A Quote by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It is the strange fate of man, that even in the greatest of evils the fear of the worst continues to haunt him.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Quote Topics

Fear Even Evils Fate Greatest Haunt Him Man Strange Worst

Quote Author

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
German - Novelist
August 28, 1749 - March 22, 1832

No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew it was the greatest of evils.

Plato

Nobody knows what death is, nor whether to man it is perchance the greatest of blessings, yet people fear it as if they surely knew it to be the worse of evils.

Socrates

The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty.

George Bernard Shaw

There is a man sleeping in the grass. And over him is gathering the greatest storm of all his days. Such lightening and thunder will come there has never been seen before, bringing death and destruction. People hurry home past him, to places safe from danger. And whether they do not see him there in the grass, or whether they fear to halt even a moment, but they do not wake him, they let him be.

Alan Paton

For a man who is lost, the three greatest dangers in order of importance, are Fear, Cold, and Hunger. He may endure extreme hunger for a week, and extreme cold for a day, but extreme fear may undo him an hour. There is no way of guarding against this greatest danger except by assuring him that he is fortified against the other two.

Ernest Thompson Seton

Were a man's sorrows and disquietudes summed up at the end of his life, it would generally be found that he had suffered more from the apprehension of such evils as never happened to him than from those evils which had really befallen him.

Joseph Addison

The imaginations excited by the view of an unknown and untravelled wilderness are not such as arise in the artificial solitude of parks and gardens... The phantoms which haunt a desert are want, and misery, and danger; the evils of dereliction rush upon the thoughts; man is made unwillingly acquainted with his own weakness, and meditation shows him only how little he can sustain, and how little he can perform.

Samuel Johnson

To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?

Socrates

The classical man's worst fear was inglorious death; the modern man's worst fear is just death

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

It is boring to haunt a writer, and even more so to haunt a celebrity. I would haunt a literary figure! Possibly some superhero, maybe even James Bond. Constant adventures, fights, beautiful women--much more interesting that watching a writer who taps on computer all day long, or a celebrity posing in front of cameras.

Sergei Lukyanenko

When a man walks in the fear of God he knows no fear, even if he were to be surrounded by wicked men. He has the fear of God within him and wears the invincible armor of faith. This makes him strong and able to take on anything, even things which seem difficult or impossible to most people. Such a man is like a giant surrounded by monkeys, or a roaring lion among dogs and foxes. He goes forward trusting in the Lord and the constancy of his will to strike and paralyze his foes. He wields the blazing club of the Word in wisdom.

Symeon the New Theologian

To be alone is the fate of all great minds—a fate deplored at times, but still always chosen as the less grievous of two evils.

Arthur Schopenhauer

But the great leveler, Death: not even the gods can defend a man, not even one they love, that day when fate takes hold and lays him out at last.

Katherine Anne Porter

Life is the greatest of blessings and death the worst of evils.... all great, powerful souls love life.

Heinrich Heine

Submissiveness to fate, the total abdication of your own will in the shaping of your life, the recognition that it was impossible to guess the best and the worst ahead of time but that it was easy to take a step you would reproach yourself for-all this freed the prisoner from any bondage, made him calmer, and even ennobled him.