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Quotes about Fear

The light of truth burns without a flicker in the depths of a house that is shaken with storms of passion and fear.
— Thomas Merton
The man who fears to be alone will never be anything but lonely, no matter how much he may surround himself with people. But the man who learns, in solitude and recollection, to be at peace with his own loneliness, and to prefer its reality to the illusion of merely natural companionship, comes to know the invisible companionship of God
— Thomas Merton
Laziness and cowardice are two of the greatest enemies of the spiritual life.
— Thomas Merton
The truth that many people never understand is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more your suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things start to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.
— Thomas Merton
What you fear is an indication of what you seek.
— Thomas Merton
Without courage we can never attain to true simplicity. Cowardice keeps us "double minded" —hesitating between the world and God.
— Thomas Merton
Just as bees are driven out by smoke, and their honey is taken away from them, so a life of ease drives out the fear of the Lord from man's soul and takes away all his good works.
— Thomas Merton
The spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to be lived. ... If we want to be spiritual, then, let us first of all live our lives. Let us not fear the responsibilities and the inevitable distractions of the work appointed by the will of God.
— Thomas Merton
CII ABBOT PASTOR said: Just as bees are driven out by smoke, and their honey is taken away from them, so a life of ease drives out the fear of the Lord from man's soul and takes away all his good works.
— Thomas Merton
The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows, not by clarity and substance but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis.
— Thomas Merton
Now anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity. It is the fruit of unanswered questions. But questions cannot go unanswered unless they first be asked. And there is a far worse anxiety, a far worse insecurity, which comes from being afraid to ask the right questions — because they might turn out to have no answer. One of the moral diseases we communicate to one another in society comes from huddling together in the pale light of an insufficient answer to a question we are afraid to ask.
— Thomas Merton
The Root of War Is Fear AT the root of all war is fear: not so much the fear men have of one another as the fear they have of everything. It is not merely that they do not trust one another; they do not even trust themselves. If they are not sure when someone else may turn around and kill them, they are still less sure when they may turn around and kill themselves. They cannot trust anything, because they have ceased to believe in God.
— Thomas Merton