Fear Quotes

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I am told that the proximity of punishment arouses real repentance in the criminal and sometimes awakens a feeling of genuine remorse in the most hardened heart; I am told this is due to fear.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

What made me run away was doubtless not so much the fear of settling down, but of settling down permanently in something ugly.

Fear of death makes us devoid both of valour and religion. For want of valour is want of religious faith.

He that outlives a wife whom he has long loved, sees himself disjoined from the only mind that has the same hopes, and fears, and interest; from the only companion with whom he has shared much good and evil; and with whom he could set his mind at liberty, to retrace the past or anticipate the future. The continuity of being is lacerated; the settled course of sentiment and action is stopped; and life stands suspended and motionless.

Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope, free of mountainous wanting.

May we not suspect that the vague but very real fears of children, which are quite independent of experience, are the inherited effects of real dangers and abject superstitions during ancient savage times?

The great unthankfulness, contempt of God's word, and wilfulness of the world, make me fear that the divine light will soon cease to shine on man, for God's word has ever had its certain course.

Animals whom we have made our slaves we do not like to consider our equals. — Do not slave holders wish to make the black man other kind? — animals with affections, imitation, fear of death, pain, sorrow for the dead. — respect.

Fear is the result of a lack of confidence. A lack of confidence is the result of not knowing what you can do. A lack of knowing what you can do is caused by a lack of experience. A lack of experience is caused by a lack of doing something new.

A wild beast has no need to leap in order to promote fear.

I am Thane of Cawdor:
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings.

William Shakespeare

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

Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency.

A door slamming makes one jump, but it doesn't make one afraid. What one fears is the serpent that crawls underneath it.

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their grieves and fears.

Consider the flea! Incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage.

How all the other passions fleet to air,
As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embrac'd despair, And shuddering fear, and green-ey'd jealousy.

William Shakespeare

There was more courage in bearing trouble than in escaping from it; the brave and the energetic cling to hope, even in spite of fortune; the cowardly and the indolent are hurried by their fears,' said Plotius Firmus, Roman Praetorian Guard.

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind;
The thief doth fear each bush an officer.

William Shakespeare

When once a man is launched on such an adventure as this, he must bid farewell to hopes and fears, otherwise death or deliverance will both come too late to save his honor and his reason. Ho, my beauties!

For night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast, And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger; At whose approach ghosts wandring here and there Troop home to church-yards.... For fear lest day should look their shames upon, They willfully exile themselves from light, And must for aye consort with black brow'd night.

William Shakespeare

A book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements, clumsy hands. So the librarian protects them not only against mankind but also against nature, and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion, the enemy of truth.

I have not yet learned to live, that I can see, and I fear that I shall not very soon. I find, however, that in the long run things correspond to my original idea,--that they correspond to nothing else so much; and thus a man may really be a true prophet without any great exertion. The day is never so dark, nor the night even, but that the laws at least of light still prevail, and so may make it light in our minds if they are open to the truth.

Henry David Thoreau

There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.

Fear, O Achilles, the wrath of heaven; think on your own father and have compassion upon me, who am the more pitiable