fear Quotes

“Fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself.”

“It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more.”

“The Duchess! The Duchess! Oh my dear paws! Oh my fur and whiskers! She’ll get me executed, as sure as ferrets are ferrets!”

“Most of the really exciting things we do in our lives scare us to death. They wouldn’t be exciting if they didn’t.”

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”

Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone

“Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;”

“There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”

“Revolution might sound a little dramatic, but in this world, choosing authenticity and worthiness is an absolute act of resistance. Choosing to live and love with our whole hearts is an act of defiance. You’re going to confuse, piss off, and terrify lots of people - including yourself. One minute you’ll pray that the transformation stops, and the next minute you’ll pray that it never ends. You’ll also wonder how you can feel so brave and so afraid at the same time. At least that’s how I feel most of the time...brave, afraid, and very, very alive.”

“The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It’s our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows.”

“We can’t be brave in the big world without at least one small safe space to work through our fears and falls.”

“I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitments, awaited those who had the courage to go forth into it’s expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst it’s perils.”

“I hope something happens. I’m restless as the devil and have a horror of getting fat or falling in love and growing domestic.”

“In a serener Bright, In a more golden light I see Each little doubt and fear, Each little discord here Removed.”

“While I was fearing it, it came, But came with less of fear, Because that fearing it so long Had almost made it dear.”

″‘Tis harder knowing it is due, Than knowing it is here.”

“Life... is a paradise to what we fear of death.”

“So full of artless jealousy is guilt, It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.”

“Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.”

“If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!”

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.”

“Don’t give in to your fears. If you do, you won’t be able to talk to your heart.”

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”

“He wept because he was afraid now that he could not save Gabriel. He no longer cared about himself”

“Scarlett, always save something to fear—even as you save something to love.”

“When I was younger, I scared my mother to death, the things I would blurt out about District 12, about the people who rule our country, Panem, from the far-off city called the Capitol. Eventually I understood this would only lead us to more trouble. So I learned to hold my tongue and to turn my features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read my thoughts.”

“When I’m mad I don’t have room to be scared.”

“Now, don’t be angry after you’ve been afraid. That’s the worst kind of cowardice.”

“By Red Flower Bagheera meant fire, only no creature in the jungle will call fire by its proper name. Every beast lives in deadly fear of it, and invents a hundred ways of describing it.”

“To each his own fear.”

“Only a fool is not afraid.”

“Someone who thinks death is the scariest thing doesn’t know a thing about life.”

“She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt and fear, she has practiced denying them in herself.”

“What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”

“She hardly knew at times what it was she feared, and what she hoped for. Whether she feared or desired what had happened or what was going to happen and exactly what she longed for, she could not have said.”

“Vianne didn’t hesitate. She knew now that no one could be neutral—not anymore—and as afraid as she was of risking Sophie’s life, she was suddenly more afraid of letting her daughter grow up in a world where good people did nothing to stop evil, where a good woman could turn her back on a friend in need. She reached for the toddler, took him in her arms.”

“At my age, I should not be afraid of anything—certainly not my own past.”

“The monsters of the mind are far worse than those that actually exist.”

“Everything I’ve ever done that’s valuable is something I was afraid to try.”

“The future will be what it will, and fretting about it will only make your fears more likely to come true.”

″[I]t is an overactive imagination that turns men into cowards, not a surfeit of fear, as most believe.”

″[Y]ou must strive to be calm, even if a hundred ravening enemies are snapping at your heels. Empty your mind and allow it to become like a tranquil pool that reflects everything around it and yet remains untouched by its surroundings. Understanding will come to you in that emptiness, when you are free of irrational fears about victory and defeat, life and death.”

“On the other side of your fear is freedom.”

“You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”

“It was for one minute that I saw him, but the hair stood upon my head like quills. Sir, if that was my master, why had he a mask upon his face?”

“I suppose that we women are such cowards that we think a man will save us from fears, and we marry him.”

“It is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles. And yet when King Laugh come, he make them all dance to the tune he play. Bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard, and tears that burn as they fall, all dance together to the music that he make with that smileless mouth of him. Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways. Then tears come, and like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too great, and we break. But King Laugh he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again, and we bear to go on with our labor, what it may be.”

“Oh, the terrible struggle that I have had against sleep so often of late; the pain of the sleeplessness, or the pain of the fear of sleep, and with such unknown horror as it has for me! How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams.”

