil

“What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human […] is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

“Don't make decisions out of fear. They never get yo anywhere you want to go.”

Danielle Steel (1947) American author of romance novels

Source: Malice

Decision

“there is nothing bad to fear; once you have crossed that threshold, all is well. Another world, and you do not have to speak”

Franz Kafka Letter to His Father

Source: Letter to His Father

World

“… sometimes you have to put your fears in order…”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“I think that most people would rather face the light of a real enemy than the darkness of their imagined fears.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

People, Imagination, Thinking, Light

“Immortality,' said Crake, ' is a concept. If you take 'mortality' as being, not death, but the foreknowledge of it and the fear of it, then 'immortality' is the absence of such fear. Babies are immortal. Edit out the fear, and you'll be…”

Margaret Atwood book Oryx and Crake

Source: Oryx and Crake

Death, Baby

“But love is different for every person. For some it's hate, for some it's joy, for some it's fear, for some it's jealousy, for some it's torture, for some it's peace. For some it's everything.”

James Frey book The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Source: The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Love, Hate, Jealousy, Peace

“Fear is a part of life. It's a warning mechanism. That's all. It tells you when there's danger around. Its job is to help you survive. Not cripple you into being unable to do it.”

Jim Butcher Dead Beat

Source: Dead Beat

Life, Help, Parting

“Doesn't our knowledge of death make life more precious?'

What good is a preciousness based on fear and anxiety? It's an anxious quivering thing”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise

Life, Death, Knowledge

“You wouldn’t be normal if you were never afraid. Even the bravest men experience fear. One of the biggest jobs we all face in combat is to overcome fear.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22

Men

“Fear can make you do more wrong than hate or jealousy… fear makes you always, always hold something back.”

Philip K. Dick book VALIS

Source: Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (1974), Chapter 21 (p. 171)
Source: VALIS
Context: "Fear,” Jason said, “can make you do more wrong than hate or jealousy. If you're afraid you don’t commit yourself to life completely; fear makes you always, always hold something back.”'

Hate, Jealousy

“Fear is inevitable, I have to accept that, but I cannot allow it to paralyze me.”

Isabel Allende (1942) Chilean writer

Source: The Sum of Our Days: A Memoir

“Only a fool is never afraid, Frank. Heroes are the people who carry on despite their fear, because they know the job’s got to get done”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Underworld

People, Fools

“No fear. No distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

“The stronger a culture, the less it fears the radical fringe. The more paranoid and precarious a culture, the less tolerance it offers.”

Joel Salatin (1957) American environmentalist

Source: Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front

“The fear of death is the beginning of slavery.”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

Source: The Golden Apple

Death

“We all fear what we do not understand.”

Dan Brown book The Lost Symbol

Variant: Open your minds, my friends. We all fear what we do not understand.
Source: The Lost Symbol
Source: Who Fears Death (2010), Chapter 21, “Gadi” (p. 139)

Understanding

“The greater the scientific advance, the more primitive the fear.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise

“What you hope for, you also fear.”

Alice Walker book The Temple of My Familiar

Source: The Temple of My Familiar

Hope

“The emotions - love, mirth, the heroic, wonder, tranquility, fear, anger, sorrow, disgust - are in the audience.”

John Cage book Silence: Lectures and Writings

Source: Silence: Lectures and Writings

Love, Anger

“When your fear touches someone’s pain, it becomes pity, when your love touches someone’s pain, it become compassion.”

Stephen Levine (1937–2016) American poet and author

Love, Pain

“I don't trust an organization that would make policy out of fear.”

Melissa de la Cruz book The Van Alen Legacy

Source: The Van Alen Legacy

“Public opinion, in its raw state, gushes out in the immemorial form of the mob's fear. It is piped into central factories, and there it is flavoured and coloured and put into cans.”

H.L. Mencken book Notes on Democracy

1920s
Source: Notes on Democracy (1926)

“How does he do it? Live. With the fear of death every day. I don't fear death as much as I fear the thought of living.”

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

Death

“Courage faces fear and thereby masters it”

Martin Luther King, Jr. book Strength to Love

Source: Strength to Love

Courage

“Great teams do not hold back with one another. They are unafraid to air their dirty laundry. They admit their mistakes, their weaknesses, and their concerns without fear of reprisal.”

