The Dread Quotes

By sort of combining the research of a lot of smart people, I came up with an equation for dread [dread=uncontrollability+unfamiliarity+imaginability+suffering+scale of destruction+unfairness]. The dread equation is a simplification, but it's a way to explain why we fear something so much when it is so unlikely. Part of it is the lack of control. That's why we're more scared of plane crashes than car crashes even though we know rationally which is more dangerous. ~ Amanda Ripley

With The Dread, first kiss was the beginning. Second kiss was the end. ~ Luke Taylor

If you regard your last day not as a punishment but as a law of nature, the breast from which you have banished the dread of death no fear will dare to enter. ~ Seneca.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius. ~ William Gilmore Simms

The death close before me was terrible, but far more terrible than death was the dread of being misremembered after death ~ Charles Dickens

Instead of living in the dread or the joy of the future, may we have the intention to live in the Real of the now. ~ Maximus Freeman

All people suffer from the dread of death, but we are mostly troubled by the uncertainties of time and circumstance. ~ Roderick Graham

A woman scorn'd is pitiless as fate,
For then the dread of shame adds stings to hate. ~ William Gifford

Writing has often been accompanied by terror, silences, and then wild bursts of private laughter that suddenly make all the dread seem worthwhile. ~ Erica Jong

Haven't you heard, the Dread Scott decision has been overturned?"

"Not out here, baby," Warren replied, without a second's hesitation. "For that matter, not in Washington, either, or in Detroit, or at the Vatican, or at the Harvard Law School. People are objects and we use them. Out here, I like to think, the trappings surrounding the transaction are a little more attractive. But we're all the users. ~ Joyce Haber

Hotel Du Lac
Edith, once again anonymous, and accepting her anonymity, made an appropriately inconspicuous exit. And, sitting in the deserted salon, the first to arrive from the dining room, she felt her precarious dignity hard-pressed and about to succumb in the light of her earlier sadness. The pianist, sitting down to play, gave her a brief nod. She nodded back, and thought how limited her means of expression had become: nodding to the pianist or to Mme de Bonneuil, listening to Mrs Pusey, using a disguised voice in the novel she was writing and, with all of this, waiting for a voice that remained silent, hearing very little that meant anything to her at all. The dread implications of this condition made her blink her eyes and vow to be brave, to do better, not to give way. But it was not easy. ~ Anita Brookner

The dread of lonliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married. ~ Cyril Connolly

Foresight of our own dissolution is so terrible to us, and that the idea of those circumstances, which undoubtedly can give us no pain when we are dead, makes us miserable while we are alive. And from thence arises one of the most important principles in human nature, the dread of death, the great poison to the happiness, but the great restraint upon the injustice of mankind, which, while it afflicts and mortifies the individual, guards and protects the society. ~ Adam Smith

My sister, the one who knows everything and pulls out facts out of a bottomless hat, told me people aren't afraid of snakes or water upon birth. It is only once we hear the snake and water stories, she says, once we are exposed to fear, that we deny our primal instincts and make room for the dread to take root and mature. ~ Tania Aebi

I'm relieved Peeta's alive. I tell myself again that if I get killed, his winnings will benefit my mother and Prim the most. This is what I tell myself to explain the conflicting emotions that arise when I think of Peeta. The gratitude that he game an edge by professing his love for me in the interview. The anger at his superiority on the roof. The dread that we may come face-to-face at any moment in this arena. ~ Suzanne Collins

This is the book I never read
These are the words I never said
This is the path I'll never tread
These are the dreams I'll dream instead
This is the joy that's seldom spread
These are the tears...
The tears we shed
This is the fear
This is the dread
"These are the contents of my head
And these are the years that we have spent
And this is what they represent
And this is how I feel
Do you know how I feel?"

