Frightens Quotes & Sayings

You tell me to trust you, but I don't know that I can. I don't know anything about you, Adam. I have no idea what kind of man you are. And that . . . that frightens me." "I frighten you? — Sarah M. Eden

When we hear about compassion, it naturally brings up working with others, caring for others. The reason we're often not there for others - whether for our child or our mother or someone who is insulting us or someone who frightens us - is that we're not there for ourselves. There are whole parts of ourselves that are so unwanted that whenever they begin to come up we run away. — Pema Chodron

Everyone tells you to write what you know. It's the tried-and-true advice every writer hears at some point in her career. But to take my writing to a deeper level, I've found that a better practice is to simply write what frightens you, haunts you, even. I now keep a sign on the bulletin board in my office that reads: 'Write What Scares You.' I've learned that tapping into the hard stuff - whether it's the fear of loss or a boogeyman lurking in childhood memories - is what ultimately gives a story the power to leap off the page and grab you by the collar. — Sarah Jio

The shy man does have some slight revenge upon society for the torture it inflicts upon him. He is able, to a certain extent, to communicate his misery. He frightens other people as much as they frighten him. He acts like a damper upon the whole room, and the most jovial spirits become, in his presence, depressed and nervous. — Jerome K. Jerome

It didn't have to be a newfound respect for the craft, I knew that it's notoriously difficult and frightens a lot of people off. I don't think anyone knows quite who to attribute it to, but the dying actor who says: "dying is easy, comedy is hard." I hear it. — Colin Firth

True freedom requires taking responsibility for your own life. That frightens the hell out of too many people. They prefer to have Big Brother holding a safety net for them, and they'll sell their own birthright and their children's as well to keep it. — F. Paul Wilson

I've never killed men with so little regard. And it frightens me how easy I find it in war. There is no ambiguity here, no violation of moral creed. These people are warColors. They kill me or I kill them. It's simpler than the Passage. — Pierce Brown

Do one thing every day that frightens you," Princess Mia advised her audience. "And never think that you can't make a difference. Even if you're only sixteen, and everyone is telling you that you're just a silly teenage girl - don't let them push you away. Remember one other thing Eleanor Roosevelt said: 'No one can make you feel inferior without your
consent.' You are capable of great things - never let anyone try to tell you that just because you've only been a princess for twelve days, you don't know what you're doing. — Meg Cabot

It is not only the size of these redwoods but their strangeness that frightens them. And why not? For these are the last remaining members of a race that flourished over four continents as far back in geologic time as the upper Jurassic period. Fossils of these ancients have been found dating from the Cretaceous era while in the Eocene and Miocene they were spread over England and Europe and America. And then the glaciers moved down and wiped the Titans out beyond recovery. And only these few are left
a stunning memory of what the world was like once long ago. Can it be that we do not love to be reminded that we are very young and callow in a world that was old when we came into it? And could there be a strong resistance to the certainty that a living world will continue its stately way when we no longer inhabit it? — John Steinbeck

It frightens me, the awful truth, of how sweet life can be ... — Bob Dylan

Depression is seductive: it offends and teases, frightens you and draws you in, tempting you with its promise of sweet oblivion, then overwhelming you with a nearly sexual power, squirming past your defenses, dissolving your will, invading the tired spirit so utterly that it becomes difficult to recall that you ever lived without it ... or to imagine that you might live that way again. With all the guile of Satan himself, depression persuades you that its invasion was all your own idea, that you wanted it all along. It fogs the part of the brain that reasons, that knows right from wrong. It captures you with its warm, guilty, hateful pleasures, and, worst of all, it becomes familiar. All at once, you find yourself in thrall to the very thing that most terrifies you. Your work slides, your friendships slide, your marriage slides, but you scarcely notice: to be depressed is to be half in love with disaster. — Stephen L. Carter

I can't even consider the prospect of grandchildren because I don't know if there will be anything left for them on Earth. That's how serious the problem is. We can't drink the water or breathe the air, and we're all dying from some sort of cancer. How many generations can sustain that? It frightens me terribly. — Patti Davis

