quotations about fear
There is a time when fear is good and ought to remain seated as a guardian of the heart.
AESCHYLUS
The Eumenides
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
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
I have no remedy for fear; there grows
No herb of help to heal a coward heart.
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
Bothwell
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
T.S. ELIOT
The Waste Land
Fear is a destructive emotion that can deal a fatal blow to any attempt on your part to build total self-confidence. If you allow your fears to run your life, it will be impossible to create the life you truly desire.
ROBERT ANTHONY
The Ultimate Secrets of Total Self-Confidence
The fear we throw about danger is always as disproportionate as a paternal shirt on an infant.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Nothing like fear to wash your mind clean.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Guilty Pleasures
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
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
Fear God and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.
BIBLE
Ecclesiastes 12:13
Fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself.
DANIEL DEFOE
The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
Fear is a quicksand that slows and grips and strangles, leaving its victims unable to act, too timid to do what life requires.
BOB LONSBERRY
A Various Language
There is always a cause for fear. The cause may change over time, but the fear is always with us.
MICHAEL CRICHTON
State of Fear
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune
If there is one thing which I would banish from the earth it is fear.
HENRY FORD
Theosophist Magazine, Feb. 1930
There is no living thing that is not afraid when it faces danger. The true courage is in facing danger when you are afraid.
L. FRANK BAUM
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
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
The good news is that fear is typically the province of the old. And hope is the province of the young.
BARACK OBAMA
Newsweek, April 29, 2019
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