all-overs, angst, ants, apprehension, botheration, butterflies, cabin fever, care, cold sweat, concern, creeps, disquiet, disquietude, distress, doubt, downer, drag, dread, fidgets, flap, foreboding, fretfulness, fuss, goose bumps, heebie-jeebies, jitters, jumps, misery, misgiving, mistrust, nail-biter, needles, nervousness, panic, restlessness, shakes, shivers, solicitude, suffering, suspense, sweat, trouble, uncertainty, unease, uneasiness, watchfulness, willies, worriment… Anxiety seems to be the dominant fact—and is threatening to become the dominant cliché—of modern life. -time magazine 1961

some strange commotion is in his brain: he bites his lip, and starts; stops on a sudden, look supon the ground, then then lays his finger on his temple; straight sptings out into fast gate; then stops again, strikes his breast hard, and anon he casts his eye against the moon. -shakespeare.

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. -Kierkegaard

Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained. -Roche

Our Age of Anxiety is, in great part, the result of trying to do today’s jobs with yesterday’s tools. -mcluhan

The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but deliverance from fear. -emerson

The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Only the moment you reject all help are you freed. -Siddharta

Anxiety is not fear, being afraid of this or that definite object, but the uncanny feeling of being afraid of nothing at all. It is precisely Nothingness that makes itself present and felt as the object of our dread. -Barrett

Your soul will be dead even before your body: fear nothing further. -Nietzsche

I’ve developed a new philosophy… I only dread one day at a time. -charlie brown

Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow. -swedish proverb

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened. -twain

fear like a dog stuffed in my mouth,
fear like dung stuffed up my nose,
fear where water turns into steel,
fear as my breast flies into the Disposall,
fear as flies tremble in my ear,
fear as the sun ignites in my lap… -anne sexton

Dread of night. Dread of not-night. -kafka

The suspense is terrible, I hope it will last. -wilde

now what sort of man or woman or monster would stroke a centipede? -burroughs

Worry is not thought; complaining is not action. -cooley

Who’s not sat tense before his own heart’s curtain? -rilke

O foolish anxiety of wretched man, how inconclusive are the arguments which make thee beat thy wings below! -dante

Only man clogs his happiness with care, destroying what is, with thoughts of what may be. -dryden

(all illustrations by heiri steiner. 1962)

don’t touch me! dont question me! don’t speak to me! stay with me! -beckett