Quotes About Fear

I realized fear one morning, with the blare of the fox hunter's sound. When they're all chasin' the poor bloody fox, 'tis safer to be dressed like the hound.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves There's no need for rain It's our own parade Let's not be afraid of our reflections It's not only you you're looking at now

I'm not going to tell you about this. I refuse to. There are things you know you'll die before telling, things you know you should have died before ever having seen. I watched and saw.

She knew it happened, but now that it had happened and to people near her, she couldn't even absorb it enough to fear it thoroughly.

Not one has shown an iota of fear of death. They want to end this agony.

The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?

Since death will take us anyway, why live our life in fear? Why not die in our old ways and be free to live?

many people who come to spiritual practice are frightened by their feelings. They hope meditation will help them to transcend the messiness of the world and leave them invulnerable to difficult feelings. But this is a false transcendence, a denial of life. It is fear masquerading as wisdom.

We are rarely lazy—we are simply afraid.

When we let ourselves feel the fear, the discontent, the difficulties we have always avoided, our heart softens. Just as it is a courageous act to face all the difficulties from which we have always run, it is also an act of compassion.

We need to learn how to honor and use a practice for as long as it serves us—which in most cases is a very long time—but to look at it as just that, a vehicle, a raft to help us cross through the waters of doubt, confusion, desire, and fear.

Right before anger arises, there is often a sense of hurt or fear or loss. When you can feel that, you can notice how little compassion or kindness you have for yourself and others. When we feel fear or when we feel pain or when we feel hurt, our response is often anger, but what is most healing is to acknowledge the anger and to notice what causes it, and to hold that in our attention.

Our belief in a limited and impoverished identity is such a strong habit that without it we are afraid we wouldn't know how to be.

Fear is the membrane between what we know and something new. It tells us we are about to open to something bigger than the world we usually experience.

Anger, blame, conflict, and resentment arise from our fear. When we are afraid, our body tightens, our heart is constricted, our mind is possessed. We cannot live wisely.

Letting go is a central theme in spiritual practice, as we see the preciousness and brevity of life. When letting go is called for, if we have not learned to do so, we suffer greatly, and when we get to the end of our life, we may have what is called a crash course. Sooner or later we have to learn to let go and allow the changing mystery of life to move through us without our fearing it, without holding and grasping. I

Almost always the roots of anger are in one of two difficult states, which arise just before the anger appears. We become angry either when we are hurt and in pain or when we are afraid. Pay attention to your own life and see if this is true. The next time anger and irritation spring up, see if just before they arose you felt fear or hurt. If you pay attention to the fear or pain first, does the anger even appear? Anger

My life has been filled with terrible misfortunes — most of which never happened. Mark Twain

The purpose of spiritual life is not to create some special state of mind. A state of mind is always temporary. The purpose is to work directly with the most primary elements of our body and our mind, to see the ways we get trapped by our fears, desires, and anger, and to learn directly our capacity for freedom.

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do children as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

H. L. Mencken, a journalist in the 1920s, saw this whipping-up of fear as endemic to politics. "The whole aim of politics is to keep the populace alarmed—and hence clamorous to be led to safety—by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, almost all of them imaginary.

we give so much attention to our protective layers of fear, depression, confusion, and aggression that we forget who we really are.

The whole aim of politics is to keep the populace alarmed—and hence clamorous to be led to safety—by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, almost all of them imaginary

Then one day you will be sitting and fear will arise, and you will feel it and recognize it and think, "Oh, this is fear, I recognize you. Welcome back." Then it is as if the fear becomes one of your friends.