Fearlessness

“ Courage and fearlessness are trained amid dangers; but we have still to consider how fear is to be trained. We desire to attain fearlessness and confidence without the insolence and boldness which commonly attend them. For do not love, ignorance, avarice, wealth, beauty, strength, while they stimulate courage, also madden and intoxicate the soul? What better and more innocent test of character is there than festive intercourse? Would you make a bargain with a man in order to try whether he is honest? ”

“ To take, for instance, the feeling of fear; is it likely that we shall find out whether it is innate in human nature or acquired and intensified in each generation, by shaking our fists in the face of a little baby, to see whether it will wink or shrink or shriek? Some children may be more fearless than others, but whether that fearlessness arises from ignorance or from stolidity is again by no means easy to determine. ”

“ Such men are rare. You all understand the meaning of "Fearlessness" in its fullest sense. It means absolute independence—in two words, he is the FEARLESS man who "fears-nothing," and "faces-everything." That everything includes everyone. That nothing excludes no one. Viewed from this standpoint is not the fearless man rarely to be met with? You may come across degrees of fearlessness. ”

“ I believe that Fearthought is the root of more misery, unhappiness, disease, crime, failure and other undesirable things than any one thing in the world. I intend to attack this monster most vigorously, through these columns. I intend going for him with the grace of God in my heart, and a good hickory club in my hand. I will cause many of you to tear out Fear by the roots—you don't need it about you. I will preach the gospel of Fearlessness. There is nothing in the world (or out of it) to fear except—Fear. ”

“ 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! ”

“ I came out of this age of ours, this ripe prime of the human race, when fear does not paralyze and mystery has lost its terrors. I at least would defend myself. Without further delay I determined to make myself arms and a fastness where I might sleep with some security. From that refuge as a base I could face the strange world with some confidence again, a confidence I had lost now that I realized to what uncanny creatures I nightly lay exposed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fear scares me from my sleep; and in the night I, like a troubled spirit, roam and try The strength of every bolt, and put to proof Each guard's fidelity:—I see, with fear, The dawning of each morn, which may confirm My apprehensions:—yet, thank God, there's hope That all my fears will soon be at an end ”

“ 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 spiritual fear—which is one of the noblest of all affections, as bodily fear is one of the basest—is, if properly defined, nothing less or more than the fear of doing wrong; of becoming a worse man.
But what has that to do with mere fear of the unseen? The fancy which conceives the fear is physical, not spiritual. Think for yourselves. What difference is there between a savage’s fear of a demon, and a hunter’s fear of a fall? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And yet, O my God, can I be without Fear? This Want of saving Fear should make me fear all things; I am certainly lost if I be not afraid of being lost, and can I fear anything so much as Eternal Perdition? ”

“ Fear no more, says the heart in the body; fear no more. ”

“ God planted fear in the soul as truly as He planted hope or courage. Fear is a kind of bell, or gong, which rings the mind into quick life and avoidance upon the approach of danger. It is the soul's signal for rallying.—Beecher. ”

“ I shall remind you of that when under the myriad eyes of the all-seeing sky you are again confused with fear. And how not have fear! The thing that we purposed was great and dreadful, and it would have given a glory to our names in far posterity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I was a younger man then, and could still in the long run rely on nerve and muscle; but fear turns one's blood to water—that terror of the spirit, and not merely of the mind or instinct. It bides its moment until the natural edges off into—into the unknown. ”

“ I don't know whether I have been able to make any of my emotions clear to you in my letters. Terror has a terrible fascination. Up to now I have always been afraid—afraid of small fears. At last I meet fear itself and it stings my pride into an unpremeditated courage. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fear leap in a babe's face, and take his breath,
⁠Fear, like the fear of eld
That knows the price of life, the name of death.
⁠What is it justifies
This thing, this dread, this fright that has no tongue,
⁠The terror in those eyes
When only eyes can speak—they are so young? ”

“ So far from perceiving any moral courage, in those, who fight duels, nothing seems more apparent, than the triumph of one fear, over four other fears—the fear of shame, over the fear of bringing misery upon parents, wives and children—the fear of the law—the fear of God—and the fear of death. ”

“ Consternation is, then, fear at a strange apparition, or at an unlooked-for representation—such as, for example, a message; while fear is an excessive wonderment on account of something which arises or is. ”

“ Then fear enters their hearts. They believe in no hereafter and no god. They see that life here is short and uncertain. They see that there are good things in the world—fine food, fine clothes, money, power. ”

“ I see her still—the piteous mouth,
The great eyes fixt with fear.
Not an hour since upon my knee
Her good-night pranks were play’d,
And now—to face Death . . . and alone . . .
God! and afraid? “Afraid!” ”

“ The escape from this tremendous fall and subtle snare is by fearing at all times, and by doing good works with fear and trembling, lest through some hidden worm of self-love and pride they be contaminated and rendered offensive to God. ”

“ Fear industriously increases every sound; we all listen; each communicates to each other his fears and conjectures. We remain thus, sometimes for whole hours, our hearts and our minds racked by the most anxious suspense! What a dreadful situation! A thousand times worse than that of a soldier engaged in the midst of a most severe conflict! Sometimes feeling the spontaneous courage of a man, I seem to wish for the decisive minute ”

“ When I became older, about the age of eighteen to twenty, a new form of fear appeared, like a new sprout added to the main trunk, or possibly growing out of the main fear of disease and death, that is the fear of some vague, impending evil. The fear of some terrible accident to myself and more so to my family, or to any of the people of whom I happen to take care, is constantly present in the margin of my consciousness, or as you would put it, in my subconsciousness. ”

“ Fear gets possession of me under circumstances in which my suspicions are, for some reason or other, aroused to activity, all the more so if the suspicions of possible impending evil are awakened suddenly. ”

“ The pendulum cannot long stay in a position which flies so completely in the face of the law of gravitation. It is pure nonsense to talk about being incapable of fear. I remember reading somewhere about Queen Elizabeth, that 'her soul was incapable of fear.' That statement is false and absurd. You may regard fear as unmanly and unworthy: you may repress the manifestations of it; but the state of mind which (in beings not properly monstrous or defective) follows the perception of being in danger, is fear. As surely as the perception of light is sight, so surely is the perception of danger fear. ”

“ But when fear has once possessed you, God ye good even! You think you are flying towards the poop when you are running towards the prow, and for one enemy think you have ten before your eyes, as drunkards who see a thousand candles at once. ”

“ Fear and a certain tender solicitude mingle in our regard for every child; not a lad we pass in the street but may presently be called to face such pain and stress and danger as no ancient hero ever knew. ”

“ I fear to say a word even against the devil or Satan. I am obsessed by fears. Fears pursue me as long as I am awake, and do not leave me alone in my sleep and dreams. Fears are the curse of my life, and yet I have control of them, none but you has any suspicion of them. ”

“ There came in answer the whimper of one too frightened to speak. Did you ever, as a child, Doctor, waken with the nightmare, afraid to cry out, afraid to move, tortured by the whimpers wrung out in reasonless terror? ”

“ Fear is more demonstrative, and as it is essentially destructive, its effects are more sudden and visible. In its acuter forms, as Fright and Terror, it may blanch the hair in a night, blight the mind and destroy the life of the individual. ”

“ As a matter of contrast-inhibitions of such fears I may either brace myself and put myself in a state of courage and exaltation, or when this does not succeed, I let my mind dwell on other fears and troubles. ”

“ Let us then frankly recognise the physical element in these irrational terrors; and when one has once done this, a great burden is taken off the mind, because one sees that such fear may be a real illusion, a sort of ghastly mockery, which by directly affecting the delicate machinery through which emotion is translated into act, may produce a symptom of terror which is both causeless and baseless, and which may imply neither a lack of courage nor self-control. ”

“ Next, the happy believers in the supernatural owed to their simplicity delicious throbs of fear,—not craven cowardice, but that more refined and complex feeling, which is of all sensations the most enthralling, the most elusive, and the most impossible to define. Fear, like all other treacherous gifts, must be handled with discrimination: a thought too much, and we are brutalized and degraded ”

“ And the many people who, impatient of perpetual alarms of fear, have hanged or drowned themselves, or dashed themselves to pieces, give us sufficiently to understand that fear is more importunate and insupportable than death itself. ”

“ 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! ”

“ So soon as the strain of my hanging told direct upon that scorched strand, that strand must part.
“Then, I think, I knew fear—fear as hideous -and demoralising as it may be, short of the will-paralysis. And, indeed, I am not convinced but that that last reserve of self-masterfulness does not aggravate fear's complaint. Consciousness in extremis never seems to me the desirable thing that some hold it. ”

“ Your hairy ears hear, not him who speaks best, but him who shouts loudest. And fear, that natural fear which was the counsellor of your ancestors and mine when they were cave-dwellers, the fear which created gods and crimes, makes you the enemy of the unfortunate and deprives you of pity. ”

“ 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. ”