frightening things

Quotations about Fear

A fool without fear is sometimes wiser than an angel with fear.
- - - Lady Nancy Astor "My Two Countries"

Cruelty and fear shake hands together. An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.
- - - Honoré de Balzac

Courage is fear that has said its prayers.
- - - Dorothy Bernard

The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?
- - - Bible - Psalm 27:1

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
- - - Bible - Psalms 23:4

He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat.
- - - Napoleon Bonaparte

Who is all-powerful should fear everything.
- - - Pierre Corneille

Fear is a question: What are you afraid of, and why? Just as the seed of health is in illness, because illness contains information, your fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if you explore them.
- - - Marilyn Ferguson

I have not ceased being fearful, but I have ceased to let fear control me.
- - - Erica Jong

Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear.
- - - Zora Neale Hurston

We invent what we love, and what we fear.
- - - John Irving

The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear.
- - - Krishnamurti

Fear is nature's warning signal to get busy.
- - - Henry C. Link

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

It's the heart afraid of dying, that never learns to dance; It's the dream afraid of waking, that never takes the chance; It's the one who won't be taken, who cannot seem to give; And the soul afraid of dying, that never learns to live.
- - - Bette Midler "The Rose"

Fear is the mother of morality.
- - - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Nay, fly to altars; there they'll talk you dead; For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
- - - Alexander Pope "An Essay on Criticism"

Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed.
- - - Michael Pritchard

We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face... we must do that which we think we cannot.
- - - Eleanor Roosevelt

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty.
- - - Bertrand Russell "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish"

Be wary then; best safety lies in fear.
- - - Shakespeare "Hamlet"

Valor grows by daring, fear by holding back.
- - - Publilius Syrus

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.
- - - Harry S Truman, August 8, 1950

Fear is a slinking cat I find Beneath the lilacs of my mind.
- - - Sophie Tunnel

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.
- - - Mark Twain

Quotations about Agony

I like a look of agony
Because I know it's true.
- - - Emily Dickinson

On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.
- - - Virginia Woolf

Quotations about Anger

Never forget what a man has said to you when he was angry.
- - - Henry Ward Beecher

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.
- - - George Eliot

Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.
- - - Elizabeth I

For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.
- - - Ralph Waldo Emerson

When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred.
- - - Thomas Jefferson

Anger is as a stone cast into a wasp's nest.
- - - Malabar Proverb

When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.
- - - Mark Twain "Pudd'nhead Wilson"

Quotations about Bigotry

Bigotry dwarfs the soul by shutting out the truth.
- - - Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost.
- - - Charles Caleb Colton

The mind of the bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract.
- - - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Quotations about Censorship

You can cage the singer but not the song.
- - - Harry Belafonte

Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.
- - - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. It is a heritage of communism, but they don't seem to see this.
- - - Doris Lessing

Quotations about Corruption

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
- - - William Shakespeare "Sonnet 94"

Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lies in sweetest bud.
All men make faults.
- - - William Shakespeare "Sonnet 35"

Quotations about Cowardice

Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie -- . . .
But rather mourn the apathetic throng --
The cowed and the meek --
Who see the world's great anguish and its wrong
And dare not speak.
- - - Ralph Chaplin "Solidarity Forever" (song, January 9, 1915)

Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.
- - - Ernest Hemingway

Pacifism is simply undisguised cowardice.
- - - Adolf Hitler

The coward threatens when he is safe.
- - - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When all the blandishments of life are gone,
The coward sneaks to death, the brave live on.
- - - George Sewell "The Suicide"

Quotations about Crime

It is worse than a crime, it is a blunder.
- - - Antoine Boulay de la Meurthe

Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
- - - Henry Thomas Buckle

Whenever man commits a crime heaven finds a witness.
- - - Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

The worst crime is faking it.
- - - Kurt Cobain

Commit a crime and the earth is made of glass.
- - - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Not failure, but low aim, is crime.
- - - James Russell Lowell

Quotations about Criticism

Do not remove a fly from your friend's forehead with a hatchet.
- - - Chinese Proverb

They have vilified me, they have crucified me. Yes, they have even criticized me.
- - - Richard J. Daley

