Fear seems to have many causes. Fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of being hurt, and so on, but ultimately all fear is the ego’s fear of death, of annihilation. To the ego, death is always just around the corner. In this mind-identified state, fear of death affects every aspect of your life.

My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a ‚race‘ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

The death of my father is probably the biggest thing that I ever faced. Daddy and I were best friends.

Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.

Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.

Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music.

Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you’re aboard, there’s nothing you can do.

Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.

I was scared many times on Everest, but this is all part of the challenge. When I fell down a crevasse, it was pretty scary.

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‚What are you doing for others?‘

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

When good Americans die they go to Paris.

My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.

One secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.

To me the ego is the habitual and compulsive thought processes that go through everybody’s mind continuously. External things like possessions or memories or failures or successes or achievements. Your personal history.

Death means change our clothes. Clothes become old, then time to come change. So this body become old, and then time come, take young body.

I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient.

Life is tragic. You are tiny and flawed and ignorant and weak, and everything else is huge, complex, and overwhelming.

The thing we fear we bring to pass.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

Youth is to all the glad season of life; but often only by what it hopes, not by what it attains, or what it escapes.

Growing old has been the greatest surprise of my life.

The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.

Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we’re hardwired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country’s scared.

Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.

I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.

I’m 31 now. I think I’m beginning to understand what life is, what romance is, and what a relationship means.

The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did – which was to hide.

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.

Just as courage is the danger of life, so is fear its safeguard.

Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.

There’s an ecstatic side to writing. It’s like jazz. It just has a life.

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.

Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life.

The big message of gospel is that you don’t have to keep fighting the universe; you can stop, and the universe is quite good to you. There is a loss of ego.

Either he’s dead or my watch has stopped.

I’m terrified of losing my voice.

Fear, separation, hate and anger come from the wrong view that you and the Earth are two separate entities, the Earth is only the environment. You are in the centre and you want to do something for the Earth in order for you to survive. That is a dualistic way of seeing.

I have spent my life going from mania to mania. Somehow it has all paid off.

He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.

If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.

Life is anything but predictable.

The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.

Life is a song to me.

We of the sinking middle class may sink without further struggles into the working class where we belong, and probably when we get there it will not be so dreadful as we feared, for, after all, we have nothing to lose.

Shame is the most powerful, master emotion. It’s the fear that we’re not good enough.

I do not like the man who squanders life for fame; give me the man who living makes a name.

A big ego means that you have some confidence in your abilities, really, and that you’re prepared to take the risk of trying them out.

A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.

It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.

Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

Let the fear of a danger be a spur to prevent it; he that fears not, gives advantage to the danger.

To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.

I am not made for politics because I am incapable of wanting or accepting the death of the adversary.

What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.

Realists do not fear the results of their study.