Quotes about fear

17 quotes · 12 authors

Quotes

  1. The timid are always cruel.

    Book cover: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman EmpireThe History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
  2. Women are so strangely constructed that they have in them darkness as well as light, though it be but a little curtain hung across the sun. And love is the hand that takes the curtain down, a stronger hand than fear, which hung it up. For all the ill that is in us comes from fear, and all the good from love.

    Book cover: Martin Pippin in the Apple OrchardMartin Pippin in the Apple Orchard
  3. Fear is the brother of hate.

    p. 72

  4. I fear my ignorance.

    p. 187

  5. It is surprising how long it takes to do a simple addition when your life depends on the answer.

    p. 172

  6. Why should one be afraid of something merely because it is strange?

    p. 114

  7. The sort of remorse Laurent experienced was purely physical. His body, his irritated nerves and trembling frame alone were afraid of the drowned man. His conscience was for nothing in his terror. He did not feel the least regret at having killed Camille. When he was calm, when the spectre did not happen to be there, he would have committed the murder over again, had he thought his interests absolutely required it.

    Book cover: Thérèse RaquinThérèse Raquin
  8. For Madame Raquin, there was such a fathomless depth in this thought, that she could neither reason it out, nor grasp it clearly. She experienced but one sensation, that of a horrible disaster; it seemed to her that she was falling into a dark, cold hole. And she said to herself: "I shall be smashed to pieces at the bottom."

    Book cover: Thérèse RaquinThérèse Raquin
  9. In a moment I knew what had happened. I had slept, and my fire had gone out, and the cold bitterness of death had come over my soul.

  10. He realized now that to be afraid of this death he was staring at with animal terror meant to be afraid of life. Fear of dying justified a limitless attachment to what is alive in man. And all those who had not made the gestures necessary to live their lives, all those who feared and exalted impotence — they were afraid of death because of the sanction it gave to a life in which they had not been involved. They had not lived enough, never having lived at all.

  11. The average man don’t like trouble and danger.

  12. I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead. The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper something to me, and I couldn’t make out what it was, and so it made the cold shivers run over me.