So much of "normal, civilized" life is bull that you can't imagine ... What frightens you, doesn't frighten me, what frightens me, you'd laugh at. — James Clavell

It's irksome to read about someone I don't recognize. It frightens me. — William Shatner

It frightens me about being alone with Cal, at least in daylight. But when night falls, there's no one I'd rather see. — Victoria Aveyard

This love frightens me, it causes me fear and ecstasy and pain and a thousand other things I never knew I could feel.
It terrifies me, leaves me wounded and open and vulnerable.
But I want you to know it exists.
And I want you to know that if there ever comes a day in your life when you want my love, then it is here.
I will be here.
Always.
That is all I want you to know. — Sherryl Jordan

That's the kind of death that frightens me. The shadow of death slowly, slowly eats away at the region of life, and before you know it everything's dark and you can't see, and the people around you think of you as more dead than alive. — Haruki Murakami

I don't know what frightens me more, the power that crushes us, or our endless ability to endure it. — Gregory David Roberts

The ego being shattered is not what frightens me - that can be useful for writing - but the ego being inflated is sort of like it dying of gout. — Garth Risk Hallberg

If she replaces her eyebrows with a Machiavellian triangle, paints her fingernails blue, and dyes her hair some color you'd see in a comic book it's not too attractive to me-because it's too familiar. Extremes aren't necessary. Even 'high fashion' frightens most men. When I have to wait in the dentist's office, I sometimes look at fashion magazines. To me, most of the models look like they have rickets or scoliosis of the spine. They look less like woman than caricatures. — Robert Stack

Hockey is a tough game. With all the talk and everything that's going on right now, it frightens me a little bit that we are giving our players an excuse not to hit. I just hope that we don't take that out of our game at the pro level. — Bobby Orr

This is the river. Water, that strong white stuff, one of the four elemental mysteries, can here be seen at its origins. Like all profound mysteries, it is so simple that it frightens me. It wells from the rock, and flows away. For unnumbered years it has welled from the rock, and flowed away. It does nothing, absolutely nothing, but be itself. — Nan Shepherd

What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance. — Epictetus

It is frequently the tragedy of the great artist, as it is of the great scientist, that he frightens the ordinary man. — Loren Eiseley

To be perfectly honest, I like pressure. It's something I find exciting. And I am the kind of personality that gets very bored very easily. The work I try and involve myself with is ordinarily determined by how much it sort of frightens me. — Taron Egerton

Consistency is the bugbear that frightens little minds. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Four houndred billion suns spiraling through space together. Our solar system just one grain on that galactic carousel. The carousel itself a speck in the cosmos. And here I am in this small clearing, on the surface of the heart, as transient and unnoticed to the universe as the dry blades of grass that are poking into my shirt. It's too much to comprehend up there, too enormous, and I'm so small when it's on top of me. It frightens me, like I'm being crushed. — Elizabeth Fama

Cruelty, I understand. But kindness frightens me, for my defenses are weak against it. ~Zahra — Jessica Khoury

What frightens me about America today is that in the large majority there is no active sense of the value of the individual: few citizens feel that they are the Republic, responsible for what happens. And when the individual in a democracy ceases to feel his importance, then there is grave danger that he will give over his freedom, if not to a Fascist State, then to the advertising men or Publicity Agents or to the newspaper he happens to read. — May Sarton

I think all kids are curious. They're drawn to the bad guy and they're drawn to things that are dark. It's not just simply a desire to be wicked. I think there are things that frighten us in life and, especially children, they want to understand and take it on or understand it so it frightens them less. — Angelina Jolie

The world is being run by people my age, men my age, with falling-out hair and health worries, and it frightens me. When the leaders were older than me I could believe in their wisdom, I could believe they had transcended rage and malice and the need to be loved. Now I know better. I look at the faces in newspapers, in magazines, and wonder: what greeds, what furies drive them on? — Margaret Atwood

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. — Rainer Maria Rilke

When the baby sees Ismay, she bawls. "She must miss her mother," Ismay says. "Maybe I remind her of her mother?" A.J. nods, though he thinks the real cause is that his sister-in-law frightens the baby. — Gabrielle Zevin

