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Exlpore more Fear quotes

"At the advent of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal force in the human heart: one very reasonably invites a man to consider the nature of the peril and the means of escaping it; the other, with a still greater show of reason, argues that it is too depressing and painful to think of the danger since it is not in man's power to foresee everything and avert the general march of events, and it is better therefore to shut one's eyes to the disagreeable until it actually comes, and to think instead of what is pleasant. When a man is alone he generally listens to the first voice; in the company of his fellow-men, to the second."

"There lay between them, separating them, that same terrible line of the unknown and of fear, like the line separating the living from the dead."

"There is a kind of fear, approaching a panic, that's spreading through the Baby Boom Generation, which has suddenly discovered that it will have to provide for its own retirement."

"Fear is a good thing. It mean you're paying attention."

"The only reason for your intimidation by the devil, and your being afraid of him, or what he can do is because you are living in ignorance (darkness) which is his territory."

"Fear leads to worry. Worry leads to depression. But faith overcomes fear and worry."
Explore more quotes by John Cheever


"Good writers are often excellent at a hundred other things, but writing promises a greater latitude for the ego."


"Literature has been the salvation of the damned, literature has inspired and guided lovers, routed despair and can perhaps in this case save the world."


"People look for morals in fiction because there has always been a confusion between fiction and philosophy."


"The task of an American writer is not to describe the misgivings of a woman taken in adultery as she looks out of a window at the rain but to describe four hundred people under the lights reaching for a foul ball. This is ceremony."


"The deep joy we take in the company of people with whom we have just recently fallen in love is undisguisable."


"When I remember my family, I always remember their backs. They were always indignantly leaving places."


"What I am going to write is the last of what I have to say. I will say that literature is the only consciousness we possess and that its role as consciousness must inform us of our ability to comprehend the hideous danger of nuclear power."
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