Most Fearful Quotes & Sayings

The most dangerous person is the fearful; he is the most to be feared. — Ludwig Borne

OLD GRIZZLY ADAMS. [37-*] James C. Adams, or "Grizzly Adams," as he was generally termed, from the fact of his having captured so many grizzly bears, and encountered such fearful perils by his unexampled daring, was an extraordinary character. For many years a hunter and trapper in the Rocky and Sierra Nevada Mountains, he acquired a recklessness which, added to his natural invincible courage, rendered him truly one of the most striking men of the age. He was emphatically what the English call a man of "pluck." In 1860, he arrived in New York with his famous collection of California animals, captured by himself, consisting of twenty or thirty immense grizzly bears, at the head of which stood "Old Sampson" - now in the American Museum - wolves, half a dozen other species of bear, California lions, tigers, buffalo, elk, etc., and Old Neptune, the great sea-lion, from the Pacific. — P.T. Barnum

At the edge of the avalanche
At the glacier's icy rim
Grows the flower of the snowfields
Trembling in the wintry wind.
It dares to live in edges
Where naught else would ever grow.
So fragile, so unlikely
An owl slices through this blow.
She dares the katabats
Her gizzard madly quivers,
But for her dearest of friends
She vows she shall deliver.
Like the lily of the avalanche
The glacier's icy rose
Like a flower of the wind
The bright fierceness in her glows.
The bravest are the small
The weakest are the strong
The most fearful find the courage
To battle what is wrong. — Kathryn Lasky

My greatest hope is that we transcend the most fearful thing, which is that we are rapidly degrading the ecological systems on this planet that support everything we are doing and all life on it. — Edward Norton

I think most of us in America want our security. There're so many people out there that are fearful and now with this realization of immigration, with the terrorists, we need to have better checks and balances in regards to who's emigrating into our country. — Jan Brewer

(As your experience about writing accrues) you learn how little you know. It becomes much more difficult because the hardest thing in the world is simplicity. And the most fearful thing, too. It becomes more difficult because you have to strip yourself of all your disguises, some of which you didn't know you had. — James Baldwin

All these "ifs" fill our minds with anxious thoughts and make us wonder constantly what to do and what to say in case something should happen in the future. Much, if not most, of our suffering is connected with these preoccupations. Possible career changes, possible family conflicts, possible illnesses, possible disasters, and a possible nuclear holocaust make us anxious, fearful, suspicious, greedy, nervous, and morose. They prevent us from feeling a real inner freedom. Since we are always preparing for eventualities, we seldom fully trust the moment. It is no exaggeration to say that much human energy is invested in these fearful preoccupations. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

For someone who'd spent most of his adult life fearful of getting girls pregnant, I thought my unexpected paternal trial was turning out reasonably well. — Richelle Mead

Sadhana You may have noticed this about yourself: when you are feeling pleasant, you want to expand; when you are fearful, you want to contract. Try this. Sit for a few minutes in front of a plant or tree. Remind yourself that you are inhaling what the tree is exhaling, and exhaling what the tree is inhaling. Even if you are not yet experientially aware of it, establish a psychological connection with the plant. You could repeat this several times a day. After a few days, you will start connecting with everything around you differently. You won't limit yourself to a tree. Using this simple process, we at the Isha Yoga Center have unleashed an environmental initiative in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, under which twenty-one million trees have been planted since 2004. We spent several years planting trees in people's minds, which is the most difficult terrain! Now transplanting those onto land happens that much more effortlessly. — Sadhguru

prisoners come across to us. They seem nervous and fearful, though most of them are big fellows with beards - they look like meek, scolded, St. Bernard dogs. They slink about — Erich Maria Remarque

The effort of trying to turn grief into regret, to live entirely on past nourishment, even to keep the sharper parts of nostalgia credible (he found himself beginning to doubt and struggle with the intricacies of the smaller memories), and, most of all, the fearful absence of anything that could begin to take their place, had worn him down. — Elizabeth Jane Howard

Searching for the self when I was entirely alone was hazardous. What if I found not so much a great emptiness as a space full of unpleasant contents, a compound of long-hidden truths, closeted, buried, forgotten. When I went looking, I was playing a desperate game of hide-and-seek, fearful of what I might find, most afraid that I would find nothing. — Doris Grumbach