The past tempts us, the present confuses us, and the future frightens us. And our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast terrible in-between. But there is still time to seize that one last fragile moment. — J. Michael Straczynski

Oh, it is not death that frightens me, but the impossibility of imparting some meaning to my past. — Elie Wiesel

Love your material. Nothing frightens the inner critic more than the writer who loves her work. The writer who is enamored of her material forgets all about censoring herself. She doesn't stop to wonder if her book is any good, or who will publish it, or what people will think. She writes in a trance, losing track of time, hearing only her characters in her head. — Allegra Goodman

Etiquette enables you to resolve conflict without just trading insults. Without etiquette, the irritations in modern life are so abrasive that you see people turning to the law to regulate everyday behavior. This frightens me; it's a major inroad on our basic freedoms. — Judith Martin

The wondrous theme of the Bible that frightens so many people is that the only visible sign of God in the world is the cross. Christ is not carried away from earth to heaven in glory, but He must go to the cross. And precisely there, where the cross stands, the resurrection is near; even there, where everyone begins to doubt God, where everyone despairs of God's power, there God is whole, there Christ is active and near. Where the power of darkness does violence to the light of God, there God triumphs and judges the darkness. Then — Michael Van Dyke

The past attracts me, the present frightens me, because the future is death. — Guy De Maupassant

As she appears in the room, her face is still covered by the hood of her coat, but I can see the outline of her chin, and a faint glow that frightens me. She slowly pulls back the hood and her eyes bore into me. Eyes red with flame, it is though they are scanning my soul, deep within me."

From 'She Blames Me' (Banfield Tales) — Michael Braccia

It is not they who have closed but I. I've cut myself away. I'm alone, and lonely. What frightens me is that I've not become lonely now, but have looked inside and seen that I was, already. How long has that been going on? — China Mieville

I've loved you for a long time, ' she said. 'But there was always something holding me back. Maybe it was that I was afraid of an emotion that was so consuming. It still frightens me,' she admitted in a whisper.
Tamani chuckled. 'If it makes you feel any better, it scares the daylights out of me on a regular basis. — Aprilynne Pike

Fear is taught by grown up men and beasts to their young. Once we learn to be afraid, we rarely shake off the habit, and I believe our fear frightens other beasts causing them to attack us. — Dhan Gopal Mukerji

The truth frightens people because it isn't stable. It shifts every day. — Alice Hoffman

It is this, not the spirits, that frightens us; shall we never be free, even after we die? — Emilie Autumn

It Does not Frighten Me To Leave This Life That My Only Son Left Five Years Ago, This Life That Insist We Bear Sorrow Upon Sorrow Long After We Can Bear No More. No I Believe I Shall Gladly Take My Leave When The Time Comes. What Frightens Me Is The Day God Summon Me Before Him And Asks. How Shall I Explain Myself To Him. What Will Be My Defense For Not Heeding His Commads. — Khaled Hosseini

What frightens us most in a madman is his sane conversation. — Anatole France

Mystical state, madness, how it frightens people. How utterly crazy they become, remote, rude, peculiar, cruel, taunting, farouche as wild beasts who have smelled danger, the unthinkable. — Kate Millett

I've never killed anyone before. What frightens me isn't that I'm killing someone. What frightens me is how easy it is. — Susan Ee

The more I think about it, the more it frightens me."
"So why are you getting involved?"
He shut his eyes. "So I can look at myself in the mirror again. And know that I did my best. — C.S. Friedman

We cannot think that God frightens us with threatenings which He really does not mean to carry out, without doing Himself obvious dishonour. — Henry Parry Liddon

Technology frightens me to death. It's designed by engineers to impress other engineers. And they always come with instruction booklets that are written by engineers for other engineers - which is why almost no technology ever works. — John Cleese

I am very bad at expressing tender sentiments. The very word 'love' frightens me. — Jules Verne

We live in a world so horrifying, it frightens even the dead — Cat Winters

When those who name dead people have gone, there just remains the calmness of foreign cemeteries, in which nothing appears familiar and nothing frightens you. — Ray Loriga