“I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul.”

“The house was a sepulcher, our fear and suffering lay buried in the ruins. There would be no resurrection.”

“And when you’re alone, there’s a very good chance you’ll meet things that scare you right out of your pants. There are some, down the road between hither and yon, that can scare you so much you won’t want to go on.”

“The moment of crisis had come, and I must face it. My old fears, my diffidence, my shyness, my hopeless sense of inferiority, must be conquered now and thrust aside. If I failed now I should fail forever.”

“Boredom is a pleasing antidote for fear.”

Ignorance is the parent of fear.

Ignorance is the parent of fear.

Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.

“In his fighting heart, there was no fear.”

True courage is in facing danger when you are afraid.

True courage is in facing danger when you are afraid.

If I run I may fall down and break myself.

“It was Silver’s voice, and before I had heard a dozen words, I would not have shown myself for all the world, but lay there, trembling and listening, in the extreme of fear and curiosity, for from these dozen words I understood that the lives of all the honest men aboard depended upon me alone.”

“Look here, if you’re telling the truth you needn’t be afraid--nobody’ll hurt you.”

“His face white in the moonlight, his hands raised in horror, glaring helplessly at the frightful thing which was hunting him down.”

Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.

“Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come.”

“You are crying! You are afraid of me! And yet I am not really wicked.”

“The man who wants you to trust him is the one you must fear the most.”

“I never wanted to be feared. If I regret one thing, it is the fear I have caused. Fear is the tool of tyrants. Unfortunately, when the fate of the world is in question, you use whatever tools are available.”

“God arranges everything for us, so that we need have no more fear or trouble and may be quite sure that all things will come right in the end.”

“Who had very properly taught him equally to love and fear him.”

“I’m very scared, Buster. Yes, at last. Because it could go on forever. Not knowing what’s yours until you’ve thrown it away.”

“I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been.”

Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

“Simon, walking in front of Ralph, felt a flicker of incredulity—a beast with claws that scratched, that sat on a mountain-top, that left no tracks and yet was not fast enough to catch Samneric. However Simon thought of the beast, there rose before his inward sight the picture of a human, at once heroic and sick.”

“Life […] is scientific, that’s what it is. In a year or two when the war is over they’ll be traveling to Mars and back. I know there isn’t no beast—not with claws and all that I mean—but I know there isn’t no fear either. . . Unless we get frightened of people.”

“The thing is – fear can’t hurt you any more than a dream.”

“You’ve noticed, haven’t you?” Jack put down his spear and squatted. “Noticed what?” “Well. They’re frightened.” He rolled over and peered into Jack’s fierce, dirty face. “I mean the way things are. They dream. You can hear ‘em. Have you been awake at night?” Jack shook his head. “They talk and scream. The littluns. Even some of the others. As if—” “As if it wasn’t a good island.” Astonished at the interruption, they looked up at Simon’s serious face. “As if,” said Simon, “the beastie, the beastie or the snake-thing, was real. Remember?”

Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?

Fear cuts deeper than swords.

“Becoming fearless isn’t the point. That’s impossible. It’s learning how to control your fear, and how to be free from it.”

“You’re afraid of heights,” I say. “How do you survive in the Dauntless compound?” “I ignore my fear,” he says. “When I make decisions, I pretend it doesn’t exist.” I stare at him for a second. I can’t help it. To me there’s a difference between not being afraid and acting in spite of fear, as he does.”

Laughter is poison to fear.

The man who fears losing has already lost.

“Katherine gave in to the wonder of the moment, imagining herself in the astronauts’ place. What emotions welled up from the depths of their hearts as they regarded their watery blue home from the void of space? How did it feel to be separated by a nearly unimaginable gulf from the rest of humanity yet carry the hopes, dreams, and fears of their entire species there with them in their tiny, vulnerable craft? Most people she knew wouldn’t have traded places with the astronauts for all of the gold in Fort Knox. The men existed all alone out their in the void of space, connected so tenuously to Earth, with the real possibility that something could go wrong. But given the chance to throw her lot in with the astronauts, Katherine Johnson would have packed her bags immediately. Even without the pressure of the space race, even without the mandate to beat the enemy. For Katherine Johnson, curiosity always bested fear.”

Why should I be afraid now? Strange men have come to kill me ever since I was twelve years old.

At core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid men will kill them.

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.

I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.

Almost everything you do, you do because you are afraid to die.

Fear needs to become your friend, so that you are no longer uncomfortable with it.

A fearful man who knows he is fearful is far more trustable than a fearful man who isn’t aware of his fear.

Your fear is the sharpest definition of your self. You should know it. You should feel it virtually constantly.

It is honorable for a man to admit his fears, resistance, and edge of practice.

“It was inevitable that she should accept any inconsistency and cruelty from her deity as all good worshippers do from theirs. All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.”

“Here and there one sat upright on an ant heap and looked about, with ears erect and nose in the wind. But a blackbird, singing undisturbed on the outskirts of the wood, showed that there was nothing alarming there, and in the other direction, along the brook, all was plain to be seen, empty and quiet. The warren was at peace.”

“What could I become if I stopped worrying about death, about pain, about anything? If I stopped trying to belong? Instead of being afraid, I could become something to fear.”

“Men are driven by two principal impulses, either by love or by fear.”

“To rabbits, everything unknown is dangerous. The first reaction is to startle, the second to bolt. Again and again they startled, until they were close to exhaustion. But what did these sounds mean and where, in this wilderness, could they bolt to?”

“But when we really delve into the reasons for why we can’t let something go, there are only two: an attachment to the past or a fear for the future.”

“His face was close to mine. He must have seen my terror. “You needn’t be Ella if you don’t want to be,” he said softly.”

“The soul attracts that which it secretly harbours; that which it loves, and also that which it fears;”

“Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress? All of them realize that, one day, amongst their many victims, there is sure to be one that rises against them and strikes back!”

“But what are you going to do to my animals?” “That’s not really the question, Mr. Hammond… The question is, what are they going to do to us?”

“If you hold back on the emotions—if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them—you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.”

“We are so afraid of the sight of death . . . As soon as someone dies in a hospital, they pull the sheets up over their head, and they wheel the body to some chute and push it down. . . . It’s not contagious, you know. Death is as natural as life. It’s part of the deal we made.”

“Strange as it may seem, horror loses its power to frighten when repeated too often.”

“Maybe all the people who say ghosts don’t exist are just afraid to admit that they do.”

“Fear is a universal experience. Even the smallest insect feels it. We wade in the tidal pools and put our finger near the soft, open bodies of sea anemones and they close up. Everything spontaneously does that. It’s not a terrible thing that we feel fear when faced with the unknown. It is part of being alive, something we all share. We react against the possibility of loneliness, of death, of not having anything to hold on to. Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.”

“Were twenty-nine rattlesnakes afraid of a lone field mouse?”

“You’d think we’d have some compassion for ourselves, bound up in emotional chains the way were are, but we don’t. We’re just disgusted with ourselves because we think we should be better by now. Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking other people don’t have as much fear as we do, which only makes us more afraid.”

“We’re all assigned a piece of the garden, a corner of the universe that is ours to transform. Our corner of the universe is our own life — our relationships, our homes, our work, our current circumstances —exactly as they are. Every situation we find ourselves in is an opportunity, perfectly planned by the Holy Spirit, to teach love instead of fear.”

“Love in your mind produces love in your life. This is the meaning of heaven. Fear in your mind produces fear in your life. This is the meaning of hell.”

“‘Out there’s the Maze,’ Newt whispered, eyes wide as if in a trance. ‘Everything we do—our whole life, Greenie—revolves around the Maze. Every lovin’ second of every lovin’ day we spend in honor of the Maze, tryin’ to solve somethin’ that’s not shown us it has a bloody solution, ya know? And we want to show ya why it’s not to be messed with. Show ya why them buggin’ walls close shut every night. Show ya why you should never, never find your butt out there’”

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

″Hope and fear is a feeling with two sides. As long as there’s one, there’s always the other. This re-dok is the root of our pain. Abandoning hope is an affirmation, the beginning of the beginning. You could even put “Abandon hope” on your refrigerator door instead of more conventional aspirations like “Every day in every way I’m getting better and better.”

“He must master or be mastered; while to show mercy was a weakness. Mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of Time, he obeyed.”

“Just as we are on the verge of really understanding something, allowing our heart to truly open, just as we have the opportunity to see clearly, we put on a Groucho Marx mask with fluffy eyebrows and a big nose. Then we refuse to laugh or let go, because we might discover who knows what?″

“So the next time you encounter fear, consider yourself lucky. This is where the courage comes in. Usually we think that brave people have no fear. The truth is that they are intimate with fear.”

