I hesitate to use a pathologizing label, but underneath the so-called narcissistic personality is definitely shame and the paralyzing fear of being ordinary.

There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever.

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.

I’m not a big fan of psychoanalysis: I think if you have mental problems what you need are good pills. But I do think that if you have thinks that bother you, things that are unresolved, the more that you talk about them, write about them, the less serious they become.

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

Where fear is, happiness is not.

The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

There is no such thing as a pure introvert or extrovert. Such a person would be in the lunatic asylum.

One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.

Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.

Depression runs in my family on both sides, and I have to be wary.

As a shame researcher, I know that the very best thing to do in the midst of a shame attack is totally counterintuitive: Practice courage and reach out!

People are just afraid of things too much. Afraid of things that don’t necessarily merit fear.

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

As a lifestyle you always being the focal point is innately unhealthy.

If you can feel that Mother Earth is in you, and you are Mother Earth, then you are not any longer afraid to die because the earth is not dying. Like a wave appears and disappears and appears again.

For many people who are so lost in their minds, so much involved in their thought processes, the only moments they have when they are not trapped in that is when they are relating to their animal, their pet.

I’m afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.

Cycling can be lonely, but in a good way. It gives you a moment to breathe and think, and get away from what you’re working on.

The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.

That we are not much sicker and much madder than we are is due exclusively to that most blessed and blessing of all natural graces, sleep.

Your emotions are very unstable and should never be the foundation for direction in your life.

Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.

I’ve often said there’s nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse.

I am in my own head most of the time.

Things done well and with a care, exempt themselves from fear.

I talk to myself all the time. Just make sure you answer.

I don’t need therapy. I’m not going to see a therapist; comedy acts as my therapy. I put my problems out there. I talk about them. I talk about everything before anybody has a chance.

I’m sure the feeling of fear, as long as you can take advantage of it and not be rendered useless by it, can make you extend yourself beyond what you would regard as your capacity. If you’re afraid, the blood seems to flow freely through the veins, and you really do feel a sense of stimulation.

My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning.

Life opens up opportunities to you, and you either take them or you stay afraid of taking them.

I’d be more frightened by not using whatever abilities I’d been given. I’d be more frightened by procrastination and laziness.

The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.

Fear is exciting for me.

Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.

I won’t touch on risky, because that’s subjective. People are just afraid of things too much. Afraid of things that don’t necessarily merit fear.

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

The more you live in the present moment, the more the fear of death disappears.

My body is weird. I wake up when the sun comes up, and it’s hard for me to go to sleep. My thoughts just take over.

One of the things I definitely think of as a driver of me is fear. And it’s fear of failure, fear of being overtaken.

I was called really horrible, profane names very loudly in front of huge crowds of people, and my schoolwork suffered at one point.

To Sun-tzu and the ancient Chinese, doing something extraordinary had little effect without a setup of something ordinary. You had to mix the two – to fix your opponent’s expectations with some banal, ordinary maneuver, a comfortable pattern that they would then expect you to follow.

If a man be gloomy let him keep to himself. No one has the right to go croaking about society, or what is worse, looking as if he stifled grief.

Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

The worst part of success is, to me, adapting to it. It’s scary.

You can be obsessed with the bad things people say and the good things; either way, you’re obsessed with yourself, and I’m not – you can become unhinged so easily.

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.

It is much more secure to be feared than to be loved.

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

My heroes don’t have anything special. They have something to tell other people but they don’t know how, so they talk to themselves.

As a human being, anger is a part of our mind. Irritation also part of our mind. But you can do – anger come, go. Never keep in your sort of – your inner world, then create a lot of suspicion, a lot of distrust, a lot of negative things, more worry.

If one has fear, there can be no initiative in the creative sense of the word. To have initiative in this sense is to do something original – to do it spontaneously, naturally, without being guided, forced, controlled. It is to do something which you love to do.

I never dared to be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old.

My father was a mean, controlling and manipulative person for most of his life. He was unpredictable and unstable. As a result, the atmosphere of our home was super-charged with fear because you never knew if what you did would make him mad or not.

For most of us, relationship with another is based on dependence, either economic or psychological. This dependence creates fear, breeds in us possessiveness, results in friction, suspicion, frustration.

Fear is real, but so is love.

We must do everything in our power to cease the behaviour that makes children everywhere feel afraid.

Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking.