Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

Compromise does not mean cowardice... Let us never negotiate out of fear; but let us never fear to negotiate.

Character | Cowardice | Fear |

Harold Lewis, fully Harold "Hal" Warren Lewis

Fear and risk are different creatures. What some of us fear most - poison in our drinking water, radiation in our air, pesticides on our food - pose hardly any real risk, while some we fear least - driving, drinking and smoking - kill many hundreds of thousands each year.

Character | Fear | Kill | Risk |

Johann Kaspar Lavater

The most stormy ebullitions of passion, from blasphemy to murder, are less terrific than one single act of cool villainy; a still rabies is more dangerous than the paroxysms of a fever. Fear the boisterous savage of passion less than the sedately grinning villain.

Blasphemy | Character | Fear | Murder | Passion |

Stephen Levine

When your fear touches someone’s pain it becomes pity; when your love touches someone’s pain, it becomes compassion.

Character | Compassion | Fear | Love | Pain | Pity |

William Mitford

Men fear death, as if unquestionably the greatest evil, and yet no man knows that it may not be the greatest good.

Character | Death | Evil | Fear | Good | Man | Men |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

The thing [of which I have most fear] I fear most is fear.

Character | Fear |

Charles B. Newcomb

Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather fear that it shall never have a beginning.

Beginning | Character | Fear | Life | Life |

Thomas Merton

The contemplative life has nothing to tell you except to reassure you and say that if you dare to penetrate your own silence and dare to advance without fear into the solitude of your own heart... you will truly recover the light and capacity to understand what is beyond words and beyond explanation because it is too close to be explained.

Capacity | Character | Fear | Heart | Life | Life | Light | Nothing | Silence | Solitude | Will | Words | Understand |

John F. Milburn

Fear is like fire: If controlled it will help you; if uncontrolled, it will rise up and destroy you. Men's actions depend a great deal upon fear. We do things either because we enjoy doing them or because we are afraid not to do them. This sort of fear has not relation to physical or moral courage. It is inspired by the knowledge that we are not adequately prepared to face the future and the events it may bring - poverty perhaps, or injury, or death.

Character | Courage | Death | Destroy | Events | Fear | Future | Knowledge | Men | Poverty | Will | Afraid |

Molière, pen name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin NULL

I maintain, in truth, that with a smile we should instruct our youth, be very gentle when we have to blame, and not to put them in fear of virtue's name.

Blame | Character | Fear | Smile | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Youth |