Quotes & Sayings About The Unknown And Fear

Oh, we can populate the dark with horrors, even we who think ourselves informed and sure, believing nothing we cannot measure or weigh. I knew beyond all doubt that the dark things crowding in on me either did not exist or were not dangerous to me, and still I was afraid. I thought how terrible the nights must have been in a time when men knew the things were there and were deadly. But no, that's wrong. If I knew they were there, I would have weapons against them, charms, prayers, some kind of alliance with forces equally strong but on my side. Knowing they were not there made me defenseless against them and perhaps more afraid. — John Steinbeck

This, then, is the human problem: there is a price to be paid for every increase in consciousness. We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain. By remembering the past we can plan for the future. But the ability to plan for the future is offset by the "ability" to dread pain and to fear of the unknown. Furthermore, the growth of an acute sense of the past and future gives us a corresponding dim sense of the present. In other words, we seem to reach a point where the advantages of being conscious are outweighed by its disadvantages, where extreme sensitivity makes us unadaptable. — Alan W. Watts

A heartbeat later a single pair of orange eyes rose from the darkened depths. Dim at first, then in full brightness of attention they moved up from the floor then glided toward here, drawing closer and closer. She staggered back in horror as they moved nearer still, staring into hers, piercing her soul. — Marcha A. Fox

Fear stops a lot of people. Fear of failure, of the unknown, of risk.
And it masks itself as procrastination. — Lisa Anderson

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown — H.P. Lovecraft

Never let your fear of the unknown and things being too difficult make your choices for you in life. One of the saddest lessons in life is finding out that your fear made the situation worse than what it was and a braver person stole the dream you gave up on. — Shannon L. Alder

Horror and the unknown or the strange are always closely connected so that it is hard to create a convincing picture of shattered natural law or cosmic alienage or 'outsideness' without laying stress on the emotion of fear. — H.P. Lovecraft

The world is full of hatred because it refuses to be poor. It wants to conquer fear with power. But you will conquer in another way, the unknown way. First, perhaps, you will forget. You will not see. You will not understand. Later you may see, and then you will know that the false self must die in order for the true self to be born. — Michael D. O'Brien

Fear of the unknown no longer controlled him. Hope had found its way in and taken hold. — James Dashner

Fear keeps us rooted in the past. Fear of the unknown, fear of abandonment, fear of rejection, fear of not having enough, fear of not being enough, fear of the future-all these fears and more keep us trapped, repeating the same old patterns and making the same choices over and over again. Fear prevents us from moving outside the comfort-or even the familiar discomfort-of what we know. It's nearly impossible to achieve our highest vision for our lives as long as we are being guided by our fears. — Debbie Ford

The ability to know that your perceptions are accurate has to happen without others' validation. Intuition is not the result of diet, rituals, or wind chimes. It's the natural consequence of having self-esteem, the greatest power you can have. With self-esteem, your life can broaden into an adventure because you can know in your gut that you can handle the unknown. And you can handle helping others without fear, which is true liberation. — Caroline Myss

It is the lies he's telling her - as he has been, Nassun understands suddenly, her whole life - that really break her heart. He's said that he loves her, after all, but that obviously isn't true. He cannot love an orogene, and that is what she is. He cannot be an orogene's father, and that is why he constantly demands she be something other than what she is. — N.K. Jemisin

If you fear the unknown you are certainly not alone. Many of God's children refuse opportunities to step through doors and into gloriously new territories. They are either too comfortable in life, or unwilling (mind you I did not say unable) to trust Him with the stretching of their faith. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Hebrews. 11:1 (NKJV) — Cheryl Zelenka

People have a fear of the unknown. Insects have different senses than us, different amount of limbs and their body structure is very different. It's hard for us to really relate to them and understand them. — Dominic Monaghan

EMBARKING on the spiritual journey is like getting into a very small boat and setting out on the ocean to search for unknown lands. With wholehearted practice comes inspiration, but sooner or later we will also encounter fear. — Pema Chodron

Stress comes from fear of the unknown, so have faith and fear will disappear and stress will melt away. — Debasish Mridha

