quotations about fear
I marvel now that it was not obvious how inextricable suffering and fear are. It was not until fear left that I noticed, slowly, how it seemed to have taken suffering with it. It took a while to figure out that (for me, anyhow) suffering is mostly caused by fear--not by the circumstances themselves, but by my response to them.
JAN FRAZIER
When Fear Falls Away
Fear is prophetical of evil.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Face your fears or they will climb over your back.
FRANK HERBERT
Chapterhouse: Dune
Fear has no brains; it is an idiot.
AMBROSE BIERCE
"The Moonlit Road"
Fear is the enemy of logic.
FRANK SINATRA
quoted in The Way You Wear Your Hat
Fear is a message--sometimes helpful, sometimes not--but often conveying critical information about our beliefs, our needs, and our relationship to the world around us.
HARRIET LERNER
Fear and Other Uninvited Guests
Sometimes fear is wholesome and rational; it is well to swing fear as a mighty battle-axe over men's heads when no other motive will move them.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Not to fear where there is occasion, is as great a weakness as to fear unduly, without reason.... Fear is a kind of bell, or gong, which rings the mind into quick life and avoidance upon the approach of danger.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Fear is the brother of hate.
LARRY NIVEN
Ringworld
Fear is ever-present, waiting to be called to the surface. Change brought fear, and fear brought destruction.
BERNARD BECKETT
Genesis
All human actions are motivated at their deepest level by two emotions--fear or love. In truth there are only two emotions--only two words in the language of the soul.... Fear wraps our bodies in clothing, love allows us to stand naked. Fear clings to and clutches all that we have, love gives all that we have away. Fear holds close, love holds dear. Fear grasps, love lets go. Fear rankles, love soothes. Fear attacks, love amends.
NEALE DONALD WALSCH
Conversations with God
We often suffer more from our fears, than from the dangers of our situation.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
The strongest human emotion is fear. It's the essence of any good thriller that, for a little while, you believe in the boogeyman.
JOHN CARPENTER
Time, Nov. 16, 1987
Man now needs for his salvation only one thing: to open his heart to joy, and leave fear to gibber through the glimmering darkness of a forgotten past.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
New Hopes for a Changing World
Throughout evolutionary history, anxiety and fear have helped every species to be wary and to survive. Fear can signal us to act, or, alternatively, to resist the impulse to act. It can help us to make wise, self-protective choices in and out of relationships where we might otherwise sail mindlessly along, ignoring signs of trouble.
HARRIET LERNER
Fear and Other Uninvited Guests
Afraid? I can dodge folly without backing into fear.
REX STOUT
The Doorbell Rang
Fear is never an actuality; it is either before or after the active present. When there is fear in the active present, is it fear? It is there and there is no escape from it, no evasion possible. There, at that actual moment, there is total attention at the moment of danger, physical or psychological. When there is complete attention there is no fear. But the actual fact of inattention breeds fear; fear arises when there is an avoidance of the fact, a flight; then the very escape itself is fear.
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
On Fear
Once bitten by a snake, one is afraid at the sight of a mere rope.
CHINESE PROVERB
Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Unpopular Essays
Some fearful sights there be that creep
By night -- I mean that harass sleep;
But tenfold more alarming seem these when
They brave the day, to breathe the air like men.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
"The Link," Cloudrifts at Twilight