101 Unusual Quotes On Fear for Living the Bold Life

fearless

Everyone loves a good quote on overcoming fear. When you finish reading this list of 101 unusual quotes on fear you’ll notice that you’ll feel lighter, inspired and less afraid. Choose your favorite ones. Put them on index cards, sticky notes and in your phone.

It’s up to you to overcome your fear and be brave. Nobody is coming to rescue you. Eventually you will die. I want you to live life full out and die without regrets! 

Do what it takes to overcome your fear. Do it everyday.

1. Fear is the worst kind of grave, because it buries one alive. ~ Beth Fantaskey

2. Fear can force obedience, but it can never transform a heart. ~ Stacey Jay

3. What you fear will not go away; it will take you into yourself and bless you and keep you. That’s the world, and we all live there. ~ William Stafford

4. Fear kills everything. Your mind, your heart, your imagination. ~ Cornelia Funke

take your fear and shove it

5. Children have a lesson adults should learn, to not be ashamed of failing, but to get up and try again. Most of us adults are so afraid, so cautious, so ‘safe,’ and therefore so shrinking and rigid and afraid that it is why so many humans fail. Most middle-aged adults have resigned themselves to failure. ~ Malcolm X

6.It’s better to die laughing than to live each moment in fear. ~Unknown

7. One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

8. Don’t be afraid of your fears. They’re not there to scare you. They’re there to let you know that something is worth it. ~ C. JoyBell C.

9.  Imagine not being frightened by any feeling. Imagine knowing that nothing will destroy you. That you are beyond any feeling, and state. Bigger than. Vaster than. That there is no reason to use drugs because anything a drug could do would pale in comparison to knowing who you are. ~ Geneen Roth

10. Find what you are afraid of, face it, and then you won’t be afraid of it anymore. ~ Marilyn Manson

11. I tend to scare myself. ~ Stephen King

12. Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. ~ Soren Keiregaard

13. People are supposed to fear the unknown, but ignorance is bliss when knowledge is so damn frightening. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

14. I saw a little girl touch a big bug and shout, “I conquered my fear! Yes!” and calmly walk away. I was inspired. ~ Nathan Fillion

15. All that ever holds somebody back, I think, is fear. For a minute I had fear. [Then] I went into the [dressing] room and shot my fear in the face… ~ Lady Gaga

16. There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance.We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life. ~ John Lennon

17. I must not fear. Fear is the mind – killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. ~ Frank Herbert

18. Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free. ~ Jim Morrison

19. Ones fear of rejection is ones fear of love. ~ Alexandria Honey

20. I’m intimidated by the fear of being average. ~ Taylor Swift

21. We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. ~ Plato

22. “What do you fear, lady?” [Aragorn] asked. “A cage,” [Éowyn] said. “To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.” ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

23. Love is like jumping out of an airplane with no parachute. But there’s no need to be frightened, because that plane is still on the ground. ~ Jarod Kintz

24. There are two kinds of fears: rational and irrational or in simpler terms, fears that make sense and fears that don’t. ~ Lemony Snicket

inspirational quotes on fear

25. Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire. ~ Dan Brown

26. A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

27. Without fear there cannot be courage. ~ Christopher Paolini

28. I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always … so you must fight hard to express it.

You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don’t, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you. ~ Yann Martel 

29. The light of a new day always chases the shadows of the night away, and shows us that the shape of our fear is only the ghost of our own minds. ~ Terry Goodkind

30.People are supposed to fear the unknown, but ignorance is bliss when knowledge is so damn frightening. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton.

31. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things happen. Don’t be afraid. ~ Frederick Buechner

32. Fear doesn’t shut you down; it wakes you up. ~ Veronica Roth

33. Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

34. Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter. ~ Francis Chan

35. Fear’s useless. Either something bad happens or it doesn’t: If it doesn’t, you’ve wasted time being afraid, and if it does, you’ve wasted time that you could have spent sharpening your weapons. ~ Sarah Rees Brennan

36. Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. ~ Bertrand Russell

37. Fear isn’t so difficult to understand. After all, weren’t we all frightened as children? Nothing has changed since Little Red Riding Hood faced the big bad wolf. ~ Alfred Hitchcock

38. The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. ~ Joseph Campbell

39. Fear is a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life. ~ Donald Miller 

40. It’s all right to be afraid. You just don’t let it stop you from doing your job. ~ Jim Butcher

42. It frightens me, the awful truth, of how sweet life can be. ~ Bob Dylan

43. Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

44.Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts … perhaps the fear of a loss of power. ~ John Steinbec

45. A kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there were no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid any more. ~ John Steinbeck

46. When we think we have been hurt by someone in the past, we build up defenses to protect ourselves from being hurt in the future. So the fearful past causes a fearful future and the past and future become one. ~ Alfred Hitchcock

47. The baby bat
Screamed out in fright,
‘Turn on the dark,
I’m afraid of the light. ~ Shel Silverstein

48. I love you, I thought. But I didn’t say it. It was not that I feared she would laugh in my face. She was far too kind for that. My fear was a greater one – that she won’t say it back. ~ Alex Flinn

49.Your fear is 100% dependent on you for it’s survival. ~ Steve Maraboli

50. Deep in my heart I’m concealing things that I’m longing to say. Scared to confess what I’m feeling – frightened you’ll slip away. ~ Madonna

51. Only those who have never known fear are allowed to think less of others for being afraid. Frankly, I think anyone who has never been afraid of anything in their entire life is either a liar or lacks imagination. ~ Laurel K. Hamilton

52. When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears. ~ Anthony Robbins

53. There is no beauty in sadness. No honor in suffering. No growth in fear. No relief in hate. It’s just a waste of perfectly good happiness. ~ Katerina Stoykova Klemer

54. Courage is knowing what not to fear. ~ Plato

55. A further sign of health is that we don’t become undone by fear and trembling, but we take it as a message that it’s time to stop struggling and look directly at what’s threatening us.
~ Pema Chodron

unusual quotes on fear

56. We cannot love when we feel fear. When we release the fearful past and forgive everyone, we will experience total love and oneness with all. ~ Gerald Jampolsky

57. Life can take so many twists and turns. You can’t ever count yourself out. Even if you’re really afraid at some point, you can’t think that there’s no room for you to grow and do something good with your life. ~ Portia de Rossi

58. Never worry alone. When anxiety grabs my mind, it is self-perpetuating. Worrisome thoughts reproduce faster than rabbits, so one of the most powerful ways to stop the spiral of worry is simply to disclose my worry to a friend…The simple act of reassurance from another human being [becomes] a tool of the Spirit to cast out fear — because peace and fear are both contagious. ~ John Ortberg

59.I’m terrified of getting involved with someone who disappoints me or leave me empty and alone. I’m terrified of rejection, so I set my expectations so high that they can never be met, and I dig around with a magnifying glass looking for flaws in very person I date. There’s always a flaw to exploit, and I’ll find it so I never have to get too close. ~ Rachel Machacek

60. If a fear cannot be articulated, it can’t be conquered. ~ Stephen King

61. The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

62. Laughter is poison to fear. ~ George R.R. Martin

63. Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful. ~ Warren Buffet

64. Surely if we knew what bitterness fate held in store, we would shrink back in fear and let the cup of life pass us by untasted. ~ Jacqueline Carey

65. I don’t run away from a challenge because I am afraid. Instead, I run towards it because the only way to escape fear is to trample it beneath your foot. ~ Nadia Comaneci

66. Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears. ~ Rudyard Kipling

take your fear and shove it

67. Mastering others is strength. Mastering oneself makes you fearless. ~ Lao Tzu

68. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. ~ Henry David Thoreau 

69. When you teach them-teach them not to fear. Fear is good in small amounts, but when it is a constant, pounding companion, it cuts away at who you are and makes it hard to do what you know is right. ~ Christopher Paolini 

unusual quotes on fear

70. We are so scared of being judged that we look for every excuse to procrastinate. ~ Erica Jong

71.  Fear sucks. Because you never know when it will attack. Sometimes it sneaks up behind you, giggling like your best girlfriend from seventh grade. Then it whacks you on the back of the head, takes you straight to your knees before you realize what hit you. Other times you can see it coming, just a dot on the horizon, but you’re like a canary in a cage. ~ Unknown 

