Quotes About Fear

To be afraid is the condition of loving knowledge. Were I not dying of fear, I'd not know how to exist myself, I wouldn't get the notices of existence, I wouldn't record with delight the miniscule passage of a blue tit, its wing dipped in gold on the dusk. Were I not dying of sorrow I wouldn't with nostalgia be present at the creation of the world, the squirrel nuptials this morning I wouldn't care. Creatures are born to a backdrop of adieux.

I am sick of death and worst of all this sickness feeds on itself, the more afraid I am the more I am afraid the more I flee the more I am afraid the more I am haunted.

Every woman has known the torment of getting up to speak. Her heart racing, at times entirely lost for words, ground and language slipping away – that's how daring a feat, how great a transgression it is for a woman to speak – even just open her mouth – in public.

But I may also be afraid. I am afraid. I have already read it. And, not to lie to you, I liked it. But I am afraid. I am not afraid of you, Fidelia, Sania, Ania. I am afraid of you . (I put all this in my separate notebook. My doubtbook.)

My book was powerless. The hall was so narrow. I could not run away from you. If I stayed there facing you, it was not out of courage but out of fear, that is the truth - fear of seeing and fear of being seen. But my soul already saw the other truth. Only my soul can tell the story that began in this doorway, slightly to the left of my gaze. There is no other witness. My soul alone saw the struggle.

The only book that is worth writing is the one we don't have the courage or strength to write.

I, too, overflow; my desires have invented new desires, my body knows unheard-of songs. Time and again I, too, have felt so full of luminous torrents that I could burst-burst with forms much more beautiful than those which are put up in frames and sold for a stinking fortune. And I, too, said nothing, showed nothing; I didn't open my mouth, I didn't repaint my half of the world. I was ashamed. I was afraid, and I swallowed my shame and my fear. I said to myself: You are mad!

It beings with fear, passion begins with a fear. Fear is the trembling of faith. One cannot have faith without being afraid. One cannot have faith, no human being. Being human is that: to have faith that's been fractured then stuck back together.

You horrify me. But at the same time, I horrify myself. We are horrible.

We dislike matter, that is ourselves, because we are destined to matter, because anonymous matter is called death. Perhaps it isn't matter we dislike, perhaps it's anonymity. The anonymity to which we are destined - the loss of name - is what we repress at any price.

Men say that there are two unrepresentable things: death and the feminine sex. That's because they need femininity to be associated with death; it's the jitters that gives them a hard-on! for themselves! They need to be afraid of us. Look at the trembling Perseuses moving backward toward us, clad in apotropes. What lovely backs! Not another minute to lose. Let's get out of here.

And I was afraid. She frightens me because she can knock me down with a word. Because she does not know that writing is walking on a dizzying silence setting one word after the other on emptiness. Writing is miraculous and terrifying like the flight of a bird who has no wings but flings itself out and only gets wings by flying. — Hélène Cixous, The Book of Promethea . (University of Nebraska Press February 1, 1991) Originally published 1983.

To hate and to fear is to be psychologically ill ... it is, in fact, the consuming illness of our time.

I wanted to find out why. But when Professor Dandrik saw what was happening, he became almost hysterical, and ordered the accelerator shut down as though he were afraid it would blow up in his face." "I think it has blown up in his face," Prince Travann said quietly.

Night, the mother of fear and mystery, was coming upon me.

I must confess that my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and floundering at sea.

Seek opportunity, not security. A boat in the harbor is safe, but in time its bottom will rot out.

Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something and has lost something.

Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something and has lost something. People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost. If you know someone who tries to drown their sorrows, you might tell them sorrows know how to swim...

Remember that the more you know, the less you fear.

Anyone who thinks of the Germans as a naturally bellicose people should recall that Prussia-Germany was the only one of the continental powers in the run-up to 1914 whose elite seriously feared that if they had their war, their people might refuse to fight it.

To be haunted is to glimpse a truth that might best be hidden.

James Herbert

The dead body of Gardenia was crashing around the cabin, eyes rolling in its head and mouth grinning crazily.