Fear and Anxiety

Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.

We are terrified by the idea of being terrified.

It is invisible hands that torment and bend us the worst

The strongest intimidation, by the way, is the invention of a hereafter with a hell everlasting.

Every moment of life wants to tell us something, but we do not want to hear what it has to say: when we are alone and quiet we are afraid that something will be whispered into our ear and hence we despise quiet and drug ourselves with sociability.

The crowd of influences streaming on the young soul is so great, the clods of barbarism and violence flung at him so strange and overwhelming, that an assumed stupidity is his only refuge.

The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.

The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.

Thus I spoke, more and more softly; for I was afraid of my own thoughts and the thoughts behind my thoughts.

Fear is not a lasting teacher of duty.

We wouldn't worry nearly as much about what others thought of us if we recognize how seldom they do.

What difference does it make if the thing you’re scared of is real or not?

Always do what you are afraid to do.

Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.

The greatest mistake you can make in life is continually to be fearing you will make one.

People wish to learn to swim and at the same time to keep one foot on the ground.

Anger is a symptom, a way of cloaking and expressing feelings too awful to experience directly—hurt, bitterness, grief and, most of all, fear.

Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage.

Live your life so that the fear of death can never enter your heart. When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the morning light. Give thanks for your life and strength. Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. And if perchance you see no reason for giving thanks, rest assured the fault is in yourself. Tecumseh Shawnee Chief

To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For no one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man.

This alone is to be feared: the closed mind, the sleeping imagination, the death of spirit.

The man who finds that in the course of his life he has done a lot of wrong often wakes up at night in terror, like a child with a nightmare, and his life is full of foreboding: but the man who is conscious of no wrongdoing is filled with cheerfulness and hope.

Some have courage in pleasures, and some in pains; some in desires, and some in fears; and some are cowards under the same conditions.

No matter how hard you fight the darkness, every light casts a shadow, and the closer you get to the light, the darker that shadow becomes.