~Annie Lennox ~ Annie Lennox

A woman's magazine quiz:
Question: You decide to do the dread deed and just as things are starting to get hot he comes, rolls over, and asks, "Was it good for you?"
You:
a. Say, "God, yes! That was the best seventeen seconds of my life"
b. Say, "Sure, as good as it gets for me with a man."
c. Put a Certs in your navel and say, "That's for you, Mr. Bunnyman. You can have it on your way back up, after the job is finished ~ Christopher Moore

I have no idea how long Quisser was gone from the table. My attention became fully absorbed by the other faces in the club and the deep anxiety they betrayed to me, an anxiety that was not of the natural, existential sort but one that was caused by peculiar concerns of an uncanny nature. What a season is upon us, these faces seemed to say. And no doubt their voices would have spoken directly of certain peculiar concerns had they not been intimidated into weird equivocations and double entendres by the fear of falling victim to the same kind of unnatural affliction that had made so much trouble in the mind of the art critic Stuart Quisser. Who would be next? What could a person say these days, or even think, without feeling the dread of repercussion from powerfully connected groups and individuals? I could almost hear their voices asking, "Why here, why now?" But of course they could have just as easily been asking, "Why not here, why not now?" It would not occur to this crowd that there were no special rules involved; it would not occur to them, even though they were a crowd of imaginative artists, that the whole thing was simply a matter of random, purposeless terror that converged upon a particular place at a particular time for no particular reason. On the other hand, it would also not have occurred to them that they might have wished it all upon themselves, that they might have had a hand in bringing certain powerful forces and connections into our district simply by wish ~ Thomas Ligotti

Yet this chirpy insistence on positivity has a strange way of enhancing the dread and anxiety and melancholy that lie just beneath the surface of things. ~ Heather Havrilesky

Winter's hard-packed snow Cedes to the fruitful summer; stubborn night At last removes, for day's white steeds to shine. The dread blast of the gale slackens and gives Peace to the sounding sea; and Sleep, strong jailer, In time yields up his captive. Shall not I Learn place and wisdom? ~ Michael K. Kellogg

It's interesting that penny-pinching is an accepted defense for toxic food habits, when frugality so rarely rules other consumer domains. The majority of Americans buy bottled drinking water, for example, even though water runs from the faucets at home for a fraction of the cost, and government quality standards are stricter for tap water than for bottled. At any income level, we can be relied upon for categorically unnecessary purchases: portable-earplug music instead of the radio; extra-fast Internet for leisure use; heavy vehicles to transport light loads; name-brand clothing instead of plainer gear. "Economizing," as applied to clothing, generally means looking for discount name brands instead of wearing last year's clothes again. The dread of rearing unfashionable children is understandable. But as a priority, "makes me look cool" has passed up "keeps arteries functional" and left the kids huffing and puffing (fashionably) in the dust. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

I remembered that time of life when most of what matters can be summed up by the phase 'the other kids,' and it struck me as pitiful. The dread was more complex ... Dread is a lure, and I cold feel its tug, but why? ... Perception is never passive. We are not only receivers of the world; we also actively produce it. There is a hallucinatory quality to all perception, and illusions are easy to create. [pp. 656-66] ~ Siri Hustvedt

There was still a monster in my house, and, in a fragment of time that had, perhaps, been snipped out of reality, my father had pushed me down into the water of the bath and tried, perhaps, to drown me. I had run for miles through the dark. I had seen my father kissing and touching the thing that called itself Ursula Monkton. The dread had not left my soul. But there was a kitten on my pillow, and it was purring in my face and vibrating gently with every purr, and, very soon, I slept. X. ~ Neil Gaiman

Hark! o'er the dread abyss the sea-bird screams
The rocks resound
again the lightning gleams! ~ John Ramsay

My laps-meter, the first caliper of the soul and the first hope of bridging the dread chasm that has rent the soul of Western man ever since the famous philosopher Descartes ripped body loose from mind and turned the very soul into a ghost that haunts its own house. ~ Walker Percy

Face each day with the expectation of achieving good, rather than the dread of falling short. ~ Shannon Miller

My 'Great Crown' is not a sentence
I could wish for anyone:
The dread talons of this monster
Wrench a father from his son. ~ B.F. Chylton

Covetousness like jealousy, when it has taken root, never leaves a person, but with their life. Cowardice is the dread of what will happen. ~ Epictetus

Peaceful with six children Darya Alexandrova could not be...Rare indeed were the brief periods of peace...hard though it was for the mother to bear the dread of illness, the illnesses themselves, and the grief of seeing signs of evil propensities in her children--the children themselves were even now repaying her in small joys for her sufferings. Those joys were so small that they passed unnoticed, like gold in sand, and at bad moments she could see nothing but the pain, nothing but sand; but there were good moments too when she saw nothing but the joy, nothing but gold.