I love acting; I love movie sets and movies, but, at the same time, there's something about the position of women in that world that frightens me a lot. I find it nearly inhuman to be an actress. — Lou Doillon

Heat and dryness frightens me,
like skeletal shapes of war,
two of them look doomed
and challenge the peace blazing. — J.M.K. Walkow

It is a very natural human trait to destroy that which frightens us. — Laurell K. Hamilton

The only reaction that frightens me is people not laughing. It's extraordinary to me when you get a laugh. That you can go in front of a bunch of people you never met before, you can say some stuff and they all laugh in unison - that's amazing. It's a miracle. — Chris Rock

I hug him tightly. "I can't imagine my life without you, Christian. I love you so much it frightens me." "Me, too," he breathes. "My life would be empty without you. I love you so much. — E.L. James

I'm a moth to his flame and it frightens me how willingly I'd burn my wings off for him. Destroy the world. Follow him to Hell. It's scary to feel like you can't breathe without someone. — Karen Marie Moning

There is darkness on your lantern
and pumpkins in your wind.
and Oh, they clutter up your mind
with their senseless bumping
while your heart is like a sea gull
frozen into a long distance telephone
call.
I'd like to take the darkness
off your lantern and change the pumpkins
into sky fields of ordered comets
and disconnect the refrigerator telephone
that frightens your heart into standing
still. — Richard Brautigan

The realism frightens me more than the bubble gum-y, heightened stuff. — Chloe Sevigny

God has created nights well-populated
with dreams, crowded with mirror images,
so that man may feel that he is nothing more
than vain reflection. That's what frightens us. — Jorge Luis Borges

The reason we're often not there for others - whether for our child or our mother or someone who is insulting us or someone who frightens us - is that we're not there for ourselves. — Pema Chodron

Should Disappointment, parent of Despair,
Strive for her son to seize my careless heart;
When, like a cloud, he sits upon the air,
Preparing on his spell-bound prey to dart:
Chase him away, sweet Hope, with visage bright,
And fright him as the morning frightens night! — John Keats

I've been a fan since I was a kid of that sort of bump-in-the-night stuff. I don't tend to go in too much for the slash-and-burn-'em or the walker kills on 'The Walking Dead.' That stuff's not necessarily the stuff that frightens me or gets me going. It's more the terror of waiting, the thriller aspects, that I find compelling. — Dallas Roberts

Beginning empty handed and alone frightens the best of men. It also speaks volumes of just how sure they are that God is with them. — Gene Edwards

You're growing old together," she said to me. "You and what frightens you. — Vivian Gornick

The familial rupture led to Prince becoming a person who cannot trust others, and must be in dictatorial control of everything around him, Leeds explained, "Anyone assuming any kind of control frightens the hell out of him. So much of what he does is driven by fear, fear of someone else having control. — Toure

There's something that really frightens me - and that's fear. — Elaine Stritch

The notion of democracy beginning to emerge scares the ideologues, the totalitarians, those who want to impose their vision. It just frightens them. — George W. Bush

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. — Marianne Williamson

Just to be in Boston, in Cambridge, on a Monday night was very horrifying to me. It frightens me . . . All the stores closing up by 5 or 6, coffeehouses being open maybe until 11, just the sense that the world shuts down and you're left with yourself. — Ann Douglas

The face of the enemy frightens me only when I see how much it resembles me — Oscar Wilde

There is only one object on earth that frightens me: a physicist working on a new trick. — Rex Stout

The only thing that frightens me a little is when I'm called Kevin rather than Fred, but that's how people have known me for so many years. So, I can't really blame them. — Fred Savage

[ ... ] I stated to them among other things that no country inflicts death so readily upon the inhabitants of other countries, frightens so many people so far away, as America. — Mohsin Hamid

[S]ex no longer frightens people; it can no longer be used to develop a sense of guilt, and thereby to force submission. — Erich Fromm

We're not afraid of sanctions. We're not afraid of military invasion. What frightens us is the invasion of western immorality. — Ruhollah Moosavi Khomeini