Patrick Lencioni (1965) American writer

Source: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

For Team

“I spend most of my waking hours confronting and destroying things that I fear. A thousand-year-old master vampire was a tall order, but a girl's got to have a goal.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Guilty Pleasures

Source: Guilty Pleasures

Girl

“Those who fear the imagination condemn it: something childish, they say, something monsterish, misbegotten. Not all of us dream awake. But those of us who do have no choice.”

Patricia A. McKillip (1948) American fantasy writer

Dreams, Imagination

“The trickster, the riddler, the keeper of balance, he of the many faces who finds life in death and who fears no evil; he who walks through doors.”

Christopher Paolini book Brisingr

Source: Brisingr

Life, Death, Evil

“No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Two: Soul and Body, p 56

Success

“Fear and realisation of ignorance, strong medicines against stupid pride.”

Garth Nix book Abhorsen

Source: Sabriel

Stupidity, Strong

“If you look into your own heart, and you find nothing wrong there, what is there to worry about? What is there to fear?”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Heart

“Write about the emotions you fear the most.”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

“The lives of all people flow through time, and, regardless of how brutal one moment may be, how filled with grief or pain or fear, time flows through all lives equally.”

Orson Scott Card book Children of the Mind

Source: Children of the Mind

Pain, People, Time

“I will guard you from Death, for I have no fear of him.”

Holly Black book The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Source: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Death

“Perhaps it is our fear, that in the silence between stories, in the moment of falling, the fear that we will never find the one story which will save us, and so we lunge for another, and we feel safe again, if only for as long as we are telling it.”

Nick Flynn (1960) American writer

Feeling, Silence

“Real leaders are people who “help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

People, Help, Selfishness

“The greatest tales, well told, awaken the fears and longings of the listeners. Each man hears a different story. Each is touched by it according to his inner self. The words go to the ear, but the true message travels straight to the spirit.”

Juliet Marillier book Son of the Shadows

Source: Son of the Shadows

Travel

“A fine line separates the weary recluse from the fearful hermit. Finer still is the line between hermit and bitter misanthrope.”

Dean Koontz book Velocity

Source: Velocity

“She closed her eyes; and in the sweet slumber lying
her spirit tiptoed from its lodging place.
It's folly to shrink in fear, if this is dying;
for death looked lovely in her face.”

Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374) Italian scholar and poet

Love, Death, Lying

“With the inevitability of a tongue returning to probe a painful tooth, we come back and back and back again to our fears, sitting to talk them over with the eagerness of a hungry man before a full and steaming plate.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

Source: Books of Blood: Volume Two

Pain

“Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

Act 1
The Flies (1943)

“These are hard times. The world hurts. We live in fear and forget to walk with hope. But hope has not forgotten you. So ask it to dinner. It's probably hungry and would appreciate the invitation.”

Libba Bray Going Bovine

Source: Going Bovine (2009), p. 428

World, Hope, Time, Hurt

“Ignorance is the parent of fear.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale

Parent

“Something did happen to me somewhere that robbed me of confidence and courage and left me with a fear of discovery and change and a positive dread of everything unknown that may occur.”

Joseph Heller book Something Happened

Source: Something Happened

Confidence, Courage, Change

“There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Music, Feeling

“I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and the dragons of home under one's skin, at the extreme corners of one's eyes and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe.”

Maya Angelou book Letter to My Daughter

Source: Letter to My Daughter

Dreams, Home

“That's why I want you there, he said. You're unpredictable, and that can be the difference between success and failure. Most people make decisions in anger, fear, love, or obligation. You make decisions to irritate people.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: For a Few Demons More

Love, People, Failure, Decision

“Try a thing you haven't done three times. Once to get over the fear of doing it. Twice to learn how to do it. And a third time to figure out whether you like it or not.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Learning, Time

“Fear not the future, weep not for the past.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley The Revolt of Islam

Canto XI, st. 18
The Revolt of Islam (1817)

Past, Future

“Fear can’t be reasoned with. Neither can hate. They’re like love. They’re almost identical emotions. That’s why Ares and Aphrodite like each other. Their twin sons – Fear and Panic – were spawned from both war and love.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Love, Hate, War

“All fear comes from trying to see the future, Biff. If you know what is coming, you aren't afraid.”

Christopher Moore book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Source: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Future

“Life is easier when you can write off others as monsters, demon, as horrible threats that must be hated and feared the thing is you can't do that without becoming them, just a little.”

Jim Butcher book White Night

Source: White Night

Life, Hate

“Sorrow is better than fear. Fear is a journey, a terrible journey. But, sorrow is at least an arriving.”

Alan Paton (1903–1988) South African writer and activist

“Thoughts - even fears - were airy things, formless until you made them solid with your voice and once given that weight, they could crush you.”

Kristin Hannah (1960) American writer

Source: Firefly Lane

“Obscenity only comes in when the mind despises and fears the body, and the body hates and resists the mind.”

D.H. Lawrence book Lady Chatterley's Lover

Source: Lady Chatterley's Lover

Hate

“The more ups and downs, the more joy I feel. The greater the fear, the greater the happiness I feel.”

Jack Kerouac book Big Sur

Source: Big Sur

Feeling, Joy, Happiness

“Love is the easiest thing there is. It's the layers of doubt, fear, and expectation that make it complicated.”

Luanne Rice (1955) American author

Source: Beach Girls

Love

“Drunk, if you like; so much the worse for those who fear wine, for it is because they have bad thoughts which they are afraid the liquor will extract from their hearts.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Chapter 4 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo/Chapter_4 <br class="br">Source: The Count of Monte Cristo (1845–1846)

Wine, Heart

“Love in your mind produces love in your life. This is the meaning of heaven.
Fear in your mind produces fear in your life. This is the meaning of hell.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

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

Love, Life, Hell

“Sometimes good choices are really bad ones, wrapped up in so much fear you can't even see straight.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Secret Life of Prince Charming

“Here was a new generation, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds, through a revery of long days and nights; destined finally to go out into that dirty gray turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken....”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Quoted, This Side of Paradise (1920)

Love, God, War, Faith

“The fact is that we don't want to be free. What is responsible for our problems is the fear of losing what we have and what we know.”

U.G. Krishnamurti (1918–2007) Indian philosopher

Source: No Way Out (2002), Ch. 7: What Kind Of Human Being Do You Want?
Context: The fact is that we don't want to be free. What is responsible for our problems is the fear of losing what we have and what we know. All these therapies, all these techniques, religious or otherwise, are only perpetuating the agony of man.

Problem

“I have discovered that even the mediocre can have adventures and even the fearful can achieve.”

Edmund Hillary (1919–2008) New Zealand mountaineer

“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land (1922), Line 25 et seq.
Context: There is shadow under this red rock
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

“I read that speaking in front of a crowd is the number-one fear in America. I found that amazing. Number two was death. Number two! That means that, if you're ever at a funeral, you'd rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

I'm Telling You for the Last Time (1998)

Death, Reading

“Where there's life, death is inevitable. Dying's easy; it's living that's hard. The harder it gets, the stronger the will to live. And the greater the fear of death, the greater the struggle to keep on living.”

Mo Yan book Big Breasts and Wide Hips

Source: Big Breasts and Wide Hips (1996)

Life, Death

“Truly, everything in this world depended on time. Time ripened all. If you had time, you succeeded in working the human mud internally and turning it into spirit. Then you did not fear death. If you did not have time, you perished.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Last Temptation of Christ

Source: The Last Temptation of Christ

Death, World, Time, Dependency

“If you are searching for sacred knowledge and not just a palliative for your fears, then you will train yourself to be a good skeptic.”

Ann Druyan (1949) American author and producer

Search, Knowledge, Training

“No, no—there are depths, depths! The more I go over it, the more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I fear. I don’t know what I don’t see—what I don’t fear!”

Henry James book The Turn of the Screw

Source: The Turn of the Screw

“We received our colouring from the Norsemen, hairy savages who hacked their gods to pieces and hung the flesh from trees. We are the ones who sacked Rome. Fear only feeble old age and death in bed. Don't forget who you are.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Death, God, Age, Tree

“I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Truth, Knowledge

“I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.”

William James book The Varieties of Religious Experience

Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
Source: 1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
Context: I am well aware of how anarchic much of what I say may sound. Expressing myself thus abstractly and briefly, I may seem to despair of the very notion of truth. But I beseech you to reserve your judgment until we see it applied to the details which lie before us. I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.

Truth, Lovers