Now in the solitude of the country, she began to be more and more frequently aware of those joys. Often, looking at them, she would make every possible effort to persuade herself that she was mistaken, that she as a mother was partial to her children. All the same, she could not help saying to herself that she had charming children, all six of them in different ways, but a set of children such as is not often to be met with, and she was happy in them, and proud of them. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Within this arena, which grows more stable night after day, generations work and love and hope and vanish. New generations tread on the corpses of their fathers, continue the work above the abyss and struggle to tame the dread mystery. How? By cultivating a single field, by kissing a woman, by studying a stone, an animal, an idea. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

My fears are agitated to an extreme degree and the dread of death involves me in a stupor of chilling indisposition. ~ John Clare

By about a week before the big day, you will have received less than half of your invitation response cards. Panic sets in when it occurs to you that everyone invited will actually show up. You couldn't have made it easier for your guests. You have included a card that had boxes for 'will attend' or 'will not attend.' You included a pre-addressed, stamped envelope. How inconvenient could it be for them simply to check it off and drop it in in a mailbox? Very inconvenient. You, evil bride-to-be, are confronting two basic human fears. A terror of correspondence and the dread of decision-making. ~ Mimi Pond

There is little peace or comfort in life if we are always anxious as to future events. He that worries himself with the dread of possible contingencies will never be at rest. ~ Samuel Johnson

The mind is seldom quickened to very vigorous operations but by pain, or the dread of pain. We do not disturb ourselves with the detection of fallacies which do us no harm. ~ Samuel Johnson

One of the things that helps use cope with loss is the fact that while memories may remian, the emotions associated with them will fade like old photographs. At the same time, there is a masochistic desire to retain those feelings spurred on by the dread of losing the power they hold. Sometimes I can't think of anything more awful than simply being human. ~ James Pratt

I think that where I've watched a movie go wrong, it's usually because the dread committee has been interfering with it. ~ John Le Carre

Two fears alternate in marriage, of loneliness and of bondage. The dread of loneliness being keener than the fear of bondage, we get married. For one person who fears being thus tied there are four who dread being set free. Yet the love of liberty is a noble passion and one to which most married people secretly aspire, -- in moments when they are not neurotically dependent -- but by then it is too late; the ox does not become a bull, not the hen a falcon.

The fear of loneliness can be overcome, for it springs from weakness; human beings are intended to be free, and to be free is to be lonely, but the fear of bondage is the apprehension of a real danger, and so I find it all the more pathetic to watch young men and beautiful girls taking refuge in marriage from an imaginary danger, a sad loss to their friends ad a sore trial to each other. First love is the one most worth having, yet the best marriage is often the second, for we should marry only when the desire for freedom be spent; not till then does a man know whether he is the kind who can settle down. The most tragic breakings-up are of those couples who have married young and who have enjoyed seven years of happiness, after which the banked fires of passion and independence explode -- and without knowing why, for they still love each other, they set about accomplishing their common destruction. ~ Cyril Connolly

For death is always in the shadow of the delight of love. In faint adumbration there is present the dread, haunting question, Will this new relationship destroy us? ... The world is annihilated; how can we know whether it will ever be built up again? We give, and give up, our own center; how shall we know that we will get it back? ...
This ... has something in common with the ecstasy of the mystic in his union with God: just as he can never be //sure// God is there, so love carries us to that intensity of consciousness in which we no longer have any guarantee of security. ~ Rollo May

And Anakin is on his way despite the dread boiling through his blood. That's what makes him a real hero. Not the way the HoloNet labels him; not without fear, but stronger than fear.
He looks the dragon in the eye and doesn't even slow down. ~ Matthew Woodring Stover