The curse that came before history has laid on us all a tendency to be weary of wonders. If we saw the sun for the first time it would be the most fearful and beautiful of meteors. Now that we see it for the hundredth time we call it, in the hideous and blasphemous phrase of Wordsworth, "the light of common day." We are inclined to increase our claims. We are inclined to demand six suns, to demand a blue sun, to demand a green sun. Humility is perpetually putting us back in the primal darkness. There all light is lightning, startling and instantaneous. Until we understand that original dark, in which we have neither sight nor expectation, we can give no hearty and childlike praise to the splendid sensationalism of things. — G.K. Chesterton

We have forgotten that courage is a choice, and that permission to move forward with boldness is never given by the fearful masses. Most have forgotten that seeking change always requires a touch of insanity. If taking action before the perfect conditions arise, or before we receive permission, is unreasonable or reckless, then we must be unreasonable and reckless. We must remember we are not the sum of our intentions but of our actions. Bold and — Brendon Burchard

Zeal, if it be well ordered, is most beautiful in a Christian; but if not, it is a thing of exceeding great danger: as fire in moderation is most comfortable, but in extremity most fearful. — Nehemiah Rogers

every day, not matter how you fight it, you learn a little more about yourself, and all most of it does is teach humility. — John D. MacDonald

But how true it is that every pleasure has also its reverse side, in brief, its pain. Or, if not wholly true, how nearly so. Therefore, I have added to most of my pleasures the little flavour of bitterness, the flaw in their perfection, the canker in the damask, the worm at the root, the fear of loss, or of satiety, the fearful risks involved in their very existence, which tang their sweetness, and mind us of their mortality and of our own, and that nothing in this world is perfect. — Rose Macaulay

One of the most terrifying things I fear is not my potential, but how much regret I'll die with should I never use it. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

So you will not kneel to me?" He said.
I will kneel to no man, "She answered, preparing herself for the push that would send her toppling to her death and ready to haul him with her.
You interest me, girl. There is no fear in you."
Nor in you, apparently, King Priam."
He looked surprised. "Fear if for weaklings. Look around you. This is Troy. My Troy. The richest and most powerful city in the world. It was not built by fearful men, but my men with imagination and courage. It's wealth grows Daily, and with it the influence that wealth brings. — David Gemmell

We live under continual threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed destinies: unremitting banality and inconceivable terror. It is fantasy, served out in large rations by the popular arts, which allows most people to cope with these twin specters. — Susan Sontag

I'll stay with you a little, my unforgettable delight, for as long as my arms and my hands and my lips remember you. I'll put my grief for you in a work that will endure and be worthy of you. I'll write your memory into an image of aching tenderness and sorrow. I'll stay here till this is done, then I too will go. This is how I will portray you, I'll trace your features on paper as the sea, after a fearful storm has churned it up, traces the form of the greatest, farthest-reaching wave on the sand. Seaweed, shells, cork, pebbles, the lightest, most imponderable things that it could lift from its bed, are cast up in a broken, sinuous line on the sand. This line endlessly stretching into the distance is the frontier of the highest tide. That was how life's storm cast you up on my shore, O my pride, that is how I'll portray you. — Boris Pasternak

Although many, we might even say most, strangers in this world become easily the victim of a fearful hostility, it is possible for men and women and obligatory for Christians to offer an open and hospitable space where strangers can cast off their strangeness and become our fellow human beings. — Henri Nouwen

It is an illusion to suppose that a Dictator makes himself; at most he seizes an opportunity made for him by passive, stupid, incompetent, and above all, unsatisfied and fearful men. — Susan Stebbing

Animals are indeed more ancient, more complex and in many ways more sophisticated than us. They are more perfect because they remain within Nature's fearful symmetry just as Nature intended. They should be respected and revered, but perhaps none more so than the elephant, the world's most emotionally human land mammal. — Daphne Sheldrick

Some of the nations of Europe who believe in the one wife system have actually forbidden a plurality of wives by their laws; and the consequences are that the whole country among them is overrun with the most abominable practices: adulteries and unlawful connections through all their villages, towns, cities, and country places to a most fearful extent. — Orson Pratt

