FEAR A good scare is worth more than good advice.
Ed Howe (1853–1937)
Anxiety has its use, stimulating us to seek with keener longing for that security where peace is complete and unassailable.
Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430)
Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
Extreme fear can neither fight nor fly.
William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
Fear always springs from ignorance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
Fear imprisons, faith liberates; fear paralyzes, faith empowers; fear disheartens, faith encourages; fear sickens, faith heals; fear makes useless, faith makes serviceable—and, most of all, fear puts hopelessness at the heart of life, while faith rejoices in its God.
Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969)
Fear is tax that conscience pays to guilt.
George Sewell (d. 1726)
Fear is the sand in the machinery of life.
E. Stanley Jones (1884–1973)
Fear knocked at the door. Faith answered. No one was there.
Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is.
German Proverb
Fear of God can deliver us from the fear of man.
John Witherspoon (1723–1794)
Fear. His modus operandi is to manipulate you with the mysterious, to taunt you with the unknown. Fear of death, fear of failure, fear of God, fear of tomorrow—his arsenal is vast. His goal? To create cowardly, joyless souls. He doesn’t want you to make the journey to the mountain. He figures if he can rattle you enough, you will take your eyes off the peaks and settle for a dull existence in the flatlands.
Max L. Lucado (1955– )
God incarnate is the end of fear; and the heart that realizes that he is in the midst . . . will be quiet in the midst of alarm.
F. B. Meyer (1847–1929)
God planted fear in the soul as truly as he planted hope or courage. It is a kind of bell or gong which rings the mind into quick life on the approach of danger. It is the soul’s signal for rallying.
Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887)
God’s never missed the runway through all the centuries of fearful fog.
Charles R. Swindoll (1934– )
He who fears death cannot enjoy life.
Spanish Proverb
He who fears to suffer, suffers from fear.
French Proverb
I fear God, yet am not afraid of him.
Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682)
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
A. E. Housman (1859–1936)
It is better to die of hunger, so that you be free from pain and from fear, than to live in plenty and be troubled in mind.
Epictetus (c. 55–c. 135)
It is the fear of everything new which gives personal and social life its stability and the framework of habits without which all is confusion.
Paul Tournier (1898–1986)
Many a man threatens while he quakes for fear.
Many of our fears are tissue-paper thin, and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them.
Brendan Francis
My father had never lost his temper with us, never beaten us, but we had for him that feeling often described as fear, which is something quite different and far deeper than alarm. . . . One does not fear God because he is terrible, but because he is literally the soul of goodness and truth, because to do him wrong is to do wrong to some mysterious part of oneself, and one does not know exactly what the consequence may be.
Joyce Cary (1888–1957)
Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.
Marie Curie (1867–1934)
Only he who can say, “The Lord is the strength of my life,” can say, “Of whom shall I be afraid?”
Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910)
Our Lord cannot endure that any who love him should be worried, for fear is painful. Thus St. John says: “Love casteth out fear.” Love cannot put up with either fear or pain, and so, to grow in love is to diminish in fear, and when one has become a perfect lover, fear has gone out of him altogether.
At the beginning of a good life, however, fear is useful. It is love’s gateway. A punch or an awl makes a hole for the thread with which a shoe is sewed . . . and a bristle is put on the thread to get it through the hole, but when the thread does bind the shoe together, the bristle is out. So fear leads love at first, and when love has bound us to God, fear is done away.
Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–c. 1327)
Relinquishment of burdens and fears begins where adoration and worship of God become the occupation of the soul.
Frances J. Roberts
Shame arises from the fear of men, conscience from the fear of God.
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear the most.
Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevski (1821–1881)
The adventurous life is not one exempt from fear, but on the contrary one that is lived in full knowledge of fears of all kinds, one in which we go forward in spite of our fears.
Paul Tournier (1898–1986)
The cure for fear is faith.
Norman Vincent Peale (1898– )
The only power which can resist the power of fear is the power of love.
Alan Stewart Paton (1903– )
The only sure way to take fear out of living is to keep a respectful fear of God in our lives, which means to maintain a reverent attitude toward his place and influence. This brand of fear is a healthy ingredient, a deterrent to want, a spur to courage and confidence, an insurance against loss, and source of comfort and understanding.
Eugene Asa Carr (1830–1910)
The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God, you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God, you fear everything else.
Oswald Chambers (1874–1917)
The right fear is the fear of losing God.
Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–c. 1327)
The wicked is a coward, and is afraid of everything; of God, because he is his enemy; of Satan, because he is his tormentor; of God’s creatures, because they, joining with their Maker, fight against him; of himself, because he bears about with him his own accuser and executioner. The godly man contrarily is afraid of nothing; not of God, because he knows him as his best friend, and will not hurt him; not of Satan, because he cannot hurt him; not of afflictions, because he knows they come from a loving God, and end in his good; not of the creatures, since “the very stones in the field are in league with him”; not of himself, since his conscience is at peace.
Joseph Hall (1574–1656)
The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear. It is the storm within which endangers him, not the storm without.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
There are moments when everything goes well; don’t be frightened, it won’t last.
Jules Renard (1864–1910)
This is a wise, sane Christian faith: that a man commit himself, his life, and his hopes to God; that God undertakes the special protection of that man; that therefore that man ought not to be afraid of anything.
George Macdonald (1824–1905)
Those who loved to be feared, fear to be loved.
Saint Francis of Sales (1567–1622)
To be feared is to fear: no one has been able to strike terror into others and at the same time enjoy peace of mind.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 b.c.–a.d. 65)
To the man who is afraid everything rustles.
Sophocles (c. 496–406 b.c.)
Tommy’s tears and Mary’s fears
Will make them old before their years.
We fear something before we hate it; a child who fears noises becomes a man who hates noises.
Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
We master fear through faith—faith in the worthwhileness of life and the trustworthiness of God; faith in the meaning of our pain and our striving, and confidence that God will not cast us aside but will use each one of us as a piece of priceless mosaic in the design of his universe.
Joshua Loth Liebman (1907–1948)
Whatever you fear (or supremely respect) the most you will serve.
Rebecca Manley Pippert
When I think of us human beings, it seems to me that we have a lot of nerve to make fun of the ostrich.
Heywood Broun (1888–1939)
Where man can find no answer, he will find fear.
Norman Cousins (1912– )
Who lives in fear will never be a free man.
Horace (65–8 b.c.)
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