In addition to the dread of Indians, Texas held out no inducements for Mexican emigrants. ~ William H. Wharton

Humanity without religion is equivalent to a slave without its chains. To end human fear is to end human faith. Beyond the dread of death humanity has no need for delusions of an afterlife. A single human mind void of religion can accomplish more than a thousand thoughtful of God. ~ C.J. Anderson

The denial of age in America culminates in the prolongevity movement, which hopes to abolish old age altogether. But the dread of age originates not in the "cult of youth" but in a cult of the self. Not only in its narcissistic indifference to future generations but in its grandiose vision of a technological utopia without old age, the prolongevity movement exemplifies the fantasy of "absolute, sadistic power" which, according to Kohut, so deeply colors the narcissistic outlook. Pathological in its psychological origins and inspiration, superstitious in its faith in medical deliverance, the prolongevity movement expresses in characteristic form the anxieties of a culture that believes it has no future. ~ Christopher Lasch

She was tired of these miracles, tired of the dread riding with her daily, and utterly sick of stories that ended in suffering for those who dared to be brave or strange or strong. ~ Leigh Bardugo

In the storm, like a prophet o'ermaddened, Thou singest and tossest thy branches; Thy heart with the terror is gladdened, Thou forebodest the dread avalanches ... In the calm thou o'erstretchest the valleys With thine arms, as if blessings imploring, Like an old king led forth from his palace, When his people to battle are pouring ... ~ James Russell Lowell

There is a silence in the imminence of animals and also in the echo of their noise, but the dread silence is the one that rises from a wilderness from which all the wild animals have gone. ~ Peter Matthiessen

The 'violent wrenching' of the world into constant movements has remained constant. Indeed, the only constancy of the past several decades has been change itself, that is, constant inconstancy. The paradox of this syndrome causes those who suffer from it to hope that change - or the right kind of change - will eventually put an end to the dread it induces through its endless turnover of the new. This is strange hope to hold to, yet it may be the only one available at a time when the unworlding of the world seems a fait accompli. ~ Robert Pogue Harrison

As Noah looked upon the powerful beasts of prey that came forth with him from the ark, he feared that his family, numbering only eight persons, would be destroyed by them. But the Lord sent an angel to his servant with the assuring message: "The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered. Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things." Before this time God had given man no permission to eat animal food; he intended that the race should subsist wholly upon the productions of the earth; but now that every green thing had been destroyed, he allowed them to eat the flesh of the clean beasts that had been preserved in the ark. ~ Ellen G. White

It had all been fake, a choreographed event, but they could not escape the dread that rattled inside their chests. It was a testament to their proficiency and talent as artists. They had affected themselves with the authenticity of the moment. ~ Kevin Wilson

I'm inexcusably happy. Something magical has happened to me, like a dream, when you're frightened, panic-stricken, and all of a sudden you wake up and all the horrors are no more. I have waked up. I have lived through the misery, the dread, and now for a long while past, especially since we've been here, I've been so happy! ... ~ Leo Tolstoy

Here's the other thing I think about. It makes little sense to try to control what happens to your remains when you are no longer around to reap the joys or benefits of that control. People who make elaborate requests concerning disposition of their bodies are probably people who have trouble with the concept of not existing. [...] I imagine it is a symptom of the fear, the dread, of being gone, of the refusal to accept that you no longer control, or even participate in, anything that happens on earth. I spoke about this with funeral director Kevin McCabe, who believes that decisions concerning the disposition of a body should be mad by the survivors, not the dead. "It's non of their business what happens to them whey the die," he said to me. While I wouldn't go that far, I do understand what he was getting at: that the survivors shouldn't have to do something they're uncomfortable with or ethically opposed to. Mourning and moving on are hard enough. Why add to the burden? If someone wants to arrange a balloon launch of the deceased's ashes into inner space, that's fine. But if it is burdensome or troubling for any reason, then perhaps they shouldn't have to. ~ Mary Roach

Here, in the dread tribunal of last resort, valor contended against valor. Here brave men struggled and died for the right as God gave them to see the right. ~ Adlai Stevenson I