And as I ran along the shore, crushing sleeping flowers with heedless feet and maddened ever by the fear of unknown things and the lure of the dead faces, I saw that the garden had no end under that moon; for where by day the walls were, there stretched now only new vistas of trees and paths, flowers and shrubs, stone idols and pagodas, and bendings of the yellow-litten stream past grassy banks and under grotesque bridges of marble. And the lips of the dead lotos-faces whispered sadly, and bade me follow, nor did I cease my steps till the stream became a river, and joined amidst marshes of swaying reeds and beaches of gleaming sand the shore of a vast and nameless sea. Upon — H.P. Lovecraft

She fell in love with freedom. In the Sommers' home she had lived shut up within four walls, in a stagnant atmosphere where time moved in circles and where she could barely glimpse the horizon through distorted windowpanes. She had grown up clad in the impenetrable armor of good manners and conventions, trained from girlhood to please and serve, bound by corset, routines, social norms, and fear. Fear had been her companion: fear of God and his unpredictable justice, of authority, of her adoptive parents, of illness and evil tongues, of anything unknown or different; fear of leaving the protection of her home and facing the dangers outside; fear of her own fragility as a woman, of dishonor and truth. Hers had been a sugar-coated reality built on the unspoken, on courteous silences, well-guarded secrets, order, and discipline. She had aspired to virtue but now she questioned the meaning of the word. — Isabel Allende

If I have any expertise, it is in the realm of spiritual darkness: fear of the unknown, familiarity with divine absence, mistrust of conventional wisdom, suspicion of religious comforters, keen awareness of the limits of all language about God and at the same time shame over my inability to speak of God without a thousand qualifiers, doubt about the health of my soul, and barely suppressed contempt for those who have no such qualms. These are the areas of my proficiency. — Barbara Brown Taylor

You laugh because what's fearful and unknown is also what's funny, you laugh the way a small child will sometimes laugh and cry at the same time when a capering circus clown approaches, knowing it is supposed to be funny... but it is also unknown, full of the unknown's eternal power. — Stephen King

A wound gives strange dignity to him who bears it. Well men shy from his new and terrible majesty. It is as if the wounded man's hand is upon the curtain which hangs before the revelations of all existence - the meaning of ants, potentates, wars, cities, sunshine, snow, a feather dropped from a bird's wing; and the power of it sheds radiance upon a bloody form, and makes the other men understand sometimes that they are little. His comrades look at him with large eyes thoughtfully. Moreover, they fear vaguely that the weight of a finger upon him might send him headlong, precipitate the tragedy, hurl him at once into the dim, gray unknown.
("An Episode Of War") — Stephen Crane

Where something even deeper than the marrow knows that the cost of avoiding what one fears is even greater than the actual object of that fear and so the fear itself is even more corrosive even more destructive than all the frightening potential of the thing that arouses it. — Joe Henry

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing
fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. — Bertrand Russell

I say, choose faith. Choose faith over doubt, choose faith over fear, choose faith over the unknown and the unseen, and choose faith over pessimism. — Dallin H. Oaks

Nothing is really typical of my efforts ... I'm simply casting about for better ways to crystallise and capture certain strong impressions (involving the elements of time, the unknown, cause and effect, fear, scenic and architectural beauty, and other seemingly ill-assorted things) which persist in clamouring for expression. — H.P. Lovecraft

Like many other who have lived long in a great capital, she had strong feelings about the various railway termini. They are our gates to the glorious and unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return. In Paddington all Cornwall is latent and the remoter west; down the inclines of Liverpool Street lie fenlands and the illimitable Broads; Scotland is through the pylons of Euston; Wessex behind the poised chaos of Waterloo. Italians realize this, as is natural; those of them who are so unfortunate as to serve as waiters in Berlin call the Anhalt Bahnhof the Stazione d'Italia, because by it they must return to their homes. And he is a chilly Londoner who does not endow his stations with some personality, and extend to them, however shyly, the emotions of fear and love. — E. M. Forster

O Moon that rid'st the night to wake
Before the dawn is pale,
The hamadryad in the brake,
The Satyr in the vale,
Caught in thy net of shadows
What dreams hast thou to show?
Who treads the silent meadows
To worship thee below?
The patter of the rain is hushed,
The wind's wild dance is done,
Cloud-mountains ruby-red were flushed
About the setting sun:
And now beneath thy argent beam
The wildwood standeth still,
Some spirit of an ancient dream
Breathes from the silent hill.

Witch-Goddess Moon, thy spell invokes
The Ancient Ones of night,
Once more the old stone altar smokes,
The fire is glimmering bright.
Scattered and few thy children be,
Yet gather we unknown
To dance the old round merrily
About the time-worn stone.
We ask no Heaven, we fear no Hell,
Nor mourn our outcast lot,
Treading the mazes of a spell
By priests and men forgot. — Gerald Gardner

Always in the big woods when you leave familiar ground and step off alone into a new place there will be, along with the feelings of curiosity and excitement, a little nagging of dread. It is the ancient fear of the Unknown, and it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going into. — Wendell Berry

I took my fear to literal heights and went skydiving over a year ago. It was in that moment, gazing over the precipice of the plane, when I realized what scared me the most, the unknown. — Kathryn Budig

When you leave the familiar and enter the unknown, your fear becomes refined by experience and hammered into tools of survival on the anvil of anxiety. — T.D. Jakes

Fear of failure and fear of the unknown are always defeated by faith. Having faith in yourself, in the process of change, and in the new direction that change sets will reveal your own inner core of steel. — Georgette Mosbacher

It never ceases to amaze me when God wants to take someone to the next level in their life and they let fear of the unknown rob them of tremendous blessings. I think there are two common problems with Christians- They are scared to death of being truly free and of God's overwhelming love. — R. Alan Woods

Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. My three [great teachers] did not tell - they catalyzed a burning desire to know. Under their influence, the horizons sprung wide and fear went away and the unknown became knowable. But most important of all, the truth, that dangerous stuff, became beautiful and very precious. — John Steinbeck

Our dearest one. Fear nothing of the forest. There is no danger in solitude. We have no need of our brothers. Let us forget their good and our evil, let us forget all things save that we are together and that there is joy as a bond between us. Give us your hand. Look ahead. It is our own world, Golden One, a strange, unknown world, but our own. — Ayn Rand

I am not without fear, but courage is taking action despite the fear. Knowing what you want, what you are meant to do, and proceeding despite any knots in your stomach or rocks stuck in your throat. It is walking boldly into the unknown with your chin held high ... even if it quivers. — Rachel Harris

The only way to find peace is to face the unknown and trust that God has heard your tears. — Shannon L. Alder

To create a space for all our words, Drawing us to listen inward and outward. We seldom notice how each day is a holy place Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens, Transforming our broken fragments Into an eternal continuity that keeps us. Somewhere in us a dignity presides That is more gracious than the smallness That fuels us with fear and force, A dignity that trusts the form a day takes. So at the end of this day, we give thanks For being betrothed to the unknown And for the secret work Through which the mind of the day And wisdom of the soul become one. — John O'Donohue

It's fear of the unknown. The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that-it's all illusion. Unknown is what it is. Accept that it's unknown and it's plain sailing. Everything is unknown-then you're ahead of the game. That's what it is. Right? — John Lennon

Thus it was that in obedience to the law laid down by his mother, and in obedience to the law of that unknown and nameless thing, fear, he kept away from the mouth of the cave. — Jack London

What's life without a little risk? Sometimes you have to gamble to achieve greatness, and it's stupid to let fear of the unknown stop you from achieving your maximum potential. — Jaycee DeLorenzo

When you have done your best, confronted your fear of committing to color and form, and dared to step over the threshold into the unknown, you will invariably find your own voice. — Michele Cassou

People are always quick to call evil what they do not know. The unknown sprouts fear. It spreads like an infection, burrowing into every facet of their lives. They need a scapegoat, someone to blame. Fingers are pointed, accusations are made, and a target lands on somebody's back. They grow angry. They turn violent.
To history, human nature must be a stubborn and tiring student. No matter how many times history tries to show it the error of its ways, it never learns from its mistakes. — Kelseyleigh Reber

In the time we spend reeling in confusion, grasping at straws trying to piece our egos together, we forget to acknowledge some things. Society created gender roles and categorizations and lifestyles and names and titles because we fear the unknown, especially when the unknown is us.
It's as though we're stranded in the middle of an ocean, but we were promised the current would bring us back ashore. We're given all we need on the life raft. As far as we can see, we're being led back, slowly. We don't know when we'll approach the shore, but all evidence points to the fact that we will. But we don't spend our time looking around, enjoying the view, seeing who came with us, and riding out the waves. We sit and panic about what we're doing and why we came here.
It doesn't matter where we started because we may never know. It matters where we're going, because that, we do. We begin and we end. We've seen one, so there's only one other option. — Brianna Wiest

I like normal stuff people fear - like spiders and heights. I'm frightened by the unknown, by things that are hard to figure out and get a grip on. — Haley Joel Osment

Essentially, almost all humans are born with a fear of the unknown. It casts a pall of anxiety which pushes us into the arms of religions and soothsayers and their made-up answers. — Mario Stinger

Every day is a grand adventure into the great unknown and you cannot know what lies around the next corner. So, standing in this place, with the unknown before you, you have only two choices: you can live in trust (believing you are safe and that good things are coming) or you can live in fear (scared of the future and focused on you). Your choice will not change what's around that next corner, it will be what it's meant to be, but it will have a big impact on the way you feel today. Do you want to experience today in fear, focused on yourself? Or do you want to experience trust and focus on love? It's up to you. — Kimberly Giles

What is true of the natural qualities of the soul is preeminently true of faith. So long as we are quietly at rest amid favorable and undisturbed surroundings, faith sleeps as an undeveloped sinew within us. But when we are pushed out from all these surroundings, with nothing but God to look to, then faith grows suddenly into a cable, a monarch oak, a master-principle of the life. As long as the bird lingers by the nest, it will not know the luxury of flight. As long as the trembling boy holds to the bank, or toes the bottom, he will not learn the ecstasy of battling with the ocean wave. — F.B. Meyer

Superstitions, and especially the early cultivation of religion, with its "fear of the Lord" and of unknown mysterious agencies, are especially potent in the development of the instinct of fear. Even the early cultivation of morality and conscientiousness, with their fears of right and wrong, often causes psychoneurotic states in later life. Religious, social, and moral taboos and superstitions, associated with apprehension of threatening impending evil, based on the fear instinct, form the germs of psychopathic affections. — Boris Sidis

In the presence of the storm, thunderbolts, hurricane, rain, darkness, and the lions, which might be concealed but a few paces away, he felt disarmed and helpless. — Henryk Sienkiewicz

Has there ever been a night where you didn't feel safe? Maybe you felt you were being watched? Or you couldn't close your eyes for fear of the unknown? If, for only a moment, you let your guard down and hear a sound - unidentified and quiet - maybe it was all in your head.
Never let your guard down. — Mandi Lynn

A short story is not a portrayal of life. When life becomes disconsolate and the fear for the unknown seeps through the holes on the walls that we thought could protect us, telling a story could greatly help. The tradition of storytelling was oral, once. It's history. The wisdom in this history was the possibility to abide. Stories were medicines to drive away the ghosts of loneliness, boredom and ignorance. — Anu Lal

Growing up, imagination gave way to cynicism. Ignorance was traded in for world weariness. Fears remained, but they were the dull, suburban fears of illness, destitution, and death. The visceral terror of the unknown- of unseen things lurking under the bed or creeping out of the cupboard- became a fuzzy memory. — John McNee

The tension of a mysterious danger is even more unbearable than danger itself. People hate the vacuum of an unknown situation. They want security. They even prefer war to the insecure expectation of a war with its threat of enemy surprise. This vague fearful expectation acts on their fantasies. They anticipate all kinds of mysterious dangers; they begin to provoke them. It is the evocation of fear and danger in order to escape the tension of insecurity. — Joost Meerloo

Death's power lies in fear, which flourishes in the imagination and the unknown. — Wade Davis

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: "Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown." And he replied: "Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light, and safer than a known way." — Minnie Louise Haskins

The sea is dangerous and its storms terrible, but these obstacles have never been sufficient reason to remain ashore ... Unlike the mediocre, intrepid spirits seek victory over those things that seem impossible ... It is with an iron will that they embark on the most daring of all endeavors ... to meet the shadowy future without fear and conquer the unknown. — Ferdinand Magellan

The Warrior looks at the column of Fear, where he reads: "you are about to enter an unknown and dangerous world where all that you have learned up to now will be of no use whatsoever."
The Warrior of Light looks at the column of Desire, where he reads: "you are about to leave a known world where all the things you always wanted and all that you have fought so hard for are kept."
The Warrior smiles, because nothing can frighten him and nothing can hold him. With the confidence of those who know what they want, he opens the door. — Paulo Coelho

In the beginning of a movie, they don't tell you what's going to happen. You just have to wait and go on the adventure with them — Katie Douglas