The most fearful phenomenon of these midcentury years is not the atom bomb; atomic energy does have its constructive possibilities ... The most fearful event of these times is the colossal expansion of the government of the United States and the constant increase of executive power within the government. — Wheeler McMillen

Happy people create happiness; it's the most contagious energy on Earth. Fearful, sad, angry, or miserable people only tend to spread these same qualities, even if working in the name of social conscience. — Dan Millman

I think a lot of young women are probably fearful or embarrassed or cautious or hiding whatever their particular sexuality might be. From the most odd to the just slightly abberrant. — Steven Shainberg

I might define a 'journey' as something that life itself calls me to. And I might then define a 'trip' as something I create to avoid a journey by mimicking a journey. And while fear is most certainly part and parcel of both, the latter is emboldened by fear while the former surrenders to it. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

If the Bible is not the Word of God and inspired, the whole of Christendom for 1800 years has been under an immense delusion - half the human race has been cheated and deceived, and churches are monuments of folly. If the Bible is the Word of God and inspired, all who refuse to believe it are in fearful danger; they are living on the brink of eternal misery. No man, in his sober senses, can fail to see that the whole subject demands most serious attention. — J.C. Ryle

You have to dare to live through the pain and struggle. Acknowledge your anguish but do not let it pull you out of yourself. Hold on to your chosen direction, your discipline, your prayer, your work, your guides, and trust that one day love will have conquered enough of you that even the most fearful part will allow love to cast out all fear. — Henri Nouwen

I knew that if the feat was accomplished it must be at a most fearful sacrifice of as brave and gallant soldiers as ever engaged in battle. — John B. Hood

Muses are fickle, and many a writer, peering into the voice, has escaped paralysis by ascribing the creative responsibility to a talisman: a lucky charm, a brand of paper, but most often a writing instrument. Am I writing well? Thank my pen. Am I writing badly? Don't blame me blame my pen. By such displacements does the fearful imagination defend itself. — Anne Fadiman

A patient complains of feeling nervous or fearful. These feelings and behaviors suggest that the patient has an anxiety disorder, and the doctor prescribes whatever drug will most probably work for an anxiety disorder. However, there's no conclusive way to tell that this patient definitely has an anxiety disorder. Even if the doctor did get the diagnosis correct, there's a great deal of variation regarding which drug class (for example, anti-anxiety drugs versus antidepressants) a particular individual will respond to and which drug within a class (for example, Prozac versus Zoloft) will work best. If the drug doesn't work, the doctor will try the next one on the list and so on, thus delaying treatment success and complicating the process with the mix-and-match type of treatment. — Chris Prentiss

Religious people tend to encounter, among those who are not, a cemented certainty that belief in God is a crutch for the weak and the fearful ... Now the belief in God may turn out at the last trump to be a mistake. Meantime, let us be quite clear, it is not merely the comfort of the simple
though it is that too, much to its glory
it is a formidable intellectual position with which most of the first-class minds of the human race, century in and century out, have concurred, each in his own way ... speaking of crutches
Freud can be a crutch, Marx can be a crutch, rationalism can be a crutch, and atheism can be two canes and a pair of iron braces. We none of us have all the answers, nor are we likely to have. But in the country of the halt, the man who is surest he has no limp may be the worst-crippled. — Herman Wouk

Ba'al led Ashtart down the underground tunnel in a dog collar. It had been thirteen years since the battle of nine kings, where Marduk had defeated Ashtart and became Ba'al, the king of the gods of Canaan. Ashtart's plan had been set back generations with the devastation of her giant progeny throughout the land by Chedorlaomer's forces. But with the addition of Ba'al as the Most High God of Canaan, the two of them together could do what she could not do alone. Ashtart had revitalized the original program of miscegenation of the Watchers. The rest of the pantheon of gods were fearful of the consequences of such a pursuit, since El Shaddai had already flooded the earth the first time such a course of action had been undertaken. But with the two most powerful divinities united, the pantheon could do little but sit back and see what happened. — Brian Godawa

He let out a breath. "How old are you?" he asked, fearful of the answer.

"Twenty-five." She gave him a wry smile. "And since you yelled it at Heather, I know you're 'forty fucking years old'."

