Anxiety

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.
~ William E. Barrett, Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1958). Chapter 9

Anxiety is simply part of the condition of being human. If we were not anxious, we would never create anything.
~ William E. Barrett, The Listener magazine (1978).

So let it be, let it be,
Fretting all the day!
~ William Rose Benét, from Man Possessed (1927). Smooth-Sliding Mincius

And leave the vain low strife
That makes men mad -- the tug for wealth and power,
The passions and the cares that wither life,
And waste its little hour.
~ William Cullen Bryant, from Poems (1832 edition). Autumn Woods

No atomic physicist has to worry, people will always want to kill other people on a mass scale. Sure, he's got the fridge full of sausages and spring water.
~ William S. Burroughs, The Adding Machine (1985). A Word to the Wise Guy

Guilt is ever at a loss, and confusion waits upon it.
~ William Congreve, The Double Dealer (1694). Act IV, scene xvii

I have no more patience. If I have not fretted myself till I am pale again, there's no veracity in me.
~ William Congreve, The Way of the World (1700). Act III, scene i

I worry about ridiculous things, you know, how does a guy who drives a snowplough get to work in the morning. ... That can keep me awake for days.
~ Billy Connolly, standup at the Albert Hall (1987)

I pity bashful men, who feel the pain
Of fancied scorn and undeserved disdain,
And bear the marks upon a blushing face,
Of needless shame, and self-impos'd disgrace.
~ William Cowper, from Poems by William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1782). Conversation

The sense of guilt implies in some vague outline the ideas of a broken moral order and an offended God.
~ William Cunningham, Essays on Theological Questions (1905).

The four leading ways of breaking tension are: taking drugs, meditating, exercising, and laughing your ham off.
~ Bill Dana (William Szathmary)

Know, he that
Foretells his own calamity, and makes
Events before they come, twice over doth
Endure the pains of evil destiny.
~ Sir William Davenant, The Distresses (1639).

You dumb ox -- why don't you get that stupid look offa your pan -- you gimme the heeby jeebys!
~ William Morgan ("Billy") DeBeck, in the Chicago Herald and Examiner (26 October 1923). Take Barney Google, F'rinstance

The only way to be rid of worry about the things we have not done is to do them.
~ William Feather, The Business of Life (1949).

Don't worry about your heart, it will last you as long as you live.
~ W.C. Fields, quoted in W.C. Fields By Himself (1973).

Set up another case bartender! The best thing for a case of nerves is a case of Scotch.
~ W.C. Fields

Whether it is fair or not, those suffering from neuroses or simple maladjustments -- the worried well -- form the majority of patients in psychotherapy. The term does them an injustice. They are not well, and they are more than worried. They are suffering.
~ Willard "Will" Gaylin, Talk Is Not Enough (2000).

If you're anxious for to shine in the high aesthetic line as a man of culture rare.
~ William Schwenck (W.S.) Gilbert, Patience: Or, Bunthorne's Bride (1881 opera).

If you can get the fear of failure and the craving for success out of your system, it will leave you with a clearer mind to concentrate on the core of the problem in front of you. You can focus on what really needs to be done, free from all the encumbrances the world would so willingly lay on you -- and 90 percent of life's stresses will drop away.
~ Wilson Greatbatch, in IEEE Spectrum (October 1999). Threshold of the new millennium

Are we having fun yet?
~ William Henry Jackson (Bill) Griffith, Zippy the Pinhead (mid-1970s).

It is an expression of the American existential dilemma, of anxiousness. The phrase is supposed to be satirical, but lots of people don't see the subtext.
~ William Henry Jackson (Bill) Griffith (of the phrase, "Are we having fun yet?"), Seattle Post-Intelligencer (1 July 1992).

The guilty mind
Debases the great image that it wears,
And levels us with brutes.
~ William Havard, Scