It is the reformer who is anxious for the reform, and not society, from which he should expect nothing better than opposition, abhorrence and even mortal persecution.
I’m afraid of love, because it involves things that are beyond our understanding; it sheds such a brilliant light, but the shadow it casts frightens me.
It was my fear of failure that first kept me from attempting the master work. Now, I'm beginning what I could have started ten years ago. But I'm happy at least that I didn't wait twenty years.
Wait. This was the first lesson I had learned about love. The day drags along, you make thousands of plans, you imagine every possible conversation, you promise to change your behavior in certain ways -- and you feel more and more anxious until your loved one arrives. But by then, you don't know what to say. The hours of waiting have been transformed into tension, the tension has become fear, and the fear makes you embarrassed about showing affection.
Think neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices are fathered by our heroism. Virtues are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.
Never have anything to do with likes and dislikes. The absence of what one likes is painful, as is the presence of what one dislikes. Therefore don't take a liking to anything. To lose what one likes is hard, but there are no bonds for those who have no likes and dislikes. From preference arises sorrow, from preference arises fear, but he who is freed from preference has no sorrow and certainly no fear.
Do you know your particular fears? And what do you usually do with them? You run away from them, don't you, or invent ideas and images to cover them? But to run away from fear is only to increase it.
It might, too, have been the singular cold that alienated me; for such chilliness was abnormal on so hot a day, and the abnormal always excites aversion, distrust, and fear.