Stoic quotes on fear

There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

We are in the habit of exaggerating, or imagining, or anticipating, sorrow.

What tortures us, therefore, is an idea. Now every evil is just as great as we consider it to be: we have, therefore, the remedy in our own hands.

As a result, because of our lack of practice, we are ever going out of our way to heap up terrors and to make them out greater than they actually are.

Let not future things disturb thee, for thou wilt come to them, if it shall be necessary, having with thee the same reason which now thou usest for present things.

There is nothing more wretched than worry over the outcome of future events…

For he only is anxious about the future, to whom the present is unprofitable.

I find in the writings of our Hecato that the limiting of desires helps also to cure fears: ‘Cease to hope,’ he says, ‘and you will cease to fear.’

Why are you looking about for troubles which may perhaps come your way, but which may indeed not come your way at all?

…by looking forward to the coming of our sorrows we take the sting out of them when they come.

In the next place remember that neither the future nor the past pains thee, but only the present.

Our minds should be sent forward in advance to meet all problems, and we should consider, not what is wont to happen, but what can happen.