quotations about fear
Fear is good in small amounts, but when it is a constant companion, it cuts away at who you are and makes it hard to do what you know is right.
CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI
Inheritance
The boundaries between fear and other emotions are not clear-cut. How does fear differ from dread, consternation or surprise? Anger, disgust, hatred and horror all contain elements of fear. Jealousy may be understood as fear of losing one's partner; guilt may be fear of God's punishment; shame may be fear of humiliation. I history of fear would be rendered meaningless if all negative emotional states were classified as 'really' being fear states.
JOANNA BOURKE
Fear: A Cultural History
I would describe a hero as a person who has no fear of life, who can face life squarely.
ALEXANDER LOWEN
Fear of Life
Though it may arrive with shocking suddenness, horror devours its prey slowly. Through hours of days and years, it spreads its sullen darkness into every corner of the being it has conquered.
JOSEPHINE HART
Damage
Face your fears or they will climb over your back.
FRANK HERBERT
Chapterhouse: Dune
Fear is another emotion that is strongly suppressed. We cannot afford to be afraid, and so we don't allow ourselves to sense and feel the fear within us. We lower our brows to deny it, set our jaws to defy it, and smile to deceive ourselves. But inwardly we remain scared to death.
ALEXANDER LOWEN
Fear of Life
You are frightened of everything. You call it caution. You call it common sense. You call it practicality. You call it playing the odds, but that's only because you're afraid to call it by its real name, and its real name is fear.
MICK FARREN
Darklost
Fear is contagious. You can catch it.
NEIL GAIMAN
The Graveyard Book
Fear hath a numerous progeny.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living.
SENECA
Epistles
Fear is the enemy of logic.
FRANK SINATRA
quoted in The Way You Wear Your Hat
Oh, we can populate the dark with horrors, even we who think ourselves informed and sure, believing nothing we cannot measure or weigh. I know beyond all doubt that the dark things crowding in on me either did not exist or were not dangerous to me, and still I was afraid.
JOHN STEINBECK
Travels with Charley: In Search of America
All is well, tho' faith and form
Be sunder'd in the night of fear.
ALFRED
LORD TENNYSON, In Memoriam
Fear was there, too, cold and hot at the same time, making everything in the plain room sharper, with fewer shadows.
ALLISON BRENNAN
Fear No Evil
Fear has no brains; it is an idiot.
AMBROSE BIERCE
"The Moonlit Road"
Fear is a fantastic marketing tool.
DANIEL GARDNER
The Science of Fear
You see something scary, you should stand up and step toward it, not away from it. Instinctively, reflexively, in a raging fury.
LEE CHILD
Echo Burning
Not to fear where there is occasion, is as great a weakness as to fear unduly, without reason.... Fear is a kind of bell, or gong, which rings the mind into quick life and avoidance upon the approach of danger.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Fear is the brother of hate.
LARRY NIVEN
Ringworld
When we fear things I think that we wish for them ... every fear hides a wish.
DAVID MAMET
Edmond