The alternative which I favor is to renounce all euphemisms and grasp the nettle of the word atheism itself, precisely because it is a taboo word carrying frissons of hysterical phobia. Critical mass may be harder to achieve than with some non-confrontational euphemism, but if we did achieve it with the dread word atheist, the political impact would be all the greater. ~ Richard Dawkins

Smart people duck when they hear the dread announcement 'I'm going to be perfectly honest with you. ~ Judith Martin

The quality of mercy is not strain'd, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown; His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway; It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God's When mercy seasons justice. ~ William Shakespeare

It's hard for me, a Jew, to stay in the moment. Without the past, where is the guilt? And without the future, where is the dread? And without guilt and dread, who am I? ~ Christopher Moore

The furtive closing of a door is a sound the wind can make a dozen times in an hour. A flow of damp air from the lake can make any house feel empty. Such currents pull one's dreams after them, and one's own dread is always mirrored upon the dread that inheres in things. ~ Marilynne Robinson

It was in this byre, littered with dry and hollow cowclaps subsiding with a sigh at the poke of my finger, that for the first time in my life, and I would not hesitate to say the last if I had not to husband my cyanide, I had to contend with a feeling which gradually assumed, to my dismay, the dread name of love. ~ Samuel Beckett

Alone in the silence, I understand for a moment the dread which many feel in the presence of primeval desert, the unconscious fear which compels them to tame, alter or destroy what they cannot understand, to reduce the wild and prehuman to human dimensions. Anything rather than confront directly the antehuman, that other world which frightens not through danger or hostility but in something far worse - its implacable indifference. ~ Edward Abbey

Woman," Westley roared, "you are the property of the Dread Pirate Roberts and you ... do ... what ... you're ... told! ~ William Goldman

The sparser the innate joy that springs from being alive, the more fervently we seek joy's pale substitute, pleasure; the less our inner strength, the greater our craving for power; the feebler our awareness of truth, the more desperate our search for certainty outside of ourselves. The greater the dread, the more vigorous the gravitational pull of the addiction process. ~ Gabor Mate

Here it is necessary briefly to consider the question of the cult of ancestors before venturing farther. The spirits of the departed are believed to be possessed of supernatural powers which they did not enjoy in the flesh. They may also be dissatisfied or malignant in consequence of being suddenly deprived of life, and if they are neglected by the living, are apt to be revengeful. Therefore they must be cajoled and propitiated. Fear of beings belonging to a mysterious state or sphere of which he knew nothing continually haunted and terrified primitive man and induced in him what is known as" the dread of the sacred." It was every man's personal duty to attend to the demands or requirements of his deceased ancestors. At first he would succour his own immediate forebears with food and gifts; but it must have been borne in upon him that when his parents joined the great majority, the care of the spirits of their parents likewise devolved upon him... and, by degrees, he might even come to regard himself as responsible for the well-being of a line of spirit ancestors of quite formidable genealogy. These, through his neglect, might starve in their tombs; or, alternatively, they might crave his company. Because of vengeance or loneliness they might send disease upon him, for the savage almost invariably believes illness to be brought about by the action of jealous or neglected ancestors. The loneliness of the spirit-world is the dead man's greatest excuse for desiring the company o ~ Lewis Spence

(life science) definitions. The question that runs through these disputatio is the following: What if "horror" has less to do with a fear of death, and more to do with the dread of life? ~ Eugene Thacker

Then I saw the consuming nature of her fear, her willingness to believe that exploitative charlatans could change her fate or really cared what happened to her, the dread and angst that congealed like a cold vapor around her heart when she awoke each morning, one day closer to the injection table at Angola. ~ James Lee Burke

I think we are clinging with ever-increasing desperation to our status as children. In the hospital you see other children - children of fifty, of sixty, of seventy - clinging to their parents of eighty, ninety, one hundred. Is all this clinging love? Or is it just the need to be reassured of your own immunity from the contagion of the Moloch ha-moves - the dread Angel of Death? Because we all secretly believe in our own immortality. Since we cannot imagine the loss of individual consciousness, we cannot possibly imagine death. ~ Erica Jong

down her spine as she fought both the dread and ~ Gretchen Craig

I saw my life if I stayed at the PR firm, and the dread and fear of that life. ~ Jessica Pan

When you come to analyze the love of money which was the general impulse to effort in your day, you find that the dread of want and desire of luxury was but one of several motives which the pursuit of money represented; the others, and with many the more influential, being desire of power, of social position, and reputation for ability and success. ~ Edward Bellamy

He who would acquire fame must not show himself afraid of censure. The dread of censure is the death of genius. ~ William Gilmore Simms

No cause more frequently produces bashfulness than too high an opinion of our own importance. He that imagines an assembly filled with his merit, panting with expectation, and hushed with attention, easily terrifies himself with the dread of disappointing them, and strains his imagination in pursuit of something that may vindicate the veracity of fame, and show that his reputation was not gained by chance. ~ Samuel Johnson

Who would fardels bear,
To groan and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus, conscience does make cowards of us all; ~ William Shakespeare

The nephew revenges himself for this, by holding his breath and terrifying his kinswoman with the dread belief that he has made up his mind to burst. Regardless of whispers and shakes, he swells and becomes discoloured, and yet again swells and becomes discoloured, until the aunt can bear it no longer, but leads him out, with no visible neck, and with his eyes going before him like a prawn's. ~ Charles Dickens

Deep within every man there lies the dread of being alone in the world, forgotten by God, overlooked among the tremendous household of millions and millions. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Crushed between the fears of going forward and the dread of going back. ~ Jim Crace

Scandal is the sport of its authors, the dread of fools, and the contempt of the wise. ~ William Benton Clulow

Aubade"

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anasthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows ~ Philip Larkin

Clever lies become matters of self-congratulation. Solemn pledges become a farce - laughable for their very solemnity. The Nation, with all its paraphernalia of power and prosperity, its flags and pious hymns, its blasphemous prayers in the churches, and the literary mock thunders of its patriotic bragging, cannot hide the fact that the Nation is the greatest evil for the Nation, that all its precautions are against it, and any new birth of its fellow in the world is always followed in its mind by the dread of a new peril. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

The human spirit didn't drown. It was swept up and carried along; it flows still, the stream coursing its way through everyone's lives.

I just have to find a way to beat the dread, that's all. ~ London Shah

What?" The dread in her tone told Rob she knew what. "How much longer?"
"Thirty seconds."
She laughed with a panicked urgency. "I just tried to nod. I can't feel my body, but I keep reaching for it, you know?"
Rob nodded, feeling guilty he was able to.
"How about this? I'll just tell you when I'm nodding, or shaking my head, or punching you."
"Oh, no," Rob laughed, "are you planning on punching me often?"
"We'll see."
Rob couldn't help glancing at the timer, though he knew it would only make Winter more aware of what was about to happen. Seven seconds.
"I keep expecting this to get easier, taht it will start to feel as if I'm going to sleep. But it doesn't. Maybe it's not possible to get used to dying."
Rob reached out to comfort her, then remembered it was forbidden and drew back. If not for the surveillance, Rob would have reached under the silver cover and taken her hand, cold and stiff as it would have been. ~ Will McIntosh

It never occurred to him to ask her what sort of demeanor she preferred. He didn't have to strategize or even scheme. Later he knew what the dread had been dread of. He hadn't had to promise her anything, it turned out. It was all for free. ~ David Foster Wallace

Distrust, not merely the old distrust of nation for nation, but a devastating distrust of human nature, gripped men like the dread of insanity. ~ Olaf Stapledon

The dread of futility has been my life-long plague. ~ Maya Angelou

Dinnertime!" It was Isabelle, standing framed in the door of the library. She still had the spoon in her hand, though her hair had escaped from its bun and was straggling down her neck. "Sorry if I'm interrupting," she added, as an afterthought.
"Dear God," said Jace, "the dread hour is nigh."
Hodge looked alarmed. "I - I - I had a very filling breakfast," he stammered. "I mean lunch. A filling lunch. I couldn't possibly eat - "
"I threw out the soup," Isabelle said. "And ordered Chinese from that place downtown."
Jace unhitched himself from the desk and stretched. "Great. I'm starved."
"I might be able to eat a bite," admitted Hodge meekly. ~ Cassandra Clare

