Quotes About Fear

What, you finally ask yourself, do I do now? Your entire recovery—all that passes for drug treatment in this country—has been about defining what you don't want to be, what you fear and dread and need to avoid.

Charlie made an art of living. He understood, as great artists do, that every life is a mixture of comedy and tragedy, joy and sorrow, daring and fear. We choose the tenor of our lives from those clashing notes. Even when Charlie's strength was fading, when the golf course had become an obstacle course, when the infirmity of encroaching time could no longer be denied, he chose to turn his wedge into a walking stick and to carry it with panache.

An embittered Douglass declared the United States a tyranny, a nation of corrupted memory, abandoning its victories in favor of power, greed, racial fear, and pride.

But what Lawson seems to have stressed most were the freedom from fear and the power of humility

You're entitled to not be strong about everything every instant. And you have the right to admit that it hurts, and that things frighten you.

And as she locked the door behind her, a deeply hidden part of her wondered uneasily if she was locking the wolf into its cage . . . or herself safely outside it.

The world's best swordsman doesn't fear the second best; he fears the worst swordsman, because he can't predict what the idiot will do.

and a cold, ugly wave of fear came with the news. Not panic, perhaps, because every single member of the murdered Federation's final fleet had known in his heart of hearts that this moment would come.

The price of our vitality is the sum of all our fears

It is not the thing you fear that you must deal with, it is the mother of the thing you fear. The very thing that has given birth to the nightmare.

It is always hard to believe that the courageous step is so close to us, that it is closer than we ever could imagine, that in fact, we already know what it is, and that the step is simpler, more radical than we had thought: which is why we so often prefer the story to be more elaborate, our identities clouded by fear, the horizon safely in the distance, the essay longer than it needs to be and the answer safely in the realm of impossibility.

for this is a lesson to carry with you all your life long. God demands our allegiance above all things. We are to remain steadfast with him, even when things are the hardest, even when we are weakest, even when we are angry, even when we are afraid. These are all forces from beyond the boundaries of Eden. They exist, yes, and they test us. But we can carry the holy garden with us wherever we go, so long as our hearts remain true to God.

Midlife is when you have to accept what you've created, knowing that the life you have is is the only one you'll live. And that can be terrifying, until you accept it, and then you are free of terror.

Inexplicably, I felt a war was coming on, and for many nights I had dreams that I died in battle. I dreamed of mountains that crumbled and rivers that flooded. My dreams were apocalyptic and savage. I began to fear that I was a prophet and that I would soon be called upon to speak. I waited for God's voice.

The obsession with the afterlife is born of a panic at not having memories of a before-life.

In self-defense and in defense of the innocent, cowardice is the only sin.

In this world only the paranoid survive.

The things we worry about the most are never the things that bite us. The sharpest teeth always take their nip of us when we are looking the other way.

Fear is a poison produced by the mind, and courage is the antidote stored always ready in the soul

I felt fear enter the halls of my mind, but I didn't give it the keys to every room.

But victimhood was seductive, a release from responsibility and caring. Fear would be transmuted into weary resignation; failure would no longer generate guilt but, instead, would spawn a comforting self-pity.

On those occasions when he had killed in the dark, he later needed to see his victims' faces because, in some unlit corner of his heart, he half expected to find his own face looking up at him, ice-white and dead-eyed. Deep down, the dream-victim had said, You know that you're already dead yourself, burnt out inside. You realize that you have far more in common with your victims after you've killed them than before.

Pain can be endured and defeated only if it is embraced. Denied or feared, it grows in perception if not in reality. The best response to terror is righteous anger, confidence in ultimate justice, a refusal to be intimidated.

Dare we linger, dare we skate? Dare we laugh or celebrate, knowing we may strain the ice? Preserve the ice at any price?