quotations about fear
Fear is a distorting mirror in which anything can appear as a caricature of itself, stretched to terrible proportions; once inflamed, the imagination pursues the craziest and most unlikely possibilities. What is most absurd suddenly seems the most probable.
STEFAN ZWEIG
The Post Office Girl
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
We must control fear or it will control us.
WALTER MATTHEWS
Human Life from Many Angles
I have no remedy for fear; there grows
No herb of help to heal a coward heart.
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
Bothwell
When a man is afraid and accedes to fear, he will always find arguments to justify his own surrender.
NATAN SHARANSKY
Fear No Evil
Don't be afraid of being scared. To be afraid is a sign of common sense. Only complete idiots are not afraid of anything.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Angel's Game
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
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
The fear in my heart was like in one of those dreams where you try to run but you can't do it, you can't run because the fear is an anchor in your chest.
WALTER MOSLEY
Fear Itself
There is a time when fear is good and ought to remain seated as a guardian of the heart.
AESCHYLUS
The Eumenides
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
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
A thing may be dreaded as long as it has not overtaken you.
CHANAKYA
Vridda-Chanakya
Fear secretes acids.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
I would describe a hero as a person who has no fear of life, who can face life squarely.
ALEXANDER LOWEN
Fear of Life
Fear hath a numerous progeny.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Fears themselves don't have to change at all. Fear is not the problem. It is our relationship to the fear that determines the choices we make. By changing our relationship to fear, we reduce its credibility, robbing it of its power to stop us.
THOM RUTLEDGE
Embracing Fear
Fear breeds upon itself because it is a hermaphrodite capable of endless reproduction. Fear is a contagious disease, spreading from its first victim to others in the vicinity until it is powerful enough to take charge of a group, in which event it becomes panic. Fear is the afterbirth of reason and calculation. It takes time to recuperate from fear.
ERNEST K. GANN
Fate is the Hunter
In one way fear is also God's daughter, redeemed on the night of Holy Friday. She is not beautiful to look at -- oh no! -- ridiculed at times, at others cursed, disowned by everyone ... and yet, make no mistake about it, she is present at every deathbed--she is man's intercessor.
GEORGES BERNANOS
Heroic Face of Innocence: Three Stories
It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more.
J. K. ROWLING
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince