Quotes About Fear

And what little she allowed herself to say was said in a strained tone, in which her ingrained timidity paralysed her tendency to freedom and audacity of speech.

love, and consequently fear, of the crowd being one of the most powerful motives in all human beings...

Were it not for habit, life would seem delightful to beings constantly under threat of dying, in other words to all humankind.

Car l'instinct d'imitation et l'absence de courage gouvernent les sociétés comme les foules.

But old age, to begin with, has something in common with death. Some face it with indifference, not because they have more courage than others, but because they have less imagination.

And so we ought not to fear in love, as in everyday life, the future alone, but even the past, which often comes to life for us only when the future has come and gone - and not only the past which we discover after the event but the past which we have long kept stored within ourselves and suddenly learn how to interpret.

We fear more than the loss of anything else the disappearance of possessions that have remained outside ourselves, because our hearts have not taken possession of them.

Let an illness, a duel, a runaway horse make us see death face to face, and how richly we should have enjoyed the life of pleasure, the travels in unknown lands, which are about to be snatched from us! And no sooner is the danger past than we resume once more the same dull life in which none of those delights existed for us.

But he did not tell her, for he realised how petty it would appear to her, and how different from what she had expected, less sensational and less touching; he was afraid, too, lest, disillusioned in the matter of art, she might at the same time be disillusioned in the greater matter of love.

It is not enough in love, as in everyday life, to fear only the future: one must fear the past, which often becomes real to us only after the future, and I am not simply speaking of the past about which we learn only after the event, but of the one we have carried within us for many years, and which we only now learn to read.

If the idea of death during this period had, as we have seen, cast a gloom over love, the memory of love had for a long time now helped me not to be afraid of death. For I understood that dying was not something new but quite the reverse, that since my childhood I had already died a number of times.

These were happy, cheerful moments, innocent in appearance but hiding the growing possibility of disaster: this is what makes the life of lovers the most unpredictable of all, a life in which it can rain sulphur and pitch a moment after the sunniest spell and where, without having the courage to learn from our misfortunes, we immediately start building again on the slopes of the crater which can only spew out catastrophe.

We do not tremble except for ourselves, or for those whom we love.

This was because, in the most genuine exhaustion, there is, especially in neurotic people, an element that depends upon attracting their attention and is kept going only by an act of memory. We at once feel tired as soon as we are afraid of feeling tired, and, to throw off our fatigue, it suffices us to forget about it.

Husbands in wheelbarrows, sons stoned and deprived of food, forced to labour amidst jeers and finally thrown into pits and buried alive because they were said to be sickening of the plague and might infect the community. The few who succeeded in escaping suddenly reappeared and added new and terrifying details to this picture of horror.

I fear yet this iron yoke of outward conformity hath left a slavish print upon our necks: the ghost of a linnen decency yet haunts us.

So farwel Hope, and with Hope farwel Fear, Farwel Remorse: all Good to me is lost; Evil be thou my Good; by thee at least Divided Empire with Heav'ns King I hold By thee, and more then half perhaps will reigne; As Man ere long, and this new World shall know. Thus

My voice thou oft hast heard and hast not feared, But oft rejoiced

so much the fear, Of Thunder and the Sword of Michael, Wrought still within them:

But listen not to his temptations, warn Thy weaker. Let it profit thee to have heard, By terrible example, the reward Of disobedience. Firm they might have stood, Yet fell. Remember, and fear to transgress.

Horror and doubt distract his troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir the Hell within him; for within him Hell he brings, and round about him, nor from Hell one step, no more than from himself, can fly by change of place.

Thus her reply with accent sweet renewd.     If this be our condition, thus to dwell   In narrow circuit strait'nd by a Foe,   Suttle or violent, we not endu'd   Single with like defence, wherever met,   How are we happie, still in fear of harm?

Hay alguien que ame el dolor? ¿Quién, hallando un camino, no huiría del infierno aunque estuviese a él condenado?

therefore all childish fear must be put away.