I know that oft we tremble at an empty terror, but the false phantasm brings a real misery.
Fear Quotes
Shakespeare leads, with Bertrand Russell second by a distance and then a mixed group of novelists. Russell is the one to read here. In Dreams and Facts (1919) he says no man is liberated from fear who dare not see his place in the world as it is, and in Marriage and Morals (1929) that to fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
Three entries are flagged. “The fear of death is more to be dreaded than death itself” is credited to Publilius Syrus and is disputed. A parody of the twenty-third Psalm credited to General Patton is marked misattributed. So is “None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear,” credited to Marshal Foch.
His flight was madness: when our actions do not,
Our fears do make us traitors.
When fear has seized upon the mind, man fears that only which he first began to fear.
Desponding Fear, of feeble fancies full,
Weak and unmanly, loosens every power.
Fair seedtime had my soul, and I grew up
Fostered alike by beauty and by fear.