I believe that obstinacy, or the dread of control and discipline, arises not so much from self-willedness as from a conscious defect of voluntary power; as foolhardiness is not seldom the disguise of conscious timidity. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Despite one's inherent distrust of what one learned from Nazi sources, a steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on one's mind and often misled it. No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime's calculated and incessant propaganda. ~ William L. Shirer

The cause of all trouble, the root of all sorrow, the dread of every man lies in this one small word - sin. It has crippled the nature of man ... It has caused man to be caught in the devil's trap. ~ Billy Graham

Lying is a crime the least liable to variation in its definitions. A child will upon the slightest temptation tell an untruth as readily as the truth. That is, as soon as he can suspect that it will be to his advantage; and the dread that he afterward has of telling a lie is acquired principally by his being threatened, punished, and terrified by those who detect him in it, till at length, a number of painful impressions are annexed to the telling of an untruth, and he comes even to shudder at the thought of it. ~ Joseph Priestley

... you know that Sunday-night feeling, where the dread of reality sinks in, that you've mismanaged your time and now the anxiety of homework and the wasteland of early mornings and school stretches ahead of you? Well, I hope he has that feeling every minute of every day of his entire life. ~ Emery Lord

After the sprout had broken through the (surface of) the ground," the handbook continues, the farmer should say a prayer to Ninkilim, the goddess of field mice and vermin, lest they harm the growing grain; he should also scare off the flying birds. When the barley has grown sufficiently to fill the narrow bottoms of the furrows, it is time to water it; and when it "stands high as (the
straw of) a mat in the middle of a boat," it is time to water it a second time. He is to water it a third time when it is "royal" barley, that is, when it has reached its full height. Should he then notice a reddening of the wet grain, it is the dread samana-dis- ease, which endangers the crops. If the barley is doing well, however, he is to water it a fourth time and thus obtain an extra yield of 10 per cent. ~ Samuel Noah Kramer

I did not fully understand the dread term 'terminal illness' until I saw Heathrow for myself. ~ Dennis Potter

In a free society, we do not imprison those who violate profound cultural taboos or burn them at the stake. But they must be identified as dangerous radicals, not fit to be counted among the priesthood. The reaction is appropriate. To raise the dread question is to open the possibility that the institutions responsible "for the indoctrination of the young" and the other propaganda institutions may be infected by the most dangerous of plagues: insight and understanding. Awareness of the facts might threaten the social order, protected by a carefully spun web of pluralist mysticism, faith in the benevolence of our pure-hearted leadership, and general superstitious belief. An ~ Noam Chomsky

Some feminist critics debate whether we take our meaning and sense of self from language and in that process become phallocentric ourselves, or if there is a use of language that is, or can be, feminine. Some, like myself, think that language is itself neither male nor female; it is creatively expansive enough to be of use to those who have the wit and art to wrest from it their own significance. Even the dread patriarchs have not found a way to 'own' language any more than they have found a way to 'own' earth (though many seem to believe that both are possible). ~ Paula Gunn Allen

The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest. It becomes
The thronèd monarch better than his crown.
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings,
But mercy is above this sceptered sway.
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings.
It is an attribute to God himself.
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, Though justice be thy plea, consider this-
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea,
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant there. ~ William Shakespeare

Chapter One: The Dawn and the Dread

Heartbeat, heartbeat comes from Valhallan way,
To meet down in judgment, to ply its trade.
Two →swords← to join in worthy cross,
Actions to be rendered, one to be lost.

She did come now from 'yond northern slope,
A day of reckoning did she again once hope.
A devout meeting was her qwesterly bane,
To stay her hand was to go insane.

St. Kari of the Blade to meet her past,
A wicked enemy, peerless of match.
Rode Kari she her charger on down,
Past the Dead Land where Gaul sat crowned.

A killing job, yea, she desired to lastly kill,
To set things right so her heart might lie still.
Upon the mist and roaring plain,
She entered in, a soul uncontained.