72. All you can do is hang in there and hope you don’t get motion sickness and puke all over the newspapers. ~ Jennifer Rardin

73. My life was going to flash before my eyes, but it decided to hide behind my eyes and quake with terror instead. ~ Sarah Rees Brennan 

74. The fear of an unknown never resolves, because the unknown expands infinitely outward, leaving you to cling pitifully to any small shelter of the known: a cracker has twelve calories; the skin, when cut, bleeds. ~ Caroline Kettlewell 

75. We fear what we most desire. ~ Harley King 

76. You shouldn’t feel so bad about being afraid of so many things.” “Why not?” “Because if you weren’t afraid never ever, then you couldn’t be brave never ever.” ~ C. JoyBell C. 

77. If you have no faith in yourself, then have faith in the things you call truth. You know what must be done. You may not have courage or trust or understanding or the will to do it, but you know what must be done. You can’t turn back. There is no answer behind you. You fear what you cannot name. So look at it and find a name for it. Turn your face forward and learn Do what must be done. ~ Patricia A. McKillip 

78. When you do what you fear most, then you can do anything. ~ Stephen Richards 

79. The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream.The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg;and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs.Dreams are the seedlings of realities. ~ James Allen

80. Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

81.But fear doesn’t need doors or windows. It works from the inside. ~ Andrew Clements

83. I believe there are three tenants to live by in this apartment called Life: Love is empowering, Fear is motivating, and Passion is fruit. ~ Jarod Kintz

83. Courage is fear that has said its prayers. ~ Dorothy Bernard 

84. Fear is the thief of dreams. ~ Brian Krans 

unusual quotes on fear

85. Your fear remains strong. You are not ready to face your story, preferring instead to surround yourself with knots. Someday, they will strangle you. ~ Maria V. Snyde 

86. It is a true saying, that what you fear you find. ~ Jeanette Winterson 

87. If you are facing a new challenge or being asked to do something that you have never done before don’t be afraid to step out. You have more capability than you think you do but you will never see it unless you place a demand on yourself for more. ~ Joyce Meyer 

88. It’s okay to be crazy and scared and brave at the same time! ~ Kelly Epperson 

89. But fear is confusing. It tears you in two. Half of you wants to run far, far away, but the other half is paralyzed, frozen, immovable. And the hard part is that you never know which half is going to win. ~ Melody Carlson

90.Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, do it. ~Neil Gaiman

91. As Grams treaded water, she tapped my forehead. ‘What’s in here, Poppy, is scarier than anything you’ll encounter in the depths of the ocean. An imagination is a powerful thing. ~ Shelley Coriell

92. What is fear after all? It is indecision. You seek some way to resist, escape. There is none. ~ Anne Rice

93. I am convinced that the deepest desire within each of us is to be liberated from the controlling influences of our own psychic madness or patterns of fear. All other things-the disdain of ordinary life, the need to control others rather than be controlled, the craving for material goods as a means of security and protection against the winds of chaos-are external props that serve as substitutes for the real battle, which is the one waged within the individual soul. ~ Caroline Myss

94. If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living. ~ Seneca

95. So now I know. I fear the unknown so deeply that I’d rather repeat the same heart-breaking pattern than face something or someone I can’t predict. ~ Valerie Frankel

96. But that inadequacy, or feeling of indadequacy, never really goes away. You just have to trudge ahead in the rain, requarless. ~ Lorrie Moore

97. Devour your fear. ~ Simon Holt

98. What frightens us today is exactly the same sort of thing that frightened us yesterday. It’s just a different wolf. This fright complex is rooted in every individual. ~ Alfred Hitchcock

99. Our tongues can’t compete with the rapid thinking of our brains, our words come out slow and slurred. The pen is our haven. There is a lot of fear buried into that little pen. It holds all of our agony, our torment, our blood and our heaven. ~ Coco J. Ginger

100. Most of us try to do too much because we are secretly afraid we will not be able to do anything at all. ~ Rick Aster

101. Of all the questions I have asked my readers this is the most important:What would you do if you weren’t afraid? When you finally give wings to that answer then you have found your life’s purpose. ~ Shannon L. Alder 

Do you want to overcome your fear? Check out my ecourse, Take Your Fear and Shove It!
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take your fear and shove it

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{ 23 comments… add one }

  • Vidya Sury July 15, 2012, 2:01 am

    WOW! Tess! What an absolute keeper this is! This one is going straight to my printer. I love the pictures throughout the post as much as the wonderful words of wisdom.

    Thank you! Have a super Sunday and a great week ahead!

    Reply
    • Tess July 15, 2012, 7:54 am

      Hi Vidya
      I’m thrilled that you are enjoying the quotes. I’m tired of the same ones and there are some real keepers here! A nice week back at you;)

      Reply
  • Harleena Singh July 15, 2012, 4:07 am

    Great collection Tess!

    Surely need to bookmark this page for all the possible collection of quotes on fear, and the wonderful pictures shared within. As I always keep saying so very often – it’s all in the mind – I guess it does hold a lot of meaning. We can overcome so many of the fears we have by just thinking positive – isn’t it?

    Thanks for sharing and have a wonderful weekend :)

    Reply
    • Tess July 15, 2012, 7:56 am

      Harleena,
      Yes, it certainly is all in the mind! I need to continuously feed my mind new affirmations, quotes, and stories to stay on top of my ego. Once a day isn’t enough. It’s several times a day for me.

      Reply
  • Jesslyn July 15, 2012, 6:02 am

    Hi Tess,
    Thanks for the great collections.
    This is my favourite quote “Fear is the thief of dreams. ~ Brian Krans”.

    Having worked in a corporation with a pay which is enviable by most of my peers, I decided to quit and be a full-time web entrepreneur. This was after much struggles with the fear inside me and the millions of “what if” which stopped me from pursuing my dreams. I am so glad that I had won the battle. Lesson learnt- If we allow fear to control us, then we will forever be controlled by fear. If we have a dream go chase it, change ourselves and do not be afraid to try new things.

    Reply
    • Tess July 15, 2012, 7:57 am

      Jesslyn,
      Good for you! There is nothing or nobody stopping us but ourselves. We have the power. We only have to use every bit of it to go forward!

      Reply
  • Karen July 15, 2012, 7:08 am

    My favorites were #20 and #25. Another great blog post.

    Reply
  • Tess July 15, 2012, 7:58 am

    Karen,
    They are simple and true. That’s for sure! Have a positive week!

    Reply
  • Chris Akins July 15, 2012, 10:36 am

    “Fear will get you hurt!” Shouted to me by a Marine Corps Drill Instructor at Officer Candidate School while I was traversing the Jungle Course, a series of rope obstacles elevated high in the trees of a Quantico, VA forest.

    There was a life lesson in that course, and in the DI’s words of encouragement.

    Reply
  • Tess The Bold Life July 15, 2012, 1:05 pm

    Hi Chris,
    Yes that’s true in many situations…fear will get me hurt. Thanks for sharing your memorable experience with us. Have a great week!

    Reply
  • Chris July 16, 2012, 12:28 am

    Hi Tess,

    this is an amazing post! Thank you so much for this wonderul collection of wisdom … it’s full of surprising insights!

    Best regards,
    Chris

    Reply
    • Tess July 16, 2012, 8:16 am

      Your welcome Chris. Let me know if there is anything else I can do for you!

      Reply
  • Megan Bord July 16, 2012, 3:27 am

    Tess, I couldn’t pass up 101 Unusual Quotes on Fear! I only read the first twenty or so, but LOVED the Geneen Roth quote, as well as the Nathan Fillion one. I’ll have to revisit this list often and pluck inspiration from it when needed.

    Reply
  • Tess July 16, 2012, 8:16 am

    Megan,
    I’m doing the same thing. I need to be inspired as well!!!

    Reply
  • Cathy | Treatment Talk July 16, 2012, 5:50 pm

    Great collection of quotes, Tess! I love this one – “Ones fear of rejection is ones fear of love.” ~ Alexandria Honey, and then No. 101 for me is the bottom line. Thanks for sharing these, will definitely come back to reread!

    Reply
  • Victor July 16, 2012, 8:51 pm

    Tess, awesome list. Boy that must have taken you some time to put together! :) This is great! I liked so many of them — 7, 16, 26, 84, 52, man — just a goldmine here! Thanks for sharing! :)

    Reply
  • Fran Sorin July 17, 2012, 3:33 am

    Tess….This is one to print and to take 2 a week to contemplate about it.

    I love Simon Holt’s ‘Devour your fear’ and

    Anne Rices ‘What is fear after all? It is indecision. You seek some way to resist, escape. There is none.’ ~

    Too many other good ones to even mention. xxoo-Fran

    Reply
  • Stephen S. Mack July 17, 2012, 7:20 am

    Do not take counsel of your fears.
    Gen. Thomas Jonathan Jackson, aka “Stonewall” Jackson.

    With best regards,

    Stephen

    Reply
  • Elle July 19, 2012, 9:21 am

    Tess, this must have taken you forever to put together…but it was so well worth it. Love the quotes, love the pics. This is a keeper.

    Elle
    xoxo

    Reply
  • michael platania July 21, 2012, 4:07 pm

    Great quotes, very inspiring, yet when the moment comes and I am face to face with the fear, it is not the quotes that get me through it – it is my own determination, strength, belief and history. I’ve had to spend a lot of time building the muscles that are giving me the strength to push through the fear and create the life I want to live.

    Reply
  • rita singh July 24, 2012, 7:13 am

    THIS is PHENOMENAL…..each quote BETTER than the other…the 1st saying said it ALL…..fear is the worst kind of grave because it buries you ALIVE….beth NAILED it S-P-O-T O-N….yes! fears n phobias stop u from living n one is like ‘A WALKING DEAD’….before u actually die u die countless ‘deaths’ n even while breathing u feel suffocated n either breathless or the heartbeats RACE n go into a FRENZY….FEAR stems from the same emotion ‘LOVE’…..there r different n various types of fears…some can be dealt with easily or with difficulty but the kind of fear that i have is i guess unique n even talking about it UPS my heartbeats….normally it would be a ‘taboo’ subject or so i think…..but this READ was VERY INSPIRING N ASPIRING…..WELL DONE N THANKS….BTW may i ask what was the BOLDEST thing u ever did???????…………………………………

    Reply
  • Kevin Klein July 26, 2012, 7:53 am

    Tess,
    Wow! What a great collection. There are so many good quotes here I’ll have to read them all again (and again.)

    Maybe I didn’t see it and maybe you didn’t include it because it’s over used; Winston Churchill said, “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.”

    Thanks for sharing!

    Wishing you Inner Peace, Outer Harmony and Joy All Around
    Kevin

    Reply
  • Halina Goldstein July 27, 2012, 11:53 pm

    Here’s what I’ve learned from my personal experience, and from working with clients:

    Fear is basically a way in which we (mis)interpret an inner physical, mental and emotional state. When you move deep into it you discover it is something completely different: excitement, power, and even joy! :-)

    So you could say that there are stages of our life where fear is installed in order to hold us back – and that is a meaningful part of the adventure we call life. It is then part of the adventure to move through and beyond fear. Some do it by making it their enemy and boldly conquering it, some do it by embracing it like any other of life’s gifts and loving it just as boldly.

    Fortunately there are as many adventures as there are people in the world and there are countless ways of relating to fear. Thank you for sharing 101 of the unusual ones!

    Reply

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