Pema Chodron Quotes

It's not a terrible thing that we feel fear when faced with the unknown. It is part of being alive, something we all share.

Life inspires more dread than death - it is life which is the great unknown.

My day-to-day local issues are rooted in an underlying fear of death.

No one knows whether death is really the greatest blessing a man can have, but they fear it is the greatest curse, as if they knew well.

It’s been too hard living, but I’m afraid to die. ‘Cause I don’t know what’s up there, beyond the sky.

To fear death is nothing other than to think oneself wise when one is not. For it is to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not even turn out to be the greatest blessings of human beings. And yet people fear it as if they knew for certain it is the greatest evil.

And yet still I worried. I like being a person. I wanted to keep at it. Worry is yet another side effect of dying.

It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more.

I was afraid I was goin to die and then I was afraid I wasnt.

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.

I am death-fearing. I don't think I'm morbid. That seems to me a fear of death that goes beyond the rational. Whereas it seems to me to be entirely rational to fear death!

We fear that this moment will end, that we won't get what we need, that we will lose what we love, or that we will not be safe. Often, our biggest fear is the knowledge that one day our bodies will cease functioning. So even when we are surrounded by all the conditions for happiness, our joy is not complete.

While there's life, there's fear.

Nor dread nor hope attend a dying animal; a man awaits his end dreading and hoping all.

The unknown is always frightening.

Living is what scares me. Dying is easy.

Mortality applies to every aspect of life. The fear of death is the driving fear of life.

I don't worry. I'm more stoical. Of course I have insecurities. I fear getting older. I fear death and illness. I'm not prone to depression, but I get depressed because everybody gets depressed. Suddenly I'm away from my family or doing a job I'm not enjoying.

There's nothing like impending death to rouse you from existential boredom.

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

Perhaps we don't need these religious concoctions to pillow the fear of death. Just the fact that there is an unknown, and something greater, can bring a feeling of peace. That's enough for me.

I believe that fear of life brings a greater fear of death.

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.

We live in a very scary time. Or should I say we don't live at all.

What makes us afraid is our great freedom in the face of the emptiness that has still to be filled.