Even though we know the origin of diseases, panic sweeps. It's one thing that frightens us, because it's your health and your body - it's more like a tangible threat; it's not like a foreign enemy you can fight. That was really what was uppermost to many of us whilst making 'Black Death.' — Kimberley Nixon

The phrase "corporate identity design" seems to be a bit exclusive it sometimes frightens the smaller client who can't relate because they don't consider themselves "corporate." — Jeff Fisher

Ultimately, Photography is subversive, not when it frightens, repels, or even stigmatizes, but when it is pensive, when it thinks. — Roland Barthes

Hell has been conceived as a police institution, to inspire fear in this world. But the worst of it all is that it no longer frightens anyone, and therefore it will have to be closed down. — Miguel De Unamuno

Sometimes I get a funny feeling inside me that I shan't be here very long,
and I'm not talking in terms of things like success.
It frightens me sometimes — Marc Bolan

Whenever it shows itself - hope, that is - hands from the crowded streets reach for it with such violent urgency because of the fear that they may never see it again. They do so without knowing that their desperation frightens hope away. Hope also doesn't know that it is its scarcity. that causes the crowd to lunge at it, shredding its robe. And as it struggles to escape, the fabric scraps land in the hands of some but last only for hours, a day, days, a week, weeks, depending on how much fabric each hand is able to catch. — Ishmael Beah

It's what's buried deep inside that frightens me because it's broken, like a shattered mirror. — Jessica Sorensen

If we refuse to accept knowledge because it frightens us, we will never grow. If we give in to fear, we will never outgrow hatred — Christina Engela

Something bad's happening, Geralt," he muttered. "In the castle. Something's frightening people." "What?" "What usually frightens people? A monster. They say it's small, hunchbacked, bristling like a Urcheon. It creeps around the castle at night, rattles chains. Moans and groans in the chambers." "Have — Andrzej Sapkowski

Of course life frightens me sometimes. I don't happen to take that as the premise for everything else though. I'm going to give it hundred percent and go as far as I can. I'll take what I want and leave what I don't want. That's how I intend to live my life, and it things go bad, I'll stop and reconsider at that point. If you think about it, an unfair society is a society that makes it possible for you to exploit your abilities to the limit. — Haruki Murakami

Maybe what frightens us about the edge isn't our fear of morality, but the thoughts it leads us to have. — Lauren DeStefano

The measure of the state's success is that the word anarchy frightens people, while the word state does not. — Joseph Sobran

The human race is a monotonous thing. Most people work most of the time in order to live, and the little freedom they have left over frightens them so, that they will do anything to get rid of it. Oh, the regimentation of mankind! — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

At times she's so basic, at others so wise it frightens me that I got so far in this world without the benefit of such knowledge. — Diane Keaton

The extremists are afraid of books and pens, the power of education frightens them. they are afraid of women. — Malala Yousafzai

As a woman, I've had to choose between ignoring the full effect of my carnal instincts and exploring them with a man who will abandon me. Both result in emotional isolation. It wasn't until tapping into the forbidden grounds of the male anatomy that I realized that men are locked in their own prison. Their vulnerability frightens them as much as my confidence. — Maggie Young

Rilke wrote in one of my favourite books [Letters to a Young Poet], "Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love." It takes courage to live as our true selves; especially when doing so can be faced with such unkindness. But I believe the more we show of ourselves, the more we make space for positive change in the world. I feel so grateful I get to be a part of a series that is contributing to that change. — Elise Bauman

It frightens me," Shallan said, "because we all see the world by some kind of light personal to us, and that light changes perception. I don't see clearly. I want to, but I don't know if I ever truly can. — Brandon Sanderson

Nothing frightens the 'Jews' more than a perfect unity in others: the unity of feeling in a movement, in a people. That is why they will always be for 'democracy' which has but one advantage, and that one for the nation's enemy. For democracy will break up the unity and spirit of a people ... — Corneliu Zelea Codreanu

I have wanted to have a baby since I was a teenager, but it frightens me. It is much easier to have a dog. — Carmen Electra