Pema Chodron Quotes

It's not a terrible thing that we feel fear when faced with the unknown. It is a part of being alive, something we all share. We react against the possibility of loneliness, of death, of not having anything to hold on to. Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.

While there's life, there's fear.

The unknown is always frightening.

I think that as you get older, you become aware of everything that could go wrong.

Death makes us sad, but it can also make us feel more alive.

You'll learn that the most worthwhile exercises are preceded by this very human phenomenon, fear. Marriage, parenthood, relationships.

I'm not cynical, but the reality is that life is mortal. Terrible, sad things happen. Everybody loses friends and family. I'll be on tour and get really scared if my wife won't answer her phone within one minute. I'm sensitive.

It's the same thing,' I told her. 'What is?' 'Being afraid and being alive.' 'No,' she said slowly, and now it was as if she was speaking a language she knew at first I wouldn't understand, the very words, not to mention the concept, being foreign to me. 'Macy, no. It's not.

Any person with any imagination is bound to be afraid.

Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth

There’s an old Ritadarion saying. You’re never more alive than when you walk hand in hand with death. (Syn)

To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know.

At odd and unpredictable times, we cling in fright to the past .

Adults always wonder what to say and how to say it when they're talking to a child. You want to be wise, but all you are is a child yourself in a larger body. Nothing is ever what it seems. The things that you think you know are never certain. I know that now. I wish that I didn't, but I do.

The face she made at me was probably meant for a smile. Whatever it was, it beat me. I was afraid she'd do it again, so I surrendered

I am most alive when I let myself be touched by the fingers of life.

Defer not till to-morrow to be wise, To-morrow's Sun to thee may never rise; Or should to-morrow chance to cheer thy sight With her enlivening and unlook'd for light, How grateful will appear her dawning rays! As favours unexpected doubly please.

None wise dares hopeless venture.

Men fear most what they cannot see.

Anxiety and fear are cousins but not twins. Fear sees a threat. Anxiety imagines one.

Sleep is death's younger brother, and so like him, that I never dare trust him without my prayers.

I used to think the only way to be truly alive is to confront your mortality.

Behind everything we feel, there is always a sense of fear.

Death would be a complete knowingness, but what frightened him was this: not knowing beforehand what it was he would know.

Joy is the reflex of terror.