As dreadful as the Manichean god,

Adored through fear, strong only to destroy.

William Cowper (1731-1800): The Task. Book v. The Winter Morning Walk. Line 444.

Who, doomed to go in company with Pain

And Fear and Bloodshed,—miserable train!—

Turns his necessity to glorious gain.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Character of the Happy Warrior.

Full little knowest thou that hast not tride,

What hell it is in suing long to bide:

To loose good dayes, that might be better spent;

To wast long nights in pensive discontent;

To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow;

To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow.

  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

To fret thy soule with crosses and with cares;

To eate thy heart through comfortlesse dispaires;

To fawne, to crowche, to waite, to ride, to ronne,

To spend, to give, to want, to be undonne.

Unhappie wight, borne to desastrous end,

That doth his life in so long tendance spend!

Edmund Spenser (1553-1599): Mother Hubberds Tale. Line 895.

When I can read my title clear

To mansions in the skies,

I 'll bid farewell to every fear,

And wipe my weeping eyes.

Isaac Watts (1674-1748): Hymns and Spiritual Songs. Book ii. Hymn 65.

Tush! tush! fear boys with bugs.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The Taming of the Shrew. Act i. Sc. 2.

Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane,

I cannot taint with fear.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act v. Sc. 3.

In every hedge and ditch both day and night

We fear our death, of every leafe affright.

Du Bartas (1544-1590): Second Week, First Day, Part iii.

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind;

The thief doth fear each bush an officer.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry VI. Part III. Act v. Sc. 6.

Fear God. Honour the king.

New Testament: 1 Peter ii. 17.

Henceforth the majesty of God revere;

Fear Him, and you have nothing else to fear.

James Fordyce (1720-1796): Answer to a Gentleman who apologized to the Author for Swearing.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

Are of imagination all compact:

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,

That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

Such tricks hath strong imagination,

That if it would but apprehend some joy,

It comprehends some bringer of that joy;

Or in the night, imagining some fear,

How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act v. Sc. 1.

First, then, a woman will or won't, depend on 't;

If she will do 't, she will; and there's an end on 't.

But if she won't, since safe and sound your trust is,

Fear is affront, and jealousy injustice.

Aaron Hill (1685-1750): Zara. Epilogue.

So slippery that

The fear's as bad as falling.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Cymbeline. Act iii. Sc. 3.

Feare may force a man to cast beyond the moone.

John Heywood (Circa 1565): Proverbes. Part i. Chap. iv.

Sacred religion! mother of form and fear.

Samuel Daniel (1562-1619): Musophilus. Stanza 57.

Love thyself last: cherish those hearts that hate thee;

Corruption wins not more than honesty.

Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace,

To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not:

Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's,

Thy God's, and truth's; then if thou fall'st, O Cromwell,

Thou fall'st a blessed martyr!

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry VIII. Act iii. Sc. 2.

Men the most infamous are fond of fame,

And those who fear not guilt yet start at shame.

Charles Churchill (1731-1764): The Author. Line 233.

Go, Soul, the body's guest,

Upon a thankless arrant:

Fear not to touch the best,

The truth shall be thy warrant:

Go, since I needs must die,

And give the world the lie.

Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618): The Lie.

The fear o' hell's a hangman's whip

To haud the wretch in order;

But where ye feel your honour grip,

Let that aye be your border.

Robert Burns (1759-1796): Epistle to a Young Friend.

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

'T is mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes

The throned monarch better than his crown;

His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,

The attribute to awe and majesty,

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;

But mercy is above this sceptred sway,

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,

It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God's,

When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,

Though justice be thy plea, consider this,

That in the course of justice none of us

Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

The deeds of mercy.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The Merchant of Venice. Act iv. Sc. 1.

Cowards die many times before their deaths;

The valiant never taste of death but once.

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,

It seems to me most strange that men should fear;

Seeing that death, a necessary end,

Will come when it will come.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Julius Caesar. Act ii. Sc. 2.

Yet do I fear thy nature;

It is too full o' the milk of human kindness.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act i. Sc. 5.

Death in itself is nothing; but we fear

To be we know not what, we know not where.

John Dryden (1631-1701): Aurengzebe. Act iv. Sc. 1.

Cowards [may] fear to die; but courage stout,

Rather than live in snuff, will be put out.

Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618): On the snuff of a candle the night before he died.—Raleigh's Remains, p. 258, ed. 1661.

Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.

Why should we faint and fear to live alone,

Since all alone, so Heaven has willed, we die?

Nor even the tenderest heart, and next our own,

Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh.

John Keble (1792-1866): The Christian Year. Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity.