Quotes About Fear

Si moría esa noche, sólo ella sabría el horror de su muerte y el horror de su vida frente al asesino que la acechaba desde el rincón más remoto de su memoria.

As abused children grow up, they may view themselves as bad, and everybody else as good, or, at least better. On the other hand, some abused children can see themselves as good, and others bad. They can become afraid of others and avoid them for fear of getting hurt. In its extreme form, these people can expect only pain and suffering from others, and see everyone as a potential attacker.

Other adults abused as children do the opposite: they believe they can accomplish nothing, so they don't try. They hold themselves back from taking chances because it is safer. Since success often makes one more important and visible to others, and since visibility is associated with being hurt, success means danger.

Fear thrives strongest; there is no telling how little we would be without having suffered fear. An intrinsic characteristic of humanity is the tendency to give in to fear. No fear is lost, but its hiding places are a riddle. Perhaps, of all things, fear is the one that changes least.

There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it. Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange. In the dark, the fear of an unexpected touch can mount to panic. Even clothes give insufficient security: it is easy to tear them and pierce through to the naked, smooth, defenceless flesh of the victim.

It is not, however, only the word, it is also the thing, in all its infinite complexity, that he [Kafka] articulates with unrivaled courage and clarity. For, since he fears power in any form, since the real aim of his life is to withdraw from it, in whatever form it may appear, he detects it, identifies it, names it, and creates figures of it in every instance where others would accept it as being nothing out of the ordinary.

The touch to which one resigns oneself because all resistance appears hopeless – and particularly so as regards the future – has, in our society, become the arrest . The feel of the hand of authority on his shoulder is usually enough to make a man give himself up without having to be actually seized. He cowers and goes quietly.

As soon as a man has surrendered himself to the crowd, he ceases to fear its touch.

Le nostre paure non vanno mai perdute, anche se i loro nascondigli sono misteriosi. Forse, di tutte le cose del mondo, nulla si evolve e si trasforma meno della paura. Quando penso ai miei primi anni, per prima cosa ritrovo le paure di cui essi abbondarono in maniera inesauribile. Molte le ritrovo soltanto ora, mentre in altre, che non troverò mai, risiede presumibilmente il segreto che mi fa desiderare una vita interminabile.

If gazelles had a religion and the lion was their god they could, in order to appease his appetite, voluntarily surrender one of their number to him. This is exactly what happens among men: religious sacrifice springs from a state of crowd fear. It serves to halt the pursuit and, for a while, stil the hunger of the hostile power.

I am much more afraid of my good deeds that please me than of my bad deeds that repel me.

How can one explain the attraction terror holds for some minds — and why for intellectuals? . . .In a totalitarian and terrorist regime, man is no longer a unique being with infinite possibilities and limitless choices but a number, a puppet, with just this difference — numbers and puppets are not susceptible to fear.

The night lifted, leaving behind it a grayish light the color of stagnant water. Soon there was only a tattered fragment of darkness, hanging in mid-air, the other side of the window. Fear caught my throat. The tattered fragment of darkness had a face. The face was my own.

man carries his fiercest enemy within himself. Hell isn't others. It's ourselves. Hell is the burning fever that makes you feel cold.

The revolver was black and nearly new. I was afraid to even touch it, for in it lay all the whole difference between what I was and what I was going to be.

For us it meant true equality: nakedness. We trembled in the cold. A

You mustn't be afraid of the dark... Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking and loving and dreaming. At night everything is more intense, more true. The echo of words that have been spoken during the day takes on a new and deeper meaning. The tragedy of man is that he doesn't know how to distinguish between day and night. He says things at night that should only be said by day.

The news spread through Sighet like wildfire. Soon that was all people talked about. But not for long. Optimism soon revived: The Germans will not come this far. They will stay in Budapest. For strategic reasons, for political reasons … In less than three days, German Army vehicles made their appearance on our streets.

Death," Kalman, the grizzled master, told me, "is being without. arms or legs or mouth or head; it is all eyes. If you ever meet a. creature with eyes everywhere, you can be sure it is death.

he slapped my father with such force that he fell down and then crawled back to his place on all fours. I stood petrified. What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked. I had watched and kept silent. Only yesterday, I would have dug my nails into this criminal's flesh. Had I changed that much? So fast?

Why should I be afraid? No one has hurt me. Winter nights are quiet here. If some stars are soaked with blood, it is because the sun has penetrated the dark sweet body. Night is screaming, and its screams become stars, don't you see? But that has nothing to do with US; so why should I be afraid of Night?

Jews, listen to me,' she cried. I see a fire! I see flames, huge flames.

This was the first story I had ever heard in which the Jews were not the ones to be afraid. Until this moment I had believed that the mission of the Jews was to represent the trembling of history rather than the wind which made it tremble

War is like night," she said. "It covers everything.