When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.

Don’t waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour’s duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, — “always do what you are afraid to do”

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world

God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. Always, always, always, always, always do what you are afraid to do. Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.

Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.

“Life can be wonderful if you’re not afraid of it. All it takes is courage, imagination … and a little dough.”

Life can be wonderful if you're not afraid of it. All it needs is courage, imagination ... and a little dough.

“The best way for us to cultivate fearlessness in our daughters and other young women is by example. If they see their mothers and other women in their lives going forward despite fear, they'll know it's possible.” 

People who say, 'There's nothing to fear from spiders' have clearly never been to Australia.

“At the prompting of some stray instinct or chance association, you will invent delightful or fearsome circumstances, identifying them, with the most shameful doubleness, with the real ones...you will burst into passionate eloquence, or pant in the direst predicament, all for the fun of it, or by virtue of a terrible inner compulsion; and this dream which is byplay, or play which is a waking dream, will exhibit your brooding soul, if not always to moral advantage or with much coherence, at least in its unsuspected ingenuities of invention. What brilliant images, what subtle emotions, what dramatic turns in the argument of a dream, and in the make-believe of children! You seem to dictate and compose your fiction deliberately, rejecting, foreseeing, feeling the oncoming revolution towards which circumstances must be addressed.”

“Laughter is the only free emotion - the only one that can't be compelled. We can be made to fear. We can even be made to believe we're in love because, if we're kept dependent and isolated for long enough, we bond in order to survive. But laughter explodes like an aha! It comes when the punch line changes everything that has gone before, when two opposites collide and make a third and when we suddenly see a new reality...laughter is an orgasm of the mind.” 

I am not afraid of death. I just don't want to be there when it happens.

All you have to do is hold your first soldier who is dying in your arms, and have that terribly futile feeling that I can't do anything about it... Then you understand the horror of war.

True courage is being afraid, and going ahead and doing your job anyhow, that's what courage is.

“True courage is being afraid, and going ahead and doing your job anyhow, that's what courage is.” 

“she seemed both proud and scared that I was where she had once wished to be.” 

“The best way for us to cultivate fearlessness in our daughters and other young women is by example. If they see their mothers and other women in their lives going forward despite fear, they'll know it's possible.” 

“Laughter is the only free emotion - the only one that can't be compelled. We can be made to fear. We can even be made to believe we're in love because, if we're kept dependent and isolated for long enough, we bond in order to survive. But laughter explodes like an aha! It comes when the punch line changes everything that has gone before, when two opposites collide and make a third and when we suddenly see a new reality...laughter is an orgasm of the mind.” 

“For fear of the newspapers politicians are dull, and at last they are too dull even for the newspapers.” 

“The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.”

“Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities.”

“Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol, or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice.”