“To how much lying, extravagance, hypocrisy and servilism does not the fear of ridicule lead? Human respect makes us cowards and slaves. It may deter from evil, but much oftener it drives to baseness. “We are too much afraid,” said Cato, “of death, exile and poverty.””

“Oh! Death would take so much from us, how should we not fear?”

“Fear puts an end to openness of manner; fear leads to concealment; fear sows the seed of much hypocrisy, and leads to many a lie.”

“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.”

“However much poetry may be respected in Ireland, this respect more often translates, in practice, into tolerance and acceptance, rather than support. Poetry is a 'nice' thing to live with, as long as it does not come too close.”

“The next thing is by gentle degrees to accustom children to those things they are too much afraid of. But here great caution is to be used, that you do not make too much haste, nor attempt this cure too early, for fear lest you increase the mischief instead of remedying it.”

“There’s a cool web of language winds us in,
Retreat from too much joy or too much fear:
We grow sea-green at last and coldly die
In brininess and volubility.”

“…do not courageous men endure death because they are afraid of yet greater evils? …Then all but philosophers are courageous only from fear, and because they are afraid; and yet that a man should be courageous from fear, and because he is a coward, is surely a strange thing.”

“How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what?… All will end in death, all!”

“Too much poverty, like living in the same conditions as Job, could lead many to become atheists.”