People can be divided into two classes: those who go ahead and do something, and those who sit still and inquire, 'Why wasn't it done the other way?'
- - - Oliver Wendell Holmes

To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
- - - Elbert Hubbard

When a man points a finger at someone else, he should remember that four of his fingers are pointing at himself.
- - - Louis Nizer

In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, impeached one and hounded another out of office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate their character.
- - - P. J. O'Rourke "Parliament of Whores"

A critic is one who leaves no turn unstoned.
- - - George Bernard Shaw

He who slings mud generally loses ground.
- - - Adlai Stevenson

Famous Curses

May your every wish be granted.
- - - Ancient Chinese Curse

May your left ear wither and fall into your right pocket.
- - - Arab Curse

May those that love us, love us;
and those that don't love us,
May God turn their hearts;
and if He doesn't turn their hearts,
may He turn their ankles
so we'll know them by their limping.
- - - Old Irish Toast

May you wander over the face of the earth forever, never sleep twice in the same bed, never drink water twice from the same well, and never cross the same river twice in a year.
- - - Traditional Gypsy Curse

May the grass grow at your door and the fox build his nest on your hearthstone.
May the light fade from your eyes, so you never see what you love.
May your own blood rise against you, and the sweetest drink you take be the bitterest cup of sorrow.
May you die without benefit of clergy;
May there be none to shed a tear at your grave, and may the hearthstone of hell be your best bed forever.
- - - Traditional Wexford Curse

It is the greatest art of the devil to convince us he does not exist.
- - - Charles Baudelaire

An apology for the Devil: It must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
- - - Samuel Butler "Higgledy-Piggledy"

The devil is an angel too.
- - - Miguel de Unamuno

In all systems of theology, the devil figures as a male person.
- - - Don Herold

Does the devil know he is a devil?
- - - Elizabeth Madox Roberts

God is in my head, but the devil is in my pants.
- - - Jonathan Winters

Quotations about Enemies

When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.
- - - African Proverb

Choose your friends carefully. Your enemies will choose you.
- - - Yassir Arafat

The wise learn many things from their enemies.
- - - Aristophanes

You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.
- - - Joseph Conrad "Lord Jim"

A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.
- - - Baltasar Gracian

One should forgive one's enemies, but not before they are hanged.
- - - Heinrich Heine

One enemy is too much.
- - - George Herbert

The Greatest Happiness is to scatter your enemy and drive him before you. To see his cities reduced to ashes. To see those who love him shrouded and in tears. And to gather to your bosom his wives and daughters.
- - - Genghis Khan

It's far easier to forgive an enemy after you've got even with him.
- - - Olin Miller

The sweeter the apple, the blacker the core -
Scratch a lover, and find a foe!
- - - Dorothy Parker

To have a good enemy, choose a friend; he knows where to strike.
- - - Diane de Pointiers

If the enemy leaves a door open, you must rush in.
- - - Sun Tzu

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it.
- - - Voltaire

Always forgive your enemies, nothing annoys them so much.
- - - Oscar Wilde

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
- - - Oscar Wilde

If you want to make enemies, try to change something.
- - - Woodrow Wilson

When your enemy falls, don't rejoice -- but don't pick him up either.
- - - Yiddish Proverb

Quotations about Envy

Do you know the hallmark of the second-rater? It's resentment of another man's achievement.
- - - Ayn Rand

How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes!
- - - William Shakespeare "As You Like It"

Quotations about Evil

Those that set in motion the forces of evil cannot always control them afterwards.
- - - Charles W. Chestnutt

Between two evils, choose neither; between two goods, choose both.
- - - Tyron Edwards

In battling evil, excess is good; for he who is moderate in announcing the truth is presenting half-truth. He conceals the other half out of fear of the people's wrath.
- - - Kahlil Gibran, 'Narcotics and Dissecting Knives,' Thoughts and Meditations, 1960

Don't let us make imaginary evils, when you know we have so many real ones to encounter.
- - - Oliver Goldsmith

You are alone my evil and my good With you I have everything - without you nothing
- - - Louise Labe

Evil often triumphs, but never conquers.
- - - Joseph Roux

By the prickling of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.
- - - William Shakespeare "Macbeth"

Evil comes to all us men of imagination wearing as its mask all the virtues.
- - - William Butler Yeats

Quotations about Failure

Half the failures in life arise from pulling in one's horse as he is leaping.
- - - Julius Hare

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
- - - Abraham Lincoln

There are few pains so grievous as to have seen, divined, or experienced how an exceptional man has missed his way and deteriorated.
- - - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche "Beyond Good and Evil"

This thing that we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down.
- - - Mary Pickford

Failures are divided into two classes -- those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought.
- - - John Charles Salak

I don't know the formula for success, but I know the formula for failure -trying to please everybody.
- - - Robert Louis Stevenson

When you are down and out something always turns up - and it's usually the noses of your friends.
- - - Orson Welles

Quotations about Hatred

Of all the objects of hatred, a woman once loved is the most hateful.
- - - Max Beerbohn

Love, friendship, respect, will never unite people as much as a common hatred for something.
- - - Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.
- - - Eldridge Cleaver

Hatred - The anger of the weak.
- - - Alphonse Daulet

What do you despise? By this are you truly known.
- - - Frank Herbert "Dune"

We must hate - hatred is the basis of communism. Children must be taught to hate their parents if they are not communists.
- - - Vladimir Ilich Lenin - 1923 Speech to the Commissars of Education

Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.
- - - Niccolo Machiavelli

Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.
- - - Bertrand Russell

Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.
- - - George Bernard Shaw

Hate and mistrust are the children of blindness.
- - - William Watson

Quotations about Mistakes

There is no mistake so great as that of being always right.
- - - Samuel Butler

A man who has committed a mistake and does not correct it is committing another mistake.
- - - Confucius

Of course I shall go astray often...for who does not make mistakes? But I cannot go far wrong for I have seen the truth.
- - - Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski

Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow; He who would search for pearls must dive below.
- - - John Dryden "All for Love"

To err is human, but when the eraser wears out ahead of the pencil, you're overdoing it.
- - - Josh Jenkins

Everybody makes mistakes; look at Hitler.
- - - Dean Martin

The physician can bury his mistakes but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines.
- - - Frank Lloyd Wright

Quotations about Murder

If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.
- - - Thomas De Quincey

And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand.
- - - George Bernard Shaw "Caesar and Cleopatra"

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
- - - Voltaire "War"

Murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.
- - - Oscar Wilde

Never murder a man who is committing suicide.
- - - Woodrow Wilson

Quotations about Pain

If I can stop one heart from breaking
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
- - - Emily Dickinson

In the country of pain we are each alone.
- - - May Sarton

Pain and pleasure, like light and darkness, succeed each other.
- - - Laurence Stern

Nothing begins, and nothing ends,
That is not paid with moan;
For we are born in others' pain
And perish in our own.
- - - Francis Thompson

We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity.
- - - H. G. Wells

Violence is the ultimate human degradation.
- - - Ramsey Clark

Not only do most people accept violence if it is perpetuated by legitimate authority, they also regard violence against certain kinds of people as inherently legitimate, no matter who commits it.
- - - Edgar Z. Friedenberg

In violence, we forget who we are.
- - - Mary McCarthy "On the Contrary"

Men create war to compete with women, who create life.
- - - Sharon Doubiago

Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is the one thing that stops women laughing at them.
- - - John Fowles "The Magus"

War is death's feast.
- - - George Herbert "Outlandish Proverbs"

Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.
- - - Herbert Hoover

Now the trumpet summons us again - not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are; but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, 'rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation', a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.
- - - John F. Kennedy

If any question why we died,
Tell them because our fathers lied.
- - - Rudyard Kipling "Epitaphs of War"

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
- - - George Orwell

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
- - - Jeannette Rankin

I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed . . .I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.
- - - Franklin D. Roosevelt

What if they gave a war and nobody came?
- - - Carl Sandburg

Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.
- - - Percy Bysshe Shelley "A Declaration of Rights" (Dublin, 1812)

It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.
- - - William Tecumseh Sherman

To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.
- - - George Washington

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
- - - Oscar Wilde