Quotes
Quotes about Fear
So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.
So slippery that
The fear's as bad as falling.
Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt.
The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death.
Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!
The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
'T is mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's,
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.
Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.
Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.
'T is just like a summer bird-cage in a garden,--the birds that are without despair to get in, and the birds that are within despair and are in a consumption for fear they shall never get out.
The fear of some divine and supreme powers keeps men in obedience.
No arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs.
So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear,
Farewell remorse; all good to me is lost.
Evil, be thou my good.
Her feet beneath her petticoat
Like little mice stole in and out,
As if they feared the light;
But oh, she dances such a way!
No sun upon an Easter-day
Is half so fine a sight.
He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
That dares not put it to the touch
To gain or lose it all.
He that is down needs fear no fall.
Death in itself is nothing; but we fear
To be we know not what, we know not where.
When I can read my title clear
To mansions in the skies,
I 'll bid farewell to every fear,
And wipe my weeping eyes.
And feels a thousand deaths in fearing one.
First, then, a woman will or won't, depend on 't;
If she will do 't, she will; and there's an end on 't.
But if she won't, since safe and sound your trust is,
Fear is affront, and jealousy injustice.
Truths would you teach, or save a sinking land?
All fear, none aid you, and few understand.
For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise!
From Marlb'rough's eyes the streams of dotage flow,
And Swift expires, a driv'ler and a show.
They hear a voice in every wind,
And snatch a fearful joy.