Yes. I know all about soul-wraiths." Ramsey frowned. "How did you avoid them in the past?"
"Set a perimeter of energized diaman crystal. That will keep them at bay." Hel smiled without humor. "I have the diaman crystal in my saddle pack. I lack a sexual partner to energize them. I had intended to return with a magistra but a magister will work as well. Care to volunteer?"
"Only if I top," Ramsey snapped.
"You'd have to kill me first," returned Hel.
"With pleasure."
Steffania took a breath. Ram cut her off. "No. I don't share you, Vixen."
Fear of the unknown almost froze Adonia's tongue, but she was the obvious answer. She could do this, and the opportunity might never present itself again. "I'll be your partner. — Patricia A. Knight

Consciousness naturally resists anything unconscious and unknown. I have already pointed out the existence among primitive peoples of what anthropologists call "misoneism," a deep and superstitious fear of novelty. The primitives manifest all the reactions of the wild animal against untoward events. But "civilized" man reacts to new ideas in much the same way, erecting psychological barriers to protect himself from the shock of facing something new. — C. G. Jung

It seemed a ruse that fear of death should be the sole motivation for living and, yet, to quell this fear made the prospect of living itself seem all the more absurd; to extend this further, the notion of living one's life for the purposes of pondering the absurdity of living was an even greater absurdity in and of itself, which thus, by reductio ad absurdum, rendered the fear of death a necessary function of life and any lack thereof, a trifling matter rooted in self-inflicted incoherence. — Ashim Shanker

As knowledge grew, fear decreased; men thought less of worshiping the unknown, and more of overcoming it. — Will Durant

Stress comes from the fear of the unknown; tranquility comes from accepting the unknown with love and joy. — Debasish Mridha

By replacing fear of the unknown with curiosity we open ourselves up to an infinite stream of possibility. We can let fear rule our lives or we can become childlike with curiosity, pushing our boundaries, leaping out of our comfort zones, and accepting what life puts before us. — Alan Watts

The spiritual journey involves going beyond hope and fear, stepping into unknown territory, continually moving forward. The most important aspect of being on the spiritual path may be to just keep moving. — Pema Chodron

Since the dawn of existence, you mortals have feared dying, feared the unknown and the pain of it, and yet, pain is a part of life, not death. And I - I am the first moment after pain ceases," he [Death] pronounced. "It is life that fights and struggles and rages; life, that tears at you in its last agonizing throes to hold on, even if but for one futile instant longer ... Whereas I, I come softly when it is all done. Pain and death are an ordered sequence, not a parallel pair. So easy to confuse the correlations, not realizing that one does not bring the other. — Vera Nazarian

It's as though not even that most basic level of imaginative thought had been admitted into consciousness to cause the slightest disturbance. A century of destruction unlike any other in its extremity befalls and blights the human race - scores of millions of ordinary people condemned to suffer deprivation upon deprivation, atrocity upon atrocity, evil upon evil, half the world or more subjected to pathological sadism as social policy, whole societies organized and fettered by the fear of violent persecution, the degradation of individual life engineered on a scale unknown throughout human history, nations broken and enslaved by ideological criminals who rob them of everything, entire populations so demoralized as to be unable to get out of bed in the morning with the minutest desire to face the day ... all the terrible touchstones presented by this century, and here they are up in arms about Faunia Farley. — Philip Roth

Part of what attracted me to the village was it had a lot of parallels to contemporary issues. Like, fear and the way fear controls us. How the governing body of a town, or a nation, controls us through fear. They might mean well by it, but we are conditioned to be afraid of things. Fear of the unknown. Fear of terrorism. And it's unfortunate. — Adrien Brody

My blood rose, mixing with my lingering fear of the unknown to drive her to a fever pitch. Her lips touched my lower neck and vertigo spun the room, burning tracings of desire to settle deep and low in me. I exhaled into the promise of more to come, calling it to me. I breathed it in like smoke, the rising passion starting a feeling of abandonment inside. I didn't care anymore if it was right or wrong. It just was. — Kim Harrison

People need not fear the unknown if they are capable of achieving what they need and want. — Paulo Coelho

When the years have all passed, there will gape the uncomfortable and unpredictable dark void of death, and into this I shall at last fall headlong, down and down and down, and the prospect of that fall, that uprooting, that rending apart of body and spirit, that taking off into so blank an unknown, drowns me in mortal fear and mortal grief. After all, life, for all its agonies of despair and loss and guilt, is exciting and beautiful, amusing and artful and endearing, full of liking and of love, at times a poem and a high adventure, at times noble and at times very gay; and whatever (if anything) is to come after it, we shall not have this life again. — Rose Macaulay

