Fear of man

“ Not all the mothers of the whole evolution of man manufactured fear or fearlessness in men. Far back beyond the first men were fear and fearlessness, love, hatred, anger, all the emotions, growing, developing, becoming the stuff that was to become men. ”

“ An action that can harm a living thing;
And undeveloped energies of mind.
What are the worst three things to fear, O Seer! -
What are the worst three things for a man to fear?
The worst three things for man to fear, O Son! ”

“ All at once this man, heretofore so sure, so self-sufficient, so incredulous of anything except his own continued glory and happiness and life, was face to face with the first fear—the simple, primitive fear of death. ”

“ Again, the man of strong will and pure desires may quit the body spiritually, actually, and be perceptible to others at a distance; may be spoken to, hold conversations, and move material objects, when his body lies scores of leagues away.
"Are there demons?" Yes, two kinds: forms of fear, corresponding to a man's bad moral state,—projected out-creations from the wicked self. ”

“ Like every man, from the head of a household to the Arch-Judge or the Camptâ, you must rule by fear. But your wrath will 'stand to cool;' and you will hate to make a girl cry as you would hate to send a criminal to the electric-rack, the lightning-stroke, or the vivisection-table. ”

“ Lord, what a thing is fear! it transforms the creatur's of the world and the craft of man, making that which is ugly, seemly in our eyes, and that which is beautiful, unsightly! Lord, Lord, what a thing is fear! ”

“ If the stimulus of fear be repeated from day to day, whether in the case of a mother anxious on account of the illness of a child; a business man struggling against failure; a politician under contest for appointment; a broker in the daily hazard of his fortune; litigants in legal battle, or a jealous lover who fears a rival; the countless real as well as the baseless fears in daily life, in fact, all forms of fear, as it seems to me, express themselves in like terms of ancestral physical contests. On this law, fear dominates the various organs and parts of the body. ”

“ Such an extravagant cast of mind engages multitudes of people not only in impertinent terrors, but in supernumerary duties of life; and arises from that fear and ignorance which are natural to the soul of man. ”

“ There have been many attempts in the history of mankind to escape from the dominion of fear; the essence of fear, that which prompts it, is the consciousness of our vulnerability. What we all dread is the disease or the accident that may disable us, the loss of money or credit, the death of those whom we love and whose love makes the sunshine of our life, the anger and hostility and displeasure and scorn and ill-usage of those about us. ”

“ Then the great fear surges in your soul, the real fear—the fear beside which other fears are vain imaginings; the fear lest right there and then you are losing your own soul; that you are losing your own soul and the soul of a people; that millions of unborn children, black and gold and mauve, are being there and then despoiled by you because you are a coward and dare not fight! ”

“ And is that not our fate? What produces to-day our repulsion towards "man"?—for we suffer from "man," there is no doubt about it. It is not fear; it is rather that we have nothing more to fear from men ”

“ Fear, that had master’d me,—why, I was Master of Fear!
It was true! Running from them, the Fear that had ridden me, spurr’d me, nor spared,
Running right for them,—where was it? As little I knew as I cared!
From all care of myself, from all fear of the Power that still menaced and quiver’d,
From the False Fear of God, by the True I’d been snatch’d and delivered!
Ay, that’s what it came to.—The moment I turn’d to be true to my trust.
Terror left me. The moment I said in my soul, “It’s my duty: I must,”
[2] I could! ”

“ Her own terror rushed upon me, and in that moment of fear, - the most terrible fear a man can experience, - I knew that in inexpressible ways she was dear to me. ”

“ He is full of fear, and objectless fear must invent a danger, [341] which is easily done by supposing that the spirit has been actuated by wrath. Then something must have been done to enrage him: a taboo has been broken, his rites have been neglected, sin has been committed—according to the customary ideas of the tribe. There must be lustration, propitiation, expiation, perhaps with horrible cruelty. Again, then, shall we say the man has been diverted from the important inquiry into the causes of disease or drought? ”

“ In this it has done mankind a great disservice: all fear is bad, and ought to be overcome not by fairy tales, but by courage and rational reflection. I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. ”

“ M. But if that cannot disorder the mind of a wise man, nothing else can. For what can such a man be disturbed by fear? Fear proceeds from the same things when absent which occasion grief when present. Take away grief, then, and you remove fear.
The two remaining perturbations are, a joy elate above measure, and lust; and if a wise man is not subject to these, his mind will be always at rest. ”

“ Fear, on the contrary, and all the contracted and egoistic modes of thought, are inlets to destruction. Most mind-curers here bring in a doctrine that thoughts are “forces,” and that, by virtue of a law that like attracts like, one man's thoughts draw to themselves as allies all the thoughts of the same character that exist the world over. ”

“ The danger, when not seen, has the imperfect vagueness of human thought. The fear grows shadowy; and Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated, sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion. ”

“ And I think if only we would go deep enough in our own lives, and be honest enough with ourselves to gain a clear insight into our motives and impulses, we would discover how large a part fear has played in us,—fear, of course, in all the wide range of its aspects, that shades off on the one side into arrant cowardice and on the other side into a mere hesitancy of character and timidity, but fear nevertheless. Some of us are even now cloaking the things that lie deepest in our hearts, because we are afraid to give expression to them. ”

“ Thus also the disturbance and fear, which often follow upon a man’s having done an injury, arise from a sense of his being blameworthy; otherwise there would, in many cases, be no ground of disturbance, nor any reason to fear resentment or shame. On the other hand, inward security and peace, and a mind open to the several gratifications of life, are the natural attendants of innocence and virtue. ”

“ Fear paralyzes the brain. Progress is born of courage. Fear believes—courage doubts. Fear falls upon the earth and prays—courage stands erect and thinks. Fear retreats—courage advances. Fear is barbarism—courage is civilization. Fear believes in witchcraft, in devils and in ghosts. Fear is religion—courage is science. ”

“ For years they had lived with some species of fear—of honest men or vengeance, of pursuit, of starvation, of lack of drink or gold, of blood and death, of stronger men, of luck, of chance, of fate, of mysterious nameless force. ”

“ This Fear of any Future Difficulties or Misfortunes is so natural to the Mind, that were a Man's Sorrows and Disquietudes summ'd up at the End of his Life, it would generally be found that he had suffer'd more from the Apprehension of such Evils as never happen'd to him, than from those Evils which had really befallen him. ”

“ But bring not thee—therefore we grow afraid.
What things men fear they do not dare to say
Lest, thus provoked, Fate should no more delay
But run on them and wreak those ills they dread:
To Death we kneel, to God we bow the head;
Yet of our fears we have the most dismay.
We fear our fears, but thee, Oh Fear, we hate,
For thou with all our sins art intimate
As He who made us; crimes wrought long ago,
Follies and half-faults, each one thou dost know
And dost avenge with rods deliberate. ”

“ Their fear is a physical and instinctive shrinking from hurt, shock, and the unknown, which instinct obtains the mastery only through surprise, or through the exhaustion of the mind and will, or through a man being excessively self-centred. ”

“ When anything seems to you to be a source of fear, when any situation strikes you with terror and makes your body tremble and the cold sweat of fear comes over it, remember it is always for one reason; the ego has perceived it as a symbol of fear, a sign of sin and death. ”

“ What is it but the consciousness of Fear? Here it is that the struggle and the triumph of humanity are to be found. Natural courage faces danger, and perhaps carries itself triumphantly through it, perhaps not. But moral courage faces fear, and in the very act of facing it puts it down: and this is the kind of courage in which we would have men put their trust ”

“ Do the things you are afraid of; dare the men who make cowards of you; say the things you fear to say; and be the things you know you ought to be, and it will surprise you how the petty devils of worry will slink away from you. You will walk in new life, in new strength, in new joy, in new freedom. ”

“ In each human heart terror survives
The ravin it has gorged: the loftiest fear
All that they would disdain to think were true: _620
Hypocrisy and custom make their minds
The fanes of many a worship, now outworn.
They dare not devise good for man's estate,
And yet they know not that they do not dare. ”

“ It was fear, rather than anger that sounded in their voices, the deadly terror of that unconquerable enemy, free-thinking, so often beaten down but always raising its head again. Men looked at each other with dread and suspicion in their eyes. ”

“ He was in the grip of horrible fear; of a fear whose cold hand robs its victim of all will and of all power; of all wish to escape, to resist, or to move; which destroys hope and despair alike, and holds the empty and useless carcass as if in a vise under the coming stroke. ”

“ I have the mania of persecution, a ceaseless, tormenting terror, but there are moments when I am seized by the thirst of life, and in those moments I fear to go out of my mind. I long to live ... terribly! ”

“ But now, in addition to this, they suffered from the constant fear not only of being killed themselves, but, what is perhaps worse for a man, of seeing his wife and children killed from the air. These feelings exist among the ordinary people throughout the whole of the civilized world, but I doubt if many of those who have that fear realize one or two things with reference to the cause of that fear. ”

“ I believe that almost every one might answer, that more than half might be charged to one single source of suffering—fear—fear of [196] opinion, reproach, shame, poverty, pain, danger, disease and death. I pause not to consider the usual dull illustrations of the wisdom and utility of assigning to us the instinct of fear, to put us on our guard and to enable us to ward off evils. It is not this instinctive shrinking and vigilance to avoid evil that I consider. ”

“ the terror and the delight of that moment when first we fear ourselves! Until then we have not lived. ”

“ We must therefore look about us, as if we were in an enemy’s country; and consider our last hour, not as a punishment, but as the law of Nature: the fear of it is a continual palpitation of the heart, and he that overcomes that terror shall never be troubled with any other. ”

“ When anyone sees me, he flees with fear. But, for what does he fear me? I have not vexed him. So, I pursue the one that fears me. I want to ask him, 'Why do you fear me?' But, when I pursue it, it goes on fleeing more rapidly. ”

“ Truly, the souls of men are full of dread:
♦ Ye cannot reason almost with a man
40 That looks not heavily and full of fear. ”

“ Is to impress on men the fear of death, to teach
Trembling & fear, terror, constriction, abject selfishness.
Mine is to teach Men to despise death & to go on
In fearless majesty annihilating Self, laughing to scorn
Thy Laws & terrors, shaking down thy Synagogues as webs. ”

“ I might boast that during all this scene of horror not a sigh or expression of fear escaped from me, had not my support been found in that miserable, though strong, consolation, that all mankind were involved in the same calamity, and that I imagined I was perishing with the world itself. ”

“ Scarcely have we seized and hastily connected by cognition a few data on the circumstances in question—a particular event, or an opinion expressed by another— than out of the depth of our being there arises, uninvited, the ever-ready, never-tiring Will, and manifests itself as terror, fear, hope, pleasure, desire, envy, sorrow, zeal, anger, courage ”