He would have laughed, but he couldn't breathe. Jesus, he'd known she was young, but hearing her actual age..."That's fifteen years."

"I can do the math, but you know what else? I'm legal. I can drink. I have decent car insurance since I hit the quarter century mark, and I own this house." she paused. "Well the bank owns most of it, but I qualified for a loan and everything since I have decent credit." Her nose wrinkled. "I'm getting off subject. If the age difference truly bothers you, then I will see you at the shop to finish your tattoo. No hard feelings."

He growled softly. Well, something was hard, and it wasn't his feelings. — Carrie Ann Ryan

When are you most afraid? When the teacher hands out the test? When the popular people walk your way? When you think about the future? Even in your most fearful moments, Jesus is with you, offering a peace you can't find anywhere else. — Max Lucado

Only while under the dominion of fear do men fall a prey to superstition; that all the portents ever invested with the reverence of misguided religion are mere phantoms of dejected and fearful minds; and lastly, that prophets have most power among the people, and are most formidable to rulers, precisely at those times when the state is in most peril. I think this is sufficiently plain to all, and will therefore say no more on the subject. — Christopher Hitchens

It occurs to me how close happiness and sadness are. So closely knitted together. Such a thin line, a thread-like divide that in the midst of emotions, it trembles, blurring the territory of exact opposites ... how quickly a moment of love was snapped away to a moment of hate ... Of how love and war stand upon the very same foundations. How, in my darkest moments, my most fearful times, when faced, became my bravest. When feeling at your weakest you end up showing more strength, when at your lowest are suddenly lifted above higher than you've ever been. They all border one another, the opposites, and how we can be altered. Despair can be altered by one simple smile offered by a stranger; confidence can become fear by the arrival of one uneasy presence. ... How similar emotions are. — Cecelia Ahern

People who seem most hostile to my presence are those most fearful of my fate. And since their fear keeps them emotionally distant from me, they are the ones least likely to learn that my life isn't half so dismal as they assume. — Nancy Mairs

This was what most people wanted: to be close to but not part of. They didn't want the fearful unknown of a 'pristine wilderness.' They didn't want a soulless artificial life, either. — Jeff VanderMeer

If I had been a different sort of person, maybe less impressionable, less intense, less fearful, less utterly dependent upon the perceptions of others - maybe then I would not have bought the cultural party line that thinness is the be-all and end-all of goals. Maybe if my family had not been in utter chaos most of the time, maybe if my parents were a little better at dealing with their own lives maybe if I'd gotten help sooner, or if I'd gotten different help, maybe if I didn't so fiercely cherish my secret, or if I were not such a good liar, or were not quite so empty inside ... maybe. — Marya Hornbacher

Women can be the most fearful about letting men off the white horse and the most likely to be critical of their vulnerability. — Brene Brown

There may indeed have been an order from the top, but when the time came nothing so direct as an order would have been necessary. Everything had been laid so carefully in place, responsibility had already been dispersed across so many different departments, commands and individuals, that no words were necessary. Jakarta's silence was the command. In Timor, the army knew what to do and once the thing had started it gathered speed and power and continued until it had exhausted itself. This was the strangest and most fearful aspect of the violence in East Timor: that it could be so meticulous and methodical, and at the same time so completely out of control. — Richard Lloyd Parry

The boy continued to listen to his heart as they crossed the desert. He came to understand its dodges and tricks, and to accept it as it was. He lost his fear, and forgot about his need to go back to the oasis, because, one afternoon, his heart told him that it was happy. "Even though I complain sometimes," it said, "it's because I'm the heart of a person, and people's hearts are that way. People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don't deserve them, or that they'll be unable to achieve them. We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren't, or of treasures that might have been found but were forever hidden in the sands. Because, when these things happen, we suffer terribly. — Paulo Coelho

Most people are poor not because they are not smart - most people are poor or struggle financially because they're fearful of losing. — Robert Kiyosaki

I often feel very grateful to God that I have undergone fearful depression. I know the borders of despair and the horrible brink of that gulf of darkness into which my feet have almost gone. But hundreds of times I have been able to give a helpful grip to brethren and sisters who have come into that same condition, which grip I could never have given if I had not known their despondency. So I believe that the darkest and most dreadful experience of a child of God will help him to be a fisher of men if he will but follow Christ. Charles Spurgeon, 2200 Quotations from the Writings of Charles H. Spurgeon — Beth Moore

One of the most appalling comments on our present way of life is that half of all the beds in our hospitals are reserved for patients with nervous and mental troubles, patients who have collapsed under the crushing burden of accumulated yesterdays and fearful tomorrows. Yet a vast majority of those people would be walking the streets today, leading happy, useful lives, if they had only heeded the words of Jesus: Have no anxiety about the morrow; or the words of Sir William Osler; Live in day-tight compartments. — Dale Carnegie

I have learned to take the part of me that is very fearful and work on that. There is space for that in my life. I have learned to give myself a bit more freedom between 'action' and 'cut.' I come by all that fear honestly, like most humans have. I can't bring it with me to work, so in that way, the work feels quite liberating. — Taylor Schilling

There is not a moment but preys upon you, - and upon all around you, not a moment in which you do not yourself become a destroyer. The most innocent walk deprives of life thousands of poor insects: one step destroys the fabric of the industrious ant, and converts a little world into chaos. No: it is not the great and rare calamities of the world, the floods which sweep away whole villages, the earthquakes which swallow up our towns, that affect me. My heart is wasted by the thought of that destructive power which lies concealed in every part of universal nature. Nature has formed nothing that does not consume itself, and every object near it: so that, surrounded by earth and air, and all the active powers, I wander on my way with aching heart; and the universe is to me a fearful monster, for ever devouring its own offspring. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

For people living in fear, moderation just doesn't cut it. And most of the people in my world are fearful. It's like keeping a piggy bank when you never empty your wallet in the first place. — Project Itoh

One of the great weaknesses of the progressive, as distinct from the religious, mind, is that it has no awareness of truth as such; only of truth in terms of enlightened expediency. The contrast is well exemplified in two exact contemporaries Simone Weil and Simone de Beauvoir; both highly intelligent and earnestly disposed. In all the fearful moral dilemmas of our time, Simone Weil never once went astray, whereas Simone de Beauvoir, with I am sure the best of intentions, has found herself aligned with apologists for some of the most monstrous barbarities and falsehoods of history. — Malcolm Muggeridge

Most human things are full of conflict and ambivalence, not ease and simplicity. The world has grown increasingly fundamentalist, and the parameters of discussion have become narrowed. People, when they're fearful, are vulnerable to certainty in rhetoric. — Dana Spiotta

There are no souls in the world that are so fearful to judge others as those that do most judge themselves, nor so careful to make a righteous judgment of men or things as those that are most careful to judge themselves. — Thomas Brooks

As a sea level adapted human, I am more fearful about the radiation levels on top of high altitude mountains, mile high modern cities and inside jet aircraft than from nuclear reactors and bombs, as that is where I get the most radiation exposures in the modern world. — Steven Magee

It seems that the most fearful people in our country are those who don't travel and are metaphorically barricaded in America. If we all stayed home and built more walls and fewer bridges between us and the rest of the world, eventually we would have something to actually be fearful of. — Rick Steves

I have lived to see the greatest plague on earth
the condemning of God's word, a fearful thing, surpassing all other plagues in the world; for thereupon most surely follow all manner of punishments, eternal and corporal. — Martin Luther

Sometimes we read or hear too much news that makes us fearful or suspicious of others. We can forget that most of the people that we know, or at least encounter regularly, are decent and friendly. — Adrienne Clarkson

Thus I continued about a year; all which time our neighbours did take me to be a very godly man, a new and religious man, and did marvel much to see such a great and famous alteration in my life and manners; and indeed so it was, though yet I knew not Christ, nor grace, nor faith, nor hope; for, as I have well seen since, had I then died, my state had been most fearful. — John Bunyan

Without doubt, it is the greatest act of courage that is often the most fearful. — Christine Brodien-Jones

I want our home to be a place where we can be our bravest selves and our most fearful selves. Where we practice difficult conversations and share our shaming moments from school and work. I want to look at Steve and my kids and say, "I'm with you. In the arena. And when we fail, we'll fail together, while daring greatly." We simply can't learn to be more vulnerable and courageous on our own. Sometimes our first and greatest dare is asking for support. — Brene Brown

