Fear Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Theodore Roethke

As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers, so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.

Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority: envy our uneasiness under it.

William Shenstone

I think what weakens people most is fear of wasting their strength.

But though it cannot be reasonable not to gain happiness for fear of losing it, yet it must be confessed, that in proportion to the pleasure of possession, will be for some time our sorrow for the loss.

The Devil fears the word of God, He can't bite it; it breaks his teeth.

I fear that he who walks over these fields a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples. Ah, poor man, there are many pleasures which he will not know!

Henry David Thoreau

Those men that are so remissly governed that they dare take up arms to defend or introduce an opinion, are still in war, and their condition not peace, but only a cessation of arms for fear of one another, and they live as it were in the precincts of battle continually.

Parties weaken themselves by their fear of capable men.

Napoleon I of France

Pain is superficial, and therefore fear is. The torments of martyrdoms are probably most keenly felt by the by-standers.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hunger, love, pain, fear are some of those inner forces which rule the individual's instinct for self preservation.

Albert Einstein

Fear of things invisible is the natural seed of that which everyone in himself calleth religion

No power is strong enough to be lasting if it labors under the weight of fear.

Bring me no more reports; let them fly all:
Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane
I cannot taint with fear.

William Shakespeare

Love is the productive form of relatedness to others and to oneself. It implies responsibility, care, respect. If it isn't productive and respectful, it isn't love, but only fear masquerading as love.

Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We should not let our fears hold us back from pursuing our hopes.

John F. Kennedy

It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buried themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe.

Edgar Allan Poe

The fear of aging, a commonplace neurosis, does not usually wait for age and spares neither sex.

The Enlightenment has always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereignty. Yet the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant.

Theodor W. Adorno

Your favour of July 31, was duly received, and was read with peculiar pleasure. The sentiments breathed through the whole do honor to both the head and heart of the writer. Mine on the subject of slavery of negroes have long since been in possession of the public, and time has only served to give them stronger root. The love of justice and the love of country plead equally the cause of these people, and it is a moral reproach to us that they should have pleaded it so long in vain, and should have produced not a single effort, nay I fear not much serious willingness to relieve them & ourselves from our present condition of moral & political reprobation.

Thomas Jefferson

True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.

Seneca the Younger

Try and write straight English; never using slang except in dialogue and then only when unavoidable. Because all slang goes sour in a short time. I only use swear words, for example, that have lasted at least a thousand years for fear of getting stuff that will be simply timely and then go sour.

Ernest Hemingway

The partial crowd their hopes and fears divide,
And aid, with eager shouts, the favored side.
Cries, murmurs, clamors, with a mixing sound,
From woods to woods, from hills to hills rebound.

Something there is that can refresh and revivify older people: joy in the activities of the younger generation—a joy, to be sure, that is clouded by dark forebodings in these unsettled times. And yet, as always, the springtime sun brings forth new life, and we may rejoice because of this new life and contribute to its unfolding; and Mozart remains as beautiful and tender as he always was and always will be. There is, after all, something eternal that lies beyond reach of the hand of fate and of all human delusions. And such eternals lie closer to an older person than to a younger one oscillating between fear and hope. For us, there remains the privilege of experiencing beauty and truth in their purest forms.

Albert Einstein