Oh, the terrible struggle that I have had against sleep so often of late; the pain of the sleeplessness, or the pain of the fear of sleep, and with such unknown horror as it has for me! How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams. — Bram Stoker

Fearing the unknown within myself has kept me crouching in a corner. I look to see who I am and discover much that is worthy. — Maureen Brady

And here's the shock
when you risk it, when you do the right thing, when you arrive at the borders of common sense and cross into unknown territory, leaving behind you all the familiar smells and lights, you do not experience great joy and huge energy.
You are unhappy. Things get worse.
It is a time of mourning. Loss. Fear. We bullet ourselves through with questions. And then we feel shot and wounded.
And then all the cowards come out and say, 'See, I told you so.'
In fact, they told you nothing. — Jeanette Winterson

It was more than a spider. It was every unknown terror in the world fused into wriggling, poison-jawed horror. It was every anxiety, insecurity, and fear in his life given a hideous, night-black form. — Richard Matheson

There are many unknowns in life. This is patently clear again and again when we face vocational transitions. We cannot see around the bend in the road. We make decisions about our lives with implications for the lives of those we love and those for whom we have some responsibilities, and there are so many unknown variables. But there is one key variable that can be a known factor in our lives: The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore. (Ps 121:8) On this we can depend. It will be the same now and for each transition of our lives. If we believe this, it will be evident because fear will no longer co-opt our lives. — Gordon T. Smith

She had always suffered from a curious fear of what was going to happen round the next corner. Even when life went smoothly and nothing occurred to justify her vague apprehensions, they did not altogether disperse. She had tried to face these fears and conquer them, but she could never do so entirely, she could only strain forward into the darkness of the future, expecting and fearing the unknown. She was brave in the face of dangers she could see, but she could not arm herself against shadows. These fears were her weakness. — D.E. Stevenson

He was thinking about men like his Uncle Ted, a Cornishman to his bones, who lived and would die in St. Mawes, part of the fabric of the place, remembered as long as there were locals, beaming out of fading photographs of the Life Boat on pub walls. When Ted died - and Strike hoped it would be twenty, thirty years hence - they would mourn him as the unknown Barrovian Grammar boy was being mourned: with drink, with tears, but in celebration that he had been given to them. What had dark, hulking Brockbank, child rapist, and fox-haired Laing, wife-torturer, left behind in the towns of their birth? Shudders of relief that they had gone, fear that they had returned, a trail of broken people and bad memories. — Robert Galbraith

Freedom from stress, freedom from anxiety, freedom from depression; freedom is autonomy from all that stagnates growth in this ever complex and noisy world. By the fear of being in the unknown, we often overlook and forget the serene view of being on the raft: the glowing virgin stars, the gentle ways that the waves moves, and the endless possibilities that exist under the sun. The fundamental principle of freedom is to be lost and our state of mind never differs too far from this analogy of being stranded in the middle of the ocean. — Forrest Curran

Oh, you know ... staring down fear, laughing in the face of death, taking a ride in Hell, and in general, testing the waters of the unknown. — Jenn Cooksey

Take down the walls.
Otherwise you must live closely, in fear, building barricades against the unknown, saying prayers against the darkness, speaking verse of terror and tightness.
Otherwise you may never know hell, but you will not find heaven, either. You will not know fresh air and flying. — Lauren Oliver

The parts of my new job that filled me with abject and irrational fear, that twisted me into all kinds of knots, were the raw emotions of those left alive. It was the living who were the great unknown. — Scot Gardner

I remembered what it was like to die-the pain, the fear, the doubt, and the unknown. Somehow I had cheated death once. Now I was about to try again. — Rick Chiantaretto

There lay between them, separating them, that same terrible line of the unknown and of fear, like the line separating the living from the dead. — Leo Tolstoy

His singing made me want to fall to the ground and kiss it, as a son to a mother, grateful that someone could love it so keenly. For the first time in my life something new awoke within me, something irresistible: I still cannot explain it. It was a need to express myself, yes, to express myself, not only to see and sense the world, but to bring to others my vision, my thoughts and sensations, to describe the beauty of the earth as inspiringly as Daniyar could sing. I caught my breath for fear and joy of the unknown. At that time, however, I had not yet realized the need to take up brush and paints. — Chingiz Aitmatov

Horror is about fear, about rising dread and unknown terrors, and in the face of such nightmares, the acts of good people can seem insignificant. — Shane Jiraiya Cummings

Mystery has great power. In the many years I have worked with people with cancer, I have seen Mystery comfort people when nothing else can comfort them and offer hope when nothing else offers hope. I have seen Mystery heal fear that is otherwise unhealable. For years I have watched people in their confrontation with the unknown recover awe, wonder, joy, and aliveness. They have remembered that life is holy, and they have reminded me as well. In losing our sense of Mystery, we have become a nation of burned-out people. People who wonder do not burn out. — Rachel Naomi Remen

Darkness might seem to obscure what's happening, but I find it's always pretty revelatory: it brings out the awe in us, the fear in us, the excitement of exploring the hidden or unknown. It seems to conceal, but it really shines a light on what we want, what we need, and what we'll do to get it. Especially when we think no one can see us. — Kathe Koja

Chance; pure chance. But chance was a dull explanation because it denied the possibility of the paranormal, and people were often disappointed by dull explanations. Mystery and the unknown were far more exciting because they suggested that our world was not quite as prosaic as we feared it might be. Yet we had to adjure those temptations because they lead to a world of darkness and fear. — Alexander McCall Smith

When our children die, we drop them into the unknown, shuddering with fear. We know that they go out from us, and we stand, and pity, and wonder. — Henry Ward Beecher

Alex: "You asked earlier why us humans fear death. I suppose it is the unknown - not knowing what awaits on the other side. But now I know, and I still fear it."
The Darkness: "?"
Alex: "But now I fear the living - in fact, I now fear life more than death! — Scott Beadle

Elizabeth, when you look into the darkness you have two choices. You either fall into it, so you'll never fear the unknown again. Or you stay on the ledge, always wondering what's there. Torturing yourself over it. Elizabeth, I live in the abyss, and would like you to leap into the unknown with me. Will you join me? — LeeAnn Whitaker

The greatest fear in life is not of death, but unsolicited change. — Raheel Farooq

Heaven often seems distant and unknown, but if He who made the road ... is our guide, we need not fear to lose the way. — Henry Van Dyke

The laws of war, that restrain the exercise of national rapine and murder, are founded on two principles of substantial interest: the knowledge of the permanent benefits which may be obtained by a moderate use of conquest, and a just apprehension lest the desolation which we inflict on the enemy's country may be retaliated on our own. But these considerations of hope and fear are almost unknown in the pastoral state of nations. — Edward Gibbon

Three, 300, or 3,000 - these are the number of unknown days, a week, a year, or a decade, each far too precious little and yet, poignantly too much at the same time, to see an irrevocably declined loved one languish and suffer. That fear-ridden, irreversible release lingers in the doorway, but hesitates for reasons we don't understand, leaving us to weep with a mixture of angst and gratitude all at the same time. It is finally ushered all the way in, to comfort and carry our loved one to that Better Place. When the time finally comes, we can be enveloped in a warm cloak of long-awaited acceptance and peace that eases our own pain. It quiets the grief which has moaned inside of us, at least some, every single one of those bittersweet days, weeks... or years. — Connie Kerbs

It is far better to make them live in the Future. Biological necessity makes all their passions point in that direction already, so that thought about the Future inflames hope and fear. Also, it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time - for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays. Hence the encouragement we have given to all those schemes of thought such as Creative Evolution, Scientific Humanism, or Communism, which fix men's affections on the Future, on the very core of temporality. Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead. Do — C.S. Lewis

Ravens and crows. Rats Mists and clouds. Insects and corruption. Strange events and odd occurrences. The ordinary twisted and strange. Wonders!

The dead are beginning to walk and some see them. Others do not, but more and more, we all fear the night.

These have been our days. They rain upon us beneath a dead sky, crushing us with their fury, until as one we beg: "Let it begin!"

-Journal of the Unknown Scholar, entry for The Feast of Freia, 1000 NE — Brandon Sanderson

The fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown. — Plato

I used to fear depression. Now I look into the mirror and want to smash it to pieces. I put on fake smiles, I have no confidence, no one likes me, and I hate this place. Now I know why I feared it. — Unknown