Girls face two major sexual issues in America in the 1990s: One is an old issue of coming to terms with their own sexuality, defining a sexual self, making sexual choices and learning to enjoy sex. The other issue concerns the dangers girls face of being sexually assaulted. By late adolescence, most girls today either have been traumatized or know girls who have. They are fearful of males even as they are trying to develop intimate relations with them. — Mary Pipher

We will understand the depth of our vision when at some point we are finally faced with the price we must pay to achieve it. And when the price comes calling, most visions end up falling. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

And what of the masses in this intellectual's paradise? They have found in the intellectual the most formidable taskmaster in history. No other regime has treated the masses so callously as raw material, to be experimented on and manipulated at will; and never before have so many lives been wasted so recklessly in war and in peace. On top of all this, the Communist intelligentsia has been using force in a wholly novel manner. The traditional master uses force to exact obedience and lets it go at that. Not so the intellectual. Because of his professed faith in the power of words and the irresistibility of the truths which supposedly shape his course, he cannot be satisfied with mere obedience. He tries to obtain by force a response that is usually obtained by the most perfect persuasion, and he uses Terror as a fearful instrument to extract faith and fervor from crushed souls. — Eric Hoffer

Group pressure is also a fascinating process to watch. Given enough arguments, time, and stress, even the most resolute and determined man can be made fearful enough to completely reverse his ideals to conform with everyone else. — Trish Mercer

Poverty, the most fearful monster that ever drew breath. — Aristophanes

It was not only for Americans that he was concerned, or primarily the older generation of any land. The thought that disturbed him the most, and that made the prospect of war much more fearful than it would otherwise have been, was the specter of the death of the children of this country and all the world - the young people who had no role, who had no say, who knew nothing even of the confrontation, but whose lives would be snuffed out like everyone else's. They would never have a chance to make a decision, to vote in an election, to run for office, to lead a revolution, to determine their own destinies. Our generation had. But the great tragedy was that, if we erred, we erred not only for ourselves, our futures, our hopes, and our country, but for the lives, futures, hopes, and countries of those who had never been given an opportunity to play a role, to vote aye or nay, to make themselves felt. — Robert F. Kennedy

The way I see it, the true fear for us as human being is not terror as such. Terror certainly exists there... It manifests itself in various forms, and from time to time overwhelms our very existence as human beings. But the most fearful thing of all is to turn your back on that fear, to close your eyes to it. By doing that, we end up alienating the very most essential part of our make-up — Haruki Murakami

It was all so damn fragile, that was the thing. Obvious, for sure,but for the most part we block - we refuse to think about how easily our lives could be torn asunder, because when we recognize it, we lose our minds. The ones who are fearful all the time, who need to medicate to function? It is because they understand the reality, how thin the line is. It isn't that they can't accept the truth - its that they can't block it. — Harlan Coben

If you have ever come up against Nothing you have no idea how it can scare you out of your wits. When I was a child I used to be afraid of Something in the dark. I know now that the most fearful thing about the dark is that we may find Nothing in it. — Howard Spring

For the most part, the best man's spirit makes a fearful sprite to haunt his grave. — Henry David Thoreau

Little children never get frozen by their selfishness. Like the disciples, they come just as they are, totally self-absorbed. They seldom get it right. As parents or friends, we know all that. In fact, we are delighted (most of the time!) to find out what is on their little hearts. We don't scold them for being self-absorbed or fearful. That is just who they are. — Paul Miller

Homosexuality involves sexual acts most men consider not only immoral, but filthy. The reason public men rarely say aloud what most say privately is they are fearful of being branded 'bigots' by an intolerant liberal orthodoxy that holds, against all evidence and experience, that homosexuality is a normal, healthy lifestyle. — Pat Buchanan

Morrie talked about his most fearful moments, when he felt his chest locked in heaving surges or when he wasn't sure where his next breath would come from. These horrifying times, he said, and his first emotions were horror, fear, anxiety. But once he recognized the feel of those emotions, their texture, their moisture, the shiver down the back, the quick flash of heat that crosses your brain - then he was able to say, Okay,. This is fear. Step away from it. Step away. — Mitch Albom

