quotations about fear
How sweet the name of Jesus sounds
In a believer's ear!
It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds,
And drives away his fear.
JOHN NEWTON
Olney Hymns
Sometimes fear is a warning. It's like someone putting a hand on your shoulder and saying Go No Farther.
ANNE RICE
Memnoch the Devil
Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.
YODA
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Fear has many eyes and can see things underground.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
Fearlessness requires attention and receptivity--it takes focus to stand in the still eye of a tornado and not be swept away by it.
SUSAN PIVER
O Magazine, Apr. 2007
In my opinion the hectic and almost frantic pace of modern living is a clear sign of the fear we have of being and of life. And as long as this fear exists in a person's unconscious, he will run faster and do more so as not to feel his fear.
ALEXANDER LOWEN
Fear of Life
Living fearlessly is not the same thing as never being afraid. It's good to be afraid occasionally. Fear is a great teacher.
MICHAEL IGNATIEFF
O Magazine, Apr. 2007
For as children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true. This terror therefore and darkness of mind must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of day, but by the aspect and law of nature.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
That's all it takes, one drop of fear to curdle love into hate.
JAMES M. CAIN
Double Indemnity
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
AUNG SAN SUU KYI
attributed, Instinct for Freedom: Finding Liberation Through Living
Nothing like fear to wash your mind clean.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Guilty Pleasures
Always use the proper names for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.
J. K. ROWLING
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Of all the mental and physical polluters of life, nothing exercises such a poisonous effect as fear.
ELBERT HUBBARD
The American Bible
The only way to get rid of the fear of doing something is to go out ... and do it.
SUSAN J. JEFFERS
Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway
Like other sets of habits, emotions had to be learned. So, fear was not an instinctive reaction to phylogenetically predetermined objects or events, but was a learned response occurring on 'signals' or conditioned stimuli.... Consequently it came as no surprise ... that children shared their mother's fears. This shared community of fear within the family was not due to inheritance of psychic mechanisms: it was learned. After all, the behaviourists pointed out, there was no direct relationship between fear and vulnerability. Indeed, the most defenceless of all human beings (the new-born child) was the least fearful of all God's creatures.
JOANNA BOURKE
Fear: A Cultural History
It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.
AUNG SAN SUU KYI
Freedom from Fear
I have no remedy for fear; there grows
No herb of help to heal a coward heart.
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
Bothwell
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Unpopular Essays
When a man is afraid and accedes to fear, he will always find arguments to justify his own surrender.
NATAN SHARANSKY
Fear No Evil
A man that is afraid is never a man.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit