Quotes About Fear

Ratzinger was afraid to intervene on a deadlocked Roman Curia, with reformers on one side, and the money changers on the other," wrote author Gianluigi Nuzzi. "So he decided to create a clean slate by bowing out and paving the way for the election of a strong Pope."34

The day in 2004 when the radiologist told me I had invasive cancer, I walked down the hospital corridor looking for a phone to call my husband, and I could almost see the fear coming toward me like a big, black shadow.

It was a voice full of light and dark. Light not only as it glimmers, but also as it glares. Dark not only as it brings cold and fear, but also as it gives rest and shade.

Who is the brave man--he who feels no fear? If so, then bravery is but a polite term for a mind devoid of rationality and imagination.

the book has survived the same human disaster over and over again. Think about it. You've got a society where people tolerate difference, like Spain in the Convivencia, and everything's humming along: creative, prosperous. Then somehow this fear, this hate, this need to demonize 'the other'--it just sort of rears up and smashes the whole society. Inquisition, Nazis, extremist Serb nationalists...same old, same old.

The brave man, the real hero, quakes with terror, sweats, feels his very bowels betray him, and in spite of this moves forward to do the act he dreads.

I recognized the tokens of the time, because I had lived through just such another uneasy season, when every day was tainted by the foul breath of a fear that could not be faced forthrightly, yet could not be ignored.

Are there any two words in all of the English language more closely twinned than courage and cowardice? I do not think there is a man alive who will not yearn to possess the former and dread to be accused of the latter. One is held to be the apogee of man's character, the other its nadir. An yet, to me the two sit side by side on the circle of life, removed from each other by the merest degree of arc. (MARCH - Chapter 11 - page 168)

I fear the line between myself and madness is as fine these days as a cobweb, and I have seen what it means when a soul crosses over into that dim and wretched place.

It is one thing to know what is to come. It is another thing to confront it.

Men are always averse to enterprises in which they foresee difficulties.

Most people go on living their everyday life: frightened, half indifferent, they behold the ghostly tragi-comedy that has been performed on the international stage before the eyes and ears of the world.

In an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.

I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets.

Like lambs to the slaughter.

I hasten to laugh at everything, for fear of being obliged to weep.

A vague uneasiness; the police. It's like when you suddenly understand you have to undress in front of the doctor.

When you come into the presence of a leader of men, you know that you have come into the presence of fire - that it is best not uncautiously to touch that man - that there is something that makes it dangerous to cross him.

A frightened captain makes a frightened crew.

Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence; conservatism, distrust of the people tempered by fear.

The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.

All that a man hath will he give for his life.

Humor has great power to heal on an emotional level. You can't hold anger, you can't hold fear, you can't hold hurt while you're laughing.

The lion is not so fierce as they paint him.