“‘Think about it. Our memories are wiped. We live inside a place that seems to have no way out, surrounded by bloodthirsty monster-guards. Doesn’t that sound like a prison to you?’ As he said it out loud, it sounded more and more possible. Nausea trickled into his chest”

“I don’t think the demons were necessarily bad for not wanting to help others. They might have been scared, or so shocked they could not really know how selfish they were being.”

“Thomas swallowed, wondering how he could ever go out there. His desire to become a Runner had taken a major blow. But he had to do it. Somehow he KNEW he had to do it. It was such an odd thing to feel, especially after what he’d just seen... Thomas knew he was a smart kid- he somehow felt it in his bones. But nothing about this place made any sense. Except for one thing. He was supposed to be a Runner. Why did he feel that so strongly? And even now, after seeing what lived in the maze?”

“It was kind of scary. One day we were living in a law-abiding community and the next day the city and the community had both dissolved, with every person for himself. It struck me that Father and I had probably walked by this house, feeling as safe as we could feel in a demon street, many times, and now here we were hiding behind what was left of it, trying to keep from getting shot.”

“My father would say to me, ‘Any organization which works for peace, I will join. If you want to resolve a dispute or come out from conflict, the very first thing is to speak the truth. If you have a headache and tell the doctor you have a stomachache, how can the doctor help? You must speak the truth. The truth will abolish fear.‘”

“It was school that kept me going in those dark days. When I was in the street it felt as though every man I passed might be a Talib. We hid our school bags in our shawls. My father always said that the most beautiful thing in a village in the morning is the sight of a child in a school uniform, but now we were afraid to wear them.”

“Abuelita smiled, reached over, and pulled the yarn, unraveling all of Esperanza’s rows. ‘Do not be afraid to start over,’ she said.”

″‘The anguish of the people Who are below here in my face depicts That pity which for terror thou has taken.‘”

“With me as the glaring exception, my father molded the world around him to his liking. The problem, of course, was that Baba saw the world in black and white. And he got to decide what was black and what was white. You can’t love a person who lives that way without fearing him too. Maybe even hating him a little.”

“When I had the kite free, I needed a minute to rest. To recover before starting down. So instead of looking at the ground below me, I held on tight and looked out. Out across the rooftops. That’s when the fear of being up so high began to lift, and in its place came the most amazing feeling that I was flying. Just soaring above the earth, sailing among the clouds. Then I began to notice how wonderful the breeze smelled. It smelled like…sunshine. Like sunshine and wild grass and pomegranates and rain! I couldn’t stop breathing it in, filling my lungs again and again with the sweetest smell I’d ever known.”

“Sometimes members of the court would come by to watch her practices. But if she caught their gaze, their eyes would drop and they would hurry on.”

“Most people won’t look into my eyes,” she said. “Most people fear them.”

“…when I faced that restless beast, which, even as she stalked me, step by step had thrust me back to where the sun is speechless.”

Other fish run from bigger things. That’s their instinct. But this fish doesn’t run from anything. He doesn’t fear.

“Terror threatened to overwhelm her. She fought it the only way she knew: “I shall not fear. Fear is the mind killer . . . ”

“Can you make yourself love? Can you make yourself be loved?”

“I opened my mouth, almost said something. Almost. The rest of my life might have turned out differently if I had. But I didn’t. I just watched. Paralyzed.”

“She was sad about what happened to Kostos. And someplace under that, she was sad that people like Bee and Kostos, who had lost everything, were still open to love, and she, who’d lost nothing, was not.”

“They hadn’t come here to fear. They hadn’t come to die. They had come to win.”

“Peter did not feel very brave; indeed, he felt he was going to be sick. But that made no difference to what he had to do.”

“This miry slough is a place that can’t be repaired. It is a low-lying place where the scum and filth that come with the conviction of sin drain and collect as the traveling sinner becomes aware of his lost condition. It is the fears, doubts, and discouraging apprehensions about oneself that arise in his soul.”

“Her fears at last night’s supper seemed silly to her now. Perhaps they were crazy, but they weren’t criminals. She loved them. They belonged to her. ”

“For the first time, Paul allowed himself to think about the real possibility of defeat—not thinking about it out of fear or because of warnings such as that of the old Reverend Mother, but facing up to it because of his own assessment of the situation.”

“All the excuses in the world won’t change one simple fact: that fear is a sign to do whatever it is you fear—and do it quickly.”

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

“That’s when I hear the scream. So full of fear and pain it ices my blood. And so familiar. I drop the spile, forget where I am or what lies ahead, only know I must reach her, protect her. I run wildly in the direction of the voice, heedless of danger, ripping through vines and branches, through anything that keeps me from reaching her.”

Sharks are like ax-murderers, Martin. People react to them with their guts. There’s something crazy and evil and uncontrollable about them.

Brody felt a shimmy of fear skitter up his back. He was a very poor swimmer, and the prospect of being on top of—let alone in—water above his head give him what his mother used to call the wimwams: sweaty palms, a persistent need to swallow, and a ache in his stomach—essentially the sensation some people feel about flying.

In Brody’s dreams, deep water was populated by slimy, savage things that rose from below and shredded his flesh, by demons that cackled and moaned.

You have to understand. There’s nothing in the sea this fish would fear.

“My shadow calleth me? What matter about my shadow! Let it run after me! I—run away from it.”

“I was ready to join [Edward’s] family. The fear and guilt and anguish I was feeling now had taught me that much… The next time something came at us, I would be ready. An asset, not a liability.”

“For fear—that is man’s original and fundamental feeling; through fear everything is explained, original sin and original virtue.”

“What’s the matter, Po? Do you fear me?” “Yes, I fear you, as I should when you’re angry. I won’t fight you when you’re angry. Nor should you fight me when I’m angry. That’s not the purpose of these practices.”

″‘In danger?’ thought Coraline to herself. It sounded exciting. It didn’t sound like a bad thing. Not really.”

“Come over here, we say - to the edge, we say. I want to show you something, we say. We are afraid, they say; it’s very exciting, they say. Come to the edge, we say, use your imagination. And they come. And they look. And we push. And they fly. We to stay and die in our beds. They to go and to die howsoever, inspiring those who come after them to come to their own edge. And fly. ”

″‘Because,’ she said, ‘when you’re scared but you still do it anyway, <em>that’s</em> brave.‘”

“From the corner of her eye she saw something bone white scamper from one tree trunk to another, closer and closer. She forced herself not to look at it.”

“All alone, in the middle of the night, Coraline began to cry. There was no other sound in the empty flat.”

″‘I’m an explorer,’ said Coraline out loud, but her words sounded muffled and dead on the misty air. She had made it out of the cellar, hadn’t she?”

“Her long white fingers fluttered gently, like a tired butterfly, and Coraline shivered.”

″‘You don’t frighten me,’ said Coraline, although they did frighten her, very much. ‘I want my parents back.‘”

“Coraline hesitated. She turned back. Her other mother and her other father were walking towards her, holding hands. They were looking at her with their black button eyes.”

“Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry - all forms of fear - are cause by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of non-forgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.”

“‘Brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared, Starr,’ she says. ‘It means you go on even though you’re scared. And you’re doing that.’”

“A woman stood in the kitchen with her back to Coraline. She looked a little like Coraline’s mother. Only...”

“Coraline was too close to stop, and she felt the other mother’s cold arms enfold her. She stood there, rigid and trembling as the other mother held her tightly.”

“... the psychological condition of fear is divorced from any concrete and true immediate danger. It comes in many forms: unease, worry, anxiety, nervousness, tension, dread, phobia, and so on. This kind of psychological fear is always of something that might happen, not of something that is happening now.”

“I felt anger and fear and pain coming from him, but I didn’t back away, I stayed right there, and knew I had done the right thing when he buried his face in my neck and cried some more.”

“Oh, dear, oh, dear, I wish I had never seen that filthy sword at all.”

“I feel like they done put me on death row, too. What do we tell these children about how to stay out of harm’s way when you can be at your own house, minding your own business, surrounded by your entire family, and they still put some murder on you that you ain’t do and send you to death row?”

“What scared Stanley the most about dying wasn’t his actual death. He figured he could handle the pain. It wouldn’t be much worse than what he felt now. In fact, maybe at the moment of his death he would be too weak to feel pain. Death would be a relief. What worried him the most was the thought of his parents not knowing what happened to him, not knowing whether he was dead or alive. He hated to imagine what it would be like for his mother and father, day after day, month after month, not knowing, living on false hope. For him, at least, it would be over. For his parents, the pain would never end.”

“The truth. Tell them Hogwarts is no longer safe. It is as we feared, Minerva. The Chamber of Secrets has indeed been opened again.”

“Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness.”

“Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper...”

“Seth pictured the gaunt man with the lank hair and the unphotogenic smile rocking the cocoon. ‘He can’t get in, he can’t get in, he can’t get in,’ Seth repeated softly to himself.”

“Why spiders? Why couldn’t it be ‘follow the butterflies.‘”

“I smiled—for what had I to fear?”

“Just in proportion as the desire grows, our fear lest it should be a mercenary desire will die away and finally be recognized as an absurdity. But probably this will not, for most of us, happen in a day; poetry replaces grammar, gospel replaces law, longing transforms obedience, as gradually as the tide lifts a grounded ship.”

″‘Leslie, I swear – I’d go in there if I could.’ He really thought he would, too. ‘You ain’t scared of her, are you, Leslie?’ He didn’t mean it in a daring way, he was just dumbfounded by the idea of Leslie being scared.”

“None of them ever accused me of being responsible for what had happened to Phineas, either because they could not believe it or else because they could not understand it. I would have talked about that, but they would not, and I would not talk about Phineas in any other way.”

“Suddenly his mother let out a great shuddering sob. ‘O my God. O my God.’ She said it over and over, her head down on her arms. His father moved to put his arm around her awkwardly, but he didn’t take his eyes off Jess.”

″‘Course you’re scared. Anybody’d be scared. You just gotta trust me, OK? I’m not gonna let you fall, May Belle. I promise you.‘”

“I felt better. Yes, I sensed it like the sweat of relief when nausea passes away; I felt better. We were even after all, even in enmity. The deadly rivalry was on both sides after all.”

“Finny turned toward me. “You were down at the bottom, weren’t you? he asked, not in the official courtroom tone he had used before, but in a friend’s voice.”

“Preserved along with it, like stale air in an unopened room, was the well known fear which had surrounded and filled those days, so much of it that I hadn’t even known it was there. Because, unfamiliar with the absence of fear and what that was like, I had not been able to identify its presence.”

“So in the summer time they had all set out for America. At the last moment there joined them Marija Berczynskas, who was a cousin of Ona’s. Marija was an orphan, and had worked since childhood for a rich farmer of Vilna, who beat her regularly. It was only at the age of twenty that it had occurred to Marija to try her strength, when she had risen up and nearly murdered the man, and then come away.”

“I must warn you that I see your enemies lurking among the trees ahead, and if you ever let Craven Fear begin painting a picture on the screen of your imagination, you will walk with fear and trembling and agony, where no fear is.”

″‘He believed her because here in the shadowy light of the stronghold everything seemed possible. Between the two of them they owned the world and no enemy, Gary Fulcher, Wanda Kay Moore, Janice Avery, Jess’s own fears and insufficiencies, nor any of the foes whom Leslie imagined attacking Terabithia, could ever really defeat them.‘”

“When the Dementors approached him, he heard the last moments of his mother’s life, her attempts to protect him, Harry, from Lord Voldemort, and Voldemort’s laughter before he murdered her...”

“I felt fear’s echo, and along with that I felt the unhinged, uncontrollable joy which had been its accompaniment and opposite face, joy which had broken out sometimes in those days like Northern Lights across black sky.”

“We need not fear that in seeking God only we may narrow our lives or restrict the motions of our expanding hearts.”

“He would like to show his drawings to his dad, but he didn’t dare. When he was in first grade, he had told his dad that he wanted to be an artist when he grew up. He’d thought his dad would be pleased. He wasn’t.”

“This surpassed the fear of death. Death would be a mercy if it would make the feeling stop, the uncontrollable panic mingling with the mind-scrambling certainty of something sinister approaching, something with no need to hurry, something that would not be so kind as to let him die. The fear was palpable, suffocating, irresistible.”

“All I know is, the violence rose from the fear like smoke from a fire.”

“If you stop trying to make yourself more than you are, out of fear that you are less than you are, whoever you really are will be a lot lighter and happier and easier to live with, too.”

“I often don’t say this out loud, even when I should. I contain and compartmentalize to a disturbing degree: In my belly-basement are hundreds of bottles of rage, despair, fear, but you’d never guess from looking at me.”

“There is fear hanging in the air of the sleeping halls, and in the air of the streets. Fear walks through the City, fear without name, without shape. All men feel it and none dare to speak.”

“Actually, he had always preferred the unreal to the real. Just as he felt better at demonstrations (which, as I have pointed out, are all playacting and dreams) than in a lecture hall full of students, so he was happier with Sabina the invisible goddess than the Sabina who had accompanied him throughout the world and whose love he constantly feared losing.”

“They carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor. They died so as not to die of embarrassment.”

“Work and I are very good friends; I never was afraid of work yet.”

“She was scraping at the mud on her bare legs. ‘I just wanted to find you, so you wouldn’t be so lonesome.’ She hung her head. ‘But I got too scared.‘”

“The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new.”

“What we did see was that jealousy is fear: it can corrode even if quite baseless. There was only one answer: total trust. And, we said, if that trust were ever violated, even the least bit, then a quick end; for trust can never be restored.”

″‘Do you think you could go back to bed?’ Grandpa asked. ‘Not likely,’ Kendra said. ‘I’ve never felt more awake. And I’ve never wished more that I was dreaming.‘”

“I did not want to find her aged and broken; I really dreaded it. In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.”

“It wasn’t so much that he minded telling Leslie that he was afraid to go; it was that he minded being afraid. It was as though he had been made with a great piece missing… Lord, it would be better to be born without an arm than to go through life with no guts.”

“She very soon came to an open field, with a wood on the other side of it: it looked much darker than the last wood, and Alice felt a little timid about going into it. However, on second thoughts, she made up her mind to go on: ‘for I certainly won’t go back,’ she thought to herself, and this was the only way to the Eighth Square.”

“The primary difference between a rich person and poor person is how they manage fear.”

“When I lived with papa, he used to tell me what he thought about everything, so that I never had any opinions but his. And if I did have any of my own, I kept them quiet, because he wouldn’t have liked them. He called me his little doll, and he played with me just the way I played with my dolls.”

“The most common one-liner in the Bible is, “Do not be afraid.” Someone counted, and it occurs 365 times.”

“Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.”

“You are not wise enough to fear me as I should be feared. You do not know the first note of the music that moves me.”

“This was a female of his kind, and it was a law of his kind that the males must not fight the females. He did not know anything about this law, for it was no generalization of the mind, not a something acquired by experience in the world. He knew it as a secret prompting, as an urge of instinct - of the same instinct that made him howl at the moon and starts of nights and that made him fear death and the unknown.”

“Yet, in reason, no man should possess him with any appearance of fear, lest he, by showing it, should dishearten his army.”

“There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.”

“George: Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf,… Martha: I...am...George...I...am...”

“You only like guys you don’t have a shot with, because you’re scared. What are you so scared of?”

“Love is scary: it changes; it can go away. That’s part of the risk. I don’t want to be scared any more.”

“Don’t leave me here alone! It’s your Sam calling. Don’t go where I can’t follow! Wake up, Mr. Frodo! O wake up, Frodo, me dear, me dear. Wake up!”

“Thus the differences between the conservative and the radical seem to spring mainly from their attitude toward the future. Fear of the future causes us to lean against and cling to the present, while faith in the future renders us receptive to change.”

“Our innocence had been replaced by fear and we had become monsters. There was nothing we could do about it.”

“Esperanza and I knew the names of twenty other union members,” . . . “The teachers’ union did not have open meetings. We worked in cells, and communicated by message. Most people knew only four other members by name. This is what I am saying. In Guatemala, you are careful. If you want to change something, you can find yourself dead. This was not the—what do you call? The P.T.A.”

“The room turned dim. Huge, cloudy, human-looking shapes bellied up in all four corners and advanced on Sophie and Michael, howling as they came. The howls began as moaning horror, and went up to despairing brays, and then up again to screams of pain and terror. Sophie pressed her hands to her ears, but the screams pressed through her hands, louder and louder still, more horrible every second. Calcifer shrank hurriedly down in the grate and flickered his way under his lowest log. Michael grabbed Sophie by her elbow and dragged her to the door.”

