Great Throughts Treasury

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

Fear

"Despise death and you have conquered every fear." - Publius Syrus

"Fear is a hindrance to all virtue." - Publius Syrus

"He whom many fear, has himself many to fear." - Publius Syrus

"Secret pleasure is rather fear than joy." - Publius Syrus

"The guilty fear the law, the guiltless Fortune." - Publius Syrus

"Valor grows by daring, fear by delay." - Publius Syrus

"If you desire to be magnanimous, undertake nothing rashly, and fear nothing thou undertakes; fear nothing but infamy; dare anything but injury; the measure of magnanimity is neither to be rash nor timorous." - Francis Quarles

"In the commission of evil, fear no man so much as thyself. Another is but one witness against thee; thou art a thousand. Another thou mayst avoid, thyself thou canst not. Wickedness is its own punishment." - Francis Quarles

"In the commission of evil, fear no man so much as thyself; another is but one witness against thee, thou art a thousand; another thou mayest avoid, thyself thou canst not. Wickedness is its own punishment." - Francis Quarles

"God, if I worship Thee in fear of hell, burn me in hell. And if I worship Thee in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise; but if I worship Thee for Thine own sake, withhold not Thine everlasting Beauty." -

"Man can be whole only when he comprises both love and fear." - Zadok ha-Kohen Rabinowitz of Lublin

"Freedom means mastery of your world. Fear and greed are common sources of bondage. We are afraid, beset by anxiety. We do not know what tomorrow will bring. We seem so helpless over against the forces that move now without apparent thought for men. And our inner freedom is destroyed by greed. We think that if we only had enough goods we should be free, happy, without care. And so there comes the lust for money, and slavery to the world of things. The world can enslave; it can never make us free." - H. F. Rall, fully Harris Franklin

"Of all passions, fear weakens judgment most." - Cardinal de Retz, Jean Francois-Paul de Gondil

"I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do, provided he keeps doing them until he gets a record of successful experiences behind him." -

"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." You must do the thing you think you cannot do." -

"Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by fear of it." -

"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth, - more than ruin, more even than death." -

"Fear is main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty." - John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, Lord John Russell

"Fear arises in two forms. Either you fear losing what you have, or you fear not getting what you want." - Shantananda Saraswathi, fully Swami Shantananda Saraswathi, born Chandrashekar

"Fear is attachment to security... Guilt and fear arise from a conviction you have accepted about yourself." - Shantananda Saraswathi, fully Swami Shantananda Saraswathi, born Chandrashekar

"Self-pity deprives us of the beauty of the past; fear deprives us of the beauty of the future; and jealousy deprives us of the beauty of the moment." - Shantananda Saraswathi, fully Swami Shantananda Saraswathi, born Chandrashekar

"Man is at his best when stimulated by hope of reward, fear of failure, and the light of a star." - Erwin H. Schell

"Courage leads starward, fear toward death." -

"Love cannot be mixed with fear." -

"Show me a man who is not a slave. One is a slave to lust, another to greed, another to ambition, and all men are slaves to fear...no servitude is more disgraceful than that which is self-imposed." -

"There is no difference between grief for something lost and the fear of losing it." -

"There is none made so great but he may both need the help and service, and stand in fear of the power and unkindness, even of the meanest of mortals." -

"To be feared is to fear: no one has been able to strike terror into others and at the same time enjoy peace of mind himself." -

"Where fear is, happiness is not." -

"Who shrinks from knowledge of his calamities but aggravates his fear; troubles half seen do torture all the more." -

"Gloom and sadness are poison to us, the origin of hysterics, which is a disease of the imagination caused by vexation, and supported by fear." - Madame de Sévigné, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné

"Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt." - George Sewell

"Imagine a man was standing before a king. Someone comes along and slaps that person in the face. Out of fear of the king the man will be almost oblivious to the blow. Moreover, he will think to himself, “I can’t retaliate now. The king witnessed what he did tome. If the king approves, nothing I do will help. If the king disapproves of what he did, the king himself will punish that person for what he has done to me.” Similarly we are in the presence of the Almighty and should not reply to insults." - Pinchas Shapiro of Koretz, aka Pinchas or Pinchos of Koretz

"Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority; envy our uneasiness under it." - William Shenstone

"To feel, to feel exquisitely, is the lot of every man; it is the charm that lends a superstitious joy to fear. But to appreciate belongs to the few; to one or two alone, here and there, the blended passion and understanding that constitute in its essence worship." - Elizabeth Sara Sheppard

"Fear destroys desires... Even a small amount of fear of the Almighty will remove your coveting." - Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, aka Beis Halevi

"Fear arises from impotence of mind, and therefore is of no service to reason nor is pity, although it seems to present an appearance of piety." -

"We are wrong to fear superiority of mind and soul; this superiority is very moral, for understanding everything makes a person tolerant and the capacity to feel deeply inspires great goodness." -

"The four great motives which move men to social activity are hunger, love, vanity, and fear of superior powers. If we search out the causes which have moved men to war we find them under each of these motives or interests." - William Graham Sumner

"Our nature is obscured by work done by the compulsion of want or fear. The mother reveals herself in the service of her children, so our true freedom is not the freedom from action but freedom in action, which can only be attained in the work of love." -

"Grief is a wound that needs attention in order to heal. To work through and complete grief means to face our feelings openly and honestly, to express and release our feelings fully and to tolerate and accept our feeling for however long it takes for the wound to heal. We fear that once acknowledged grief will bowl us over. The truth is that grief experienced does dissolve. Grief unexpressed is grief that lasts indefinitely." - Judy Tatelbaum

"A great fear... is the parent of superstition; but a discreet and well-guided fear produced religion." - Jeremy Taylor

"It is a little learning, and but a little, which makes men conclude hastily. Experience and humility teach modesty and fear." - Jeremy Taylor

"For he who has acquired the habit of lying or deceiving his father, will do the same with less remorse to others. I believe that it is better to bind your children to you by a feeling of respect, and by gentleness, then by fear." -

"Fear is a noose that binds until it strangles." - Jean Toomer

"Have I met the hour patiently, without fear, at the portal? Now is my name called, of the lip of my love has spoken: Do I mistake you, O divine Signaler? is it after all some other soul that is hailed. My self is my answer: there’s that in my heart responds, meeting the call with equal voice, establishing forever the unspeakable bond! Bond that does not bind - bond that frees - bond that discovers and bestows. Look! I am flushed with inexhaustible possessions! The old measures vanish, I am expanded to infinite sweep... Before birth, seeing birth, after life seeing life!... This minute grown infinite, the far worlds spread before me, the endless drift of soul..." - Horace Traubel

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave." - Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens

"The absolute demonstration of man’s mastery of fate and command of all condition - the victory of man - all men in this racial man, this elder brother of mankind in his triumph over sin, fear and death! But one thing had remained in my mind as necessary to prove to the mass of men to-day man’s absolute supremacy over death in all its forms as an attribute of his oneness with God, with Eternal Life, Perfect Love, Perfect Justice, Omniscience and Omnipotence." - Paul Tyner