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# Weekend Words: Fear
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/weekend-words-fear/
- Published: 2017-01-15T14:30:10.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:28:05.000Z
- Description: "Everyone believes very easily whatever they fear or desire."
- Author: Weekend Editors
- Tags: Art, Weekend, Weekend Words, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:23 (2016, 2017, part 2)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2017/01/fear.jpg)

Benvenuto Cellini, “Nude of Fear” (n.d.), bronze, height 32 cm, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence (image via Web Gallery of Art)

Yesterday, Hyperallergic Weekend began its new series, [**Drawing in a Time of Fear & Lies**](https://hyperallergic.com/drawing-in-a-time-of-fear-lies/), with “[Various Dismal Futures](https://hyperallergic.com/william-powhida-various-dismal-futures/)” (2016) by William Powhida.

> The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.  
>  
> **—James Branch Cabell**

> Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.  
>  
> **—H. L. Mencken**

> I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.  
>  
> **—Isaac Asimov**

> There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbors will say.  
>  
> **—Cyril Connolly**

> Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.  
>  
> **—Bertrand Russell**

> I will show you fear in a handful of dust.  
>  
> **—T.S. Eliot, *The Waste Land***

> If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.  
>  
> **—Niccolo Machiavelli** 

> Humor is an almost physiological response to fear.  
>  
> **—Kurt Vonnegut**

> Scorching my seared heart with a pain, not hell shall make me fear again.  
>  
> **—Edgar Allan Poe, *Tamerlane***

> Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?  
>  
> **—Jane Austen**

> Everyone believes very easily whatever they fear or desire.  
>  
> **—Jean de La Fontaine**

> I do not fear Satan half so much as I fear those who fear him.  
>  
> **—Teresa of Avila**

> I expect nothing. I fear no one. I am free.  
>  
> **—Nikos Kazantzakis**

> I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.  
>  
> **—Rosa Parks**