Moral Fear Quotes

The source of justice was the fear of injustice.

Shame arises from the fear of men, conscience from the fear of God.

Our responsibility as Christians makes us tremble.

Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.

I came to believe it not true that "the coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man only one." I think it is the other way around: It is the brave who die a thousand deaths. For it is imagination, and not just conscience, which doth make cowards of us all. Those who do not know fear are not truly brave.

Fear is the mother of morality.

One of the greatest artifices the devil uses to engage men in vice and debauchery, is to fasten names of contempt on certain virtues, and thus fill weak souls with a foolish fear of passing for scrupulous, should they desire to put them in practice.

We fear men so much, because we fear God so little.

Men are always invoking justice; yet it is justice which should make them tremble.

And pray that he is the man I think he is, he finished silently, and not the man I fear he has become.

But complex people are never certain that they are not crooks, never certain their passports are quite in order, and are, therefore, unnerved by the slightest thing.

Men will face destructive cannon and mortars, engage each other in the clashing of arms, and meet the horrors of war undaunted, but the devil and his banditti of fiends and emissaries fright them out of their wits…

It is an open question whether any behavior based on fear of eternal punishment can be regarded as ethical or should be regarded as merely cowardly.

Alone, alone, about the dreadful wood / Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind, / Dreading to find its Father.

He has but one great fear that fears to do wrong.

Feare nothing but sinne.

Perhaps your fear in passing judgement is greater than mine in receiving it.

Sin then is not a toy with which to play but a terror to be shunned.

The works of the righteous would be mortal sins if they would not be feared as mortal sins by the righteous themselves out of pious fear of God.

Are we not rude and deserve blame, if we leave Him alone, to busy ourselves about trifles, which do not please Him and perhaps offend Him? 'Tis to be feared these trifles will one day cost us dear.

Fear to do ill, and you need fear else.