A fierce wind in deed, and forever freed,
Enemies she annihilhates ('tis hur' creed).
Her own advanced guard of a sort,
Multitudes to follow in her report.

Know this Valkyrie from on cold,
An ancient maiden soft and bold.
A warrior spirit from Ages past,
A fragmented mind like broken glass.

Solid in stature this eternal framed being,
Yet crippled within from internaled bleedings.
A sword saint so refined in the poetic art,
A noble character yet with a banshee's heart.

Rhythmed horse now to the beats,
Kari emboldened amid the sleet.
Beyond the mountain she does come,
Unto southern fields wherein r ~ Douglas Laurent

Gather close, and let us speak of nasty little shits. Oh, come now, we are no strangers to the vicious demons in placid disguises, innocent eyes so wide, hidden minds so dark. Does evil exist? Is it a force, some deadly possession that slips into the unwary? Is it a thing separate and thus subject to accusation and blame, distinct from the one it has used? Does it flit from soul to soul, weaving its diabolical scheme in all the unseen places, snarling into knots tremulous fears and appalling opportunity, stark terrors and brutal self-interest? Or is the dread word nothing more than a quaint and oh so convenient encapsulation of all those traits distinctly lacking moral context, a sweeping generalization embracing all things depraved and breath takingly cruel, a word to define that peculiar glint in the eye - the voyeur to one's own delivery of horror, of pain and anguish and impossible grief?
Give the demon crimson scales, slashing talons. Tentacles and dripping poison. Three eyes and six slithering tongues. As it crouches there in the soul, its latest abode in an eternal succession of abodes, may every god kneel in prayer.
But really. Evil is nothing but a word, an objectification where no objectification is necessary. Cast aside this notion of some external agency as the source of inconceivable inhumanity - the sad truth is our possession of an innate proclivity towards indifference, towards deliberate denial of mercy, towards disengaging all that is moral within ~ Steven Erikson

25This day I will begin to put the dread and fear of you on the peoples who are under the whole heaven, who shall hear the report of you and shall tremble and be in anguish because of you. ~ Anonymous

All men needed the bridle of religion, which, properly speaking, was the dread of a Hereafter. ~ George Eliot

The deeds we do, the words we say,Into still air they seem to fleet;We count them ever past;But they shall last -In the dread judgment theyAnd we shall meet. ~ John Keble

Squat, thick-bodied, swarthy, with the unmistakable stamp of Indian blood on his features, he was the dread Apachito himself- Mister Fifteen Thousand Dollars, in the language of the bounty hunting trade. ~ Joe Millard

We now dwelt in a very large prison, without walls, bounded by Canada, Mexico and two oceans. There were the jailers, the turnkeys, the informers, and somewhere in the Midwest the solitary confinement of the special internment camps. Most people did not appear to notice. Since there were no literal walls or barbed wire, since they had committed no crimes, had not been arrested or taken to court, they did not grasp the change, the dread transformation, of their situation. It was the classic case of a man kidnapped while standing still. Since they had been taken nowhere and since they themselves had voted the new tyranny into power, they could see nothing wrong. Anywho, a good third of them, had they known, would have thought it a good idea…Their freedom to do as they were told had been preserved. ~ Philip K. Dick

Our life is twofold; Sleep hath its own world, a boundary between the things misnamed Death and existence. Sleep hath its own world, and a wide realm of wild reality; and dreams in their development have breath, and tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy. They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts, they take a weight off our waking toils. They do divide our being; they become a portion of ourselves as of our time, and look like heralds of eternity. They pass like spirits of the past - they speak like sibyls of the future; they have power - the tyranny of pleasure and of pain. They make us what we were not - what they will, and shake us with the vision that's gone by, the dread of vanished shadows - Are they so? Is not the past all shadow? - What are they? Creations of the mind? - The mind can make substances, and people planets of their own, with beings brighter than have been, and give a breath to forms which can outlive all flesh. I would recall a vision which I dreamed, perchance in sleep - for in itself a thought, a slumbering thought, is capable of years, and curdles a long life into one hour. ~ Lord Byron