An aching tooth is better out than in,
To lose a rotten member is a gain.
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.
I fear freedom. I, above all, fear the freedom that is above all feardom.
[Y]ou get used to everything. No human force, not even fear, is stronger than habit.
Full twenty times was Peter feared,
For once that Peter was respected.
I was astounded, my hair stood on end, and my voice stuck in my throat.