“I always get the shakes before a drop. I’ve had the injections, of course, and hypnotic preparation, and it stands to reason that I can’t really be afraid. The ship’s psychiatrist has checked my brain waves and asked me silly questions while I was asleep and he tells me that it isn’t fear, it isn’t anything important — it’s just like the trembling of an eager race horse in the starting gate. I couldn’t say about that; I’ve never been a race horse. But the fact is: I’m scared silly, every time.”

“When we so fear the dark that we demand light around the clock, there can be only one result: artificial light that is glaring and graceless and, beyond its borders, a darkness that grows ever more terrifying as we try to hold it off.”

“Forget the self and you will fear nothing, in whatever level or awareness you find yourself to be.”

“It is undeniably the case that in our society we do not easily accept that death is a natural part of life, which results in a perpetual sense of insecurity and fear, and many are confused at the time of the death of a loved one, not knowing what they can do to help the one that has passed away or how to address their own grief. Exploring ways of overcoming our fear of death and adopting a creative approach at the time of bereavement, that is, focusing one’s energy on supporting the one that has passed away, are both extraordinary benefits of the insights and practices that are so beautifully expressed in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. When I think of these things I often remember the Dalai Lama saying: ‘When we look at life and death from a broader perspective, then dying is just like changing our clothes! When this body becomes old and useless, we die and take on a new body, which is fresh, healthy and full of energy! This need not be so bad!’”

“We are all of us not merely liable to fear, we are also prone to be afraid of being afraid, and the conquering of fear produces exhilaration... The contrast between the previous apprehension and the present relief and feeling of security promotes a self-confidence that is the very father and mother of courage.”

“I scanned the group. Faces spoke to their future. I saw courage, anger, fear and confusion. Others were hopeless. They had already given up.”

“I didn’t know what to do or say. In a matter of seconds it seemed, I had gone from being angered by her strength, to being amazed by her innocence, and then frightened by her vulnerability. And now I felt numb, strangely weak, as if someone had unplugged me and the current running through me had stopped.”

“I prayed that we would not be in an accident (I was terrified of cars and buses) and that we would get there by my mother’s birthday – seven days away – and that we would bring her home.”

“I, Salamanca Tree Hiddle, was afraid of lots and lots of things. For example, I was terrified of car accidents, death, cancer, brain tumors, nuclear war, pregnant women, loud noises, strict teachers, elevators, and scads of other things. But I was not afraid of spiders, snakes, and wasps. ”

“Gram and Gramps knew that I wanted to see Momma, but that I was afraid to.”

“I moved from body to body, treating blisters, wounds, frostbite. But I had no treatment for what plagued people most the most. Fear.”

“Heaven’s justice goads them on, that fear Is turn’d into desire.”

“Fear is a hunter. But brave warriors, we brush away fear with a flick of the wrist. We laugh in the face of fear, kick it like a stone across the street.”

“I, if on this voyage then I venture, fear it will in folly end.”

“Thy soul is by vile fear assail’d, which oft So overcasts a man, that he recoils From noblest resolution, like a beast At some false semblance in the twilight gloom.”

“I think fear had made us all a little cantankerous. I had spent the night in the waiting room. Gramps offered to get me a motel room, but I was afraid that if I left the hospital, I would never see Gram again.”

“My body begged for sleep but my mind warned me not to trust these people.”

“Man is the creature he fears.”

“But when day came, with a sprinkle of rain, and he looked about him and saw on every side unknown woods, wild heaths, and blue mountains, he thought how large and strange the world was and felt frightened and small.”

“There were, I considered, amongst my guests, varying degrees of guilt. Those whose guilt was the lightest should, I considered, pass out first, and not suffer the prolonged mental strain and fear that the more cold-blooded offenders were to suffer.”

“And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds “joy luck” is not a word, it does not exist. They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope passed from generation to generation.”

“They stood entranced with the delicious cold bumps on their necks and the suddenly stiffened small hairs quilled up over their scalps.”

“‘I don’t trust anybody. Not anybody. And the more that I care about someone, the more sure I am they’re going to get tired of me and take off.’”

“They fear as I once feared you,” he said. “As you once feared me. We are all someone’s monster, Nina.”

″‘If you were coming along here when it was half dark, you could easily think those piles of rock were giants. Look at that one, now! You could almost imagine that the lump on top was a head […] And the things sticking out on each side are quite like ears. They’d be horribly big, but then I daresay giants would have big ears, like elephants. And—o-o-o-h!‘”

“A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it.”