Skip to content

William Shakespeare on Fear

1564–1616 England

← All quotes by William Shakespeare

24 quotes

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind;
The thief doth fear each bush an officer.

Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;
When little fears grow great, great love grows there.

To fear the foe, since fear oppresseth strength,
Gives in your weakness strength unto your foe.

Richard II (1595)

You can behold such sights,
And keep the natural ruby of your cheeks,
When mine is blanch'd with fear.

Macbeth (1605)

Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush suppos'd a bear!

There is not such a word
Spoke of in Scotland as this term of fear.

And make my seated heart knock at my ribs.

Macbeth (1605)

Thou tremblest; and the whiteness in thy cheek
Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand.

I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins,
That almost freezes up the heat of life.

Romeo and Juliet (1597)

They spake not a word;
But, like dumb statues or breathing stones,
Gazed each on other, and look'd deadly pale.

Richard III (1591)

Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings.

Macbeth (1605)

O God of battles! steel my soldiers' hearts;
Possess them not with fear; take from them now
The sense of reckoning, if the opposèd numbers
Pluck their hearts from them.

Henry V (1600)

Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep
In the affliction of these terrible dreams
That shake us nightly.

Macbeth (1605)

Truly the souls of men are full of dread:
Ye cannot reason almost with a man
That looks not heavily and full of fear.

Richard III (1591)

Thou can'st not say I did it; never shake
Thy gory locks at me.

Macbeth (1605)

The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death.

Now he'll outstare the lightning. To be furious
Is to be frightened out of fear.

His flight was madness: when our actions do not,
Our fears do make us traitors.

Macbeth (1605)

It is the part of men to fear and tremble,
When the most mighty gods by tokens send
Such dreadful heralds to astonish us.

Julius Cæsar (1599)

It is a basilisk unto mine eye,
Kills me to look on't.

Cymbeline (1611)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: William Shakespeare (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.