What motivates most gold purchasers is their belief that the ranks of the fearful will grow ... As 'bandwagon' investors join any party, they create their own truth - for a while. — Warren Buffett

Feelings and stories of unworthiness and shame are perhaps the most binding element in the trance of fear. When we believe something is wrong with us, we are convinced we are in danger. Our shame fuels ongoing fear, and our fear fuels more shame. The very fact that we feel fear seems to prove that we are broken or incapable. When we are trapped in trance, being fearful and bad seem to define who we are. The anxiety in our body, the stories, the ways we make excuses, withdraw or lash out - these become to us the self that is most real. — Tara Brach

She [Evelina] is not, indeed, like most modern young ladies; to be known in half an hour; her modest worth, and fearful excellence, require both time and encouragement to show themselves. — Fanny Burney

The most interesting thing was the talk from the customers. Nobody can buy a hat without gossiping. Sophie sat in her alcove and stitched and heard [ ... ] that Wizard Howl's castle had moved round to the cliffs again, really that man, whisper, whisper, whisper ... The voices always dropped low when they talked of Wizard Howl, [ ... ] Then there would be a fleeting, fearful whisper about the Witch of the Waste.
Sophie began to feel that Wizard Howl and the Witch of the Waste should get together. — Diana Wynne Jones

Genuine trust involves allowing another to matter and have an impact in our lives. For that reason, many who hate and do battle with God trust Him more deeply than those whose complacent faith permits an abstract and motionless stance before Him. Those who trust God most are those whose faith permits them to risk wrestling with Him over the deepest questions of life. Good hearts are captured in a divine wrestling match; fearful, doubting hearts stay clear of the mat. — Dan B. Allender

Was it just fear? the voices wonder. We were fearful in the best of times; how could we cope with the worst? So we found the tallest walls and poured ourselves behind them. We kept pouring until we were biggest and strongest, elected the greatest generals and found the most weapons, thinking all this maximalism would somehow generate happiness. But nothing so obvious could ever work. — Isaac Marion

The whole group represented a powerful picture: Ivan Nikiforovich standing in the middle of the room in all his unadorned beauty! The woman, her mouth gaping and with a most senseless and fearful look on her face! Ivan Ivanovich with one arm raised aloft, the way Roman tribunes are portrayed! This was an extraordinary moment! a magnificent spectacle! And yet there was only one spectator: this was the boy in the boundless frock coat, who stood quite calmly and cleaned his nose with his finger. — Nikolai Gogol

Truly in the short term, there tends to be no consequences to our act of irresponsibility. However in the long run most of those kids we refused to pay attention to are now grown ups and are the fearful nocturnal visitors with weapons attacking the same neighbourhood, raping our daughters and wives, maiming our sons and husbands, turning our lives into a nightmare. Our response? Another blame game. — Sunday Adelaja

The experienced feel love or desire, or both. The inexperienced are sick with a thousand feelings, most of them unformed: fearful that they may be unable to love or to inspire love; fearful of what they may do if once they allow their emotions to carry them away; fearful that they may be unable to cut the cord that binds them still to the superficial affections of childhood; longing for adventure and yet unable to see that their adventure is in the present, that there will soon be nothing left but love and desire. — Gene Wolfe

Bear in mind, now, that most of this work was done by men who had no intention whatever, when they enlisted, of making war to end slavery. Slavery was killed by the act of war itself. It was the one human institution on all the earth which could not possibly be defended by force of arms, because that force, once called into play, was bound to destroy it. The Union armies which ended slavery were led by men like Grant and Sherman, who had profound sympathies with the South and who had never in their lives shown the slightest sympathies with the abolitionists. But they were also men who believed in the one great, fearful fact about modern war
that when you get into it, the guiding rule is that you have to win it. — Bruce Catton

There are currently thousands of police officers who feel some degree of alienation from the people for whom they risk their lives. They are fearful that if they act according to their training, they will be unfairly judged to have done something wrong. Many officers have reported to me the feeling of anger and betrayal at always being portrayed as the "bad guy" in the media when they take police action. They believe that most of the public buys into the negative image of police often presented by the media and has no idea what police work requires. — Lawrence N. Blum

