Great Throughts Treasury

"In morals, what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion, what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil." - Anna Jameson

"Life is an exciting adventure... There is nothing to fear... I am totally responsible for my happiness." - Susan Jeffers

"Men are naturally divided into two parties: (1) those who fear and distrust the people... (2) those who identify themselves with people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider than as the most honest and safe." - Thomas Jefferson

"Courage, contrary to popular belief, is not the absence of fear. Courage is the wisdom to act in spite of fear." - John-Roger & Peter McWilliams NULL

"Fear breeds lack of experience, lack of experience breeds ignorance, ignorance breeds more fear. It is a vicious cycle." - John-Roger & Peter McWilliams NULL

"Fear is the energy to do our best in a new situation. Guilt is the energy for personal change. Unworthiness keeps us on track. Hurt feelings remind us how much we care. Anger is the energy for change. Discouragement reveals our courage." - John-Roger & Peter McWilliams NULL

"All fear is in itself painful, and, when it conduces not to safety, is painful without use. Every consideration, therefore, by which groundless terrors may be removed adds something to human happiness." -

"Fear is implanted in us as a preservative from evil; but its duty, like that of other passions, is not to overbear reason, but to assist it; nor should it be suffered to tyrannize in the imagination, to raise phantoms of horror, or to beset life with supernumerary distresses." -

"The great movers of the human mind are the desire of good, and the fear of evil." -

"The two great movers of the human mind are the desire of good, and the fear of evil." -

"Compromise does not mean cowardice... Let us never negotiate out of fear; but let us never fear to negotiate." - John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

"Fear exists only in relationship to something, it does not exist by itself." - Jiddu Krishnamurti

"All belief that does not render us more happy, more free, more loving, more active, more calm, is, I fear, an erroneous and superstitious belief." - 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." - Johann Kaspar Lavater

"We are not asking our children to do their own best but to be the best. Education is in danger of becoming a religion based on fear; its doctrine is to compete. The majority of our children are being led to believe that they are doomed to failure in a world which has room only for those at the top." - Eda J. LeShan

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

"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." - Harold Lewis, fully Harold "Hal" Warren Lewis

"Between hope and fear, love makes her home. She lives on thought, and then she is forgotten, dies. So unlike the pleasure of this world are their foundations." -

"Envy and anger, not being caused by pain and pleasure simply in themselves, but having in them some mixed considerations of ourselves and others, are not therefore to be found in all men, because those other parts, of valuing their merits, or intending revenge, is wanting in them. but all the rest [of the passions], terminating purely in pain and pleasure, are, I think, to be found in all men. For we love, desire, rejoice, and hope, only in respect of pleasure; we hate, fear, and grieve, only in respect of pain ultimately. In fine, all these passions are moved by things, only as they appear to be the causes of pleasure and pain, or to have pleasure or pain some way or other annexed to them." - John Locke

"Moaning over what cannot be helped is a confession of futility and fear, of emotional stagnation - in fact, of selfishness and cowardice. The best way to "snap out of it" is to stop thinking about yourself, and start thinking about other people. You can lighten your own load by doing something for someone else. By the simple device of doing an outward, unselfish act today, you can make the past recede. The present and future will again take on their true challenge and perspective." - Frederick Loomis, fully Sir Frederick Oscar Warren Loomis

"Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old by deserting their ideals. Years wrinkle the face, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt, self-interest, fear, despair - these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust." - Watterson Lowe

"Fear is not the cause of indolence, but indolence is the cause of fear." - Moshe Chayim Luzzatto, also Moses Hayyim Luzzato, known by Hebrew acronym RaMCHal

"Love and fear exclude each other." - Macrobius, fully Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius NULL

"The multitude unawed is insolent; once seized with fear, contemptible and vain." - David Mallet, also David Malloch

"Men fear silence as they fear solitude, because both give them a glimpse of the terror of life's nothingness." -

"Fear makes strangers of people who should be friends." -

"The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants beyond everything else is safety." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"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." - Thomas Merton

"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." - John F. Milburn

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

"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." - Molière, pen name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin NULL

"He who fears he will suffer, already suffers because of his fear[s]." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

"The thing [of which I have most fear] I fear most is fear." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

"We are never [present with] at home, we are always beyond [ourselves]. Fear, desire, hope, project us toward the future and steal from us the feeling and consideration of what is, to busy us with what will be, even when we shall no longer be." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

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

"Fear not that your live shall come to an end but rather that it shall never have a beginning." -

"One will seldom go wrong if one attributes extreme actions to vanity, average ones to habit, and petty ones to fear." -

"The bravery founded on hope of recompense, fear of punishment, experience of success, on rage, or on ignorance of danger, is but common bravery, and does not deserve the name. True bravery proposes a just end; measures the dangers, and meets the result with calmness and unyielding decision." - François de La Noüe

"I know of but one remedy against the fear of death that is effectual and that will stand the test of a sick-bed, or of a sound mind - that is, a good life, a clear conscience, an honest heart, and a well-ordered conversation; to carry the thoughts of dying men about us, and so to live before we die as we shall wish we had when we come to it." - Kathleen Norris

"Half the things that people do not succeed in, are through fear of making the attempt." - James Northcote

"Man's loneliness is but his fear of life." - Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

"They set the slave free, striking off his chains. Then he was as much of a slave as ever. He was still chained to servility. He was still manacled to indolence and sloth, he was still bound by fear and superstition, by ignorance suspicion and savagery. His slavery was not in the chains, but in himself. They can only set free men free. And there is no need of that. Free men set themselves free." - José Joaquín de Olmedo, fully José Joaquín de Olmedo y Maruri

"If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more frightened. The courageous man is the man who forces himself, in spite of his fear, to carry on. Discipline, pride, self-respect, self-confidence, and the love of glory are attributes which will make a man courageous even when he is afraid." -

"Courage is fear holding on a minute longer." -

"Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind. People grow old only by deserting their ideals and outgrowing the consciousness of youth. Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. You are as old as your doubt; your fear; your despair. The way to keep young is to keep your faith young. Keep your self-confidence young. Keep your hope young." - Luella F. Phelan

"Five minutes, just before going to sleep, given to a bit of directed imagination regarding achievement possibilities of the morrow, will steadily and increasingly bear fruit, particularly if all ideas of difficulty, worry or fear are resolutely ruled out and replace by those of accomplishment and smiling courage." -

"Most men are afraid of a bad name, but few fear their consciences." - Pliny the Elder, full name Casus Plinius Secundus NULL

"The pinions of your soul will have power to still the untamed body. The creature will yield only to watchful, strenuous constancy of habit. Purify your soul from all undue hope and fear about earthly things, mortify the body, deny self - affections as well as appetites - and the inner eye will begin to exercise its clear and solemn vision." - Plotinus NULL

"Love, hope and joy, fair pleasure’s smiling train, hate fear and grief, the family of pain; these mix’d with art, and to due bounds confin’d, make and maintain the balance of the mind." - Alexander Pope

"Almost always it is the fear of being ourselves that brings us to the mirror." - Antonio Porchia