I love the unanswered question, the unresolved story, the unclimbed mountain, the tender shard of an incomplete dream. Most of the time. But is it mandatory for a writer to be ambiguous about everything? Isn't it true that there have been fearful episodes in human history when prudence and discretion would have just been euphemisms for pusillanimity? When caution was actually cowardice? When sophistication was disguised decadence? When circumspection was really a kind of espousal? Isn't it true, or at least theoretically possible, that there are times in the life of a people or a nation when the political climate demands that we - even the most sophisticated of us - overtly take sides? I think such times are upon us. — Arundhati Roy

Grief and loss are probably the most fearful creatures that exist. But loss shouldn't be a fearful creature. It should be a creature of wisdom. It should teach us not to fear that tomorrow may never come, but live fully, as though the hours are melting away like seconds. Loss should teach us to cherish those we love, to never do anything that will result in regret, and to cheer on tomorrow with all of its promises of greatness. It's easy and un-extraordinary to be frightened of life. It's far more difficult to arm yourself with the good stuff despite all the bad and step foot into tomorrow as an everyday warrior. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Language does not stand still. Surprisingly, despite this knowledge, most speakers are fearful of change. — Peter Farb

From the 5th grade through the 4th year of college, our young people are being indoctrinated with a Marxist philosophy and I am fearful of the harvest. The younger generation is further to the left than most adults realize. The old concepts of our Founding Fathers are scoffed and jeered at by young moderns whose goals appear to be the destruction of integrity and virtue, and the glorification of pleasure, thrills, and self-indulgence. — Ezra Taft Benson

The real problem is that most people fear failure, and thus take no action. They really they should be fearful of their thoughts that cause their failure to take action! — Tony Dovale

[A] writer's most powerful weapon, his true strength, was his intuition, and regardless of whether he had any talent, if the critics combined to discredit an author's nose for things, he would be reduced to a fearful creature who took a mistakenly guarded, absurdly cautious approach to his work, which would end up stifling his latent genius. — Felix J. Palma

No man more truly loves God than he that is most fearful to offend Him. — Thomas Adams

It is a most fearful fact to think of, that in every heart there is some secret spring that would be weak at the touch of temptation, and that is liable to be assailed. Fearful, and yet salutary to think of; for the thought may serve to keep our moral nature braced. It warns us that we can never stand at ease, or lie down in this field of life, without sentinels of watchfulness and campfires of prayer. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Yet, when this cherished volume was now placed in my hand - when I turned over its leaves, and sought in its marvellous pictures the charm I had, till now, never failed to find - all was eerie and dreary; the giants were gaunt goblins, the pigmies malevolent and fearful imps, Gulliver a most desolate wanderer in most dread and dangerous regions. I closed the book, which I dared no longer peruse, and put it on the table, beside the untasted tart. — Charlotte Bronte

Even though I complain sometimes," it said, "it's because I'm the heart of a person, and people's hearts are that way. People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don't deserve them, or that they'll be unable to achieve them. We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren't, or of treasures that might have been found but were forever hidden in the sands. Because, when these things happen, we suffer terribly." "My — Paulo Coelho

I am fearful of romantic dinners,
huge crowds, dusk -
of normal things-
afraid to be loved,
the one thing I want most.
Maybe it's because I don't think I deserve it
because I am not that perfect
little girl that I was supposed to be,
well manicured and well groomed,
because I have nervous breakdowns,
and take pills,
and keep moving on. — Samantha Schutz

Among [Applewhite's] other teachings was the classic cult specialty of developing disdain for anyone outside of the Heaven's Gate commune. Applewhite flattered his would-be alien flock that they were an elite elect far superior to the non-initiated humans whom he considered to be deluded zombies.[ ... ]Applewhite effectively fed his paranoid persecution complex to his followers to ensure blind loyalty to the group and himself while fostering alienation from the mundane world. This paradoxical superior/fearful attitude towards "Them" (i.e., anyone who is not one of "Us") is one of the simplest means of hooking even the most skeptical curiosity seeker into the solipsistic netherworld of a [mentally unbalanced] leader's insecure and threatened worldview. — Zeena Schreck

Sadly, it seems that I have the proclivity to create plenty of devils, but most of the time I don't even go looking for angels. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

And normality was precisely the most fearful part of that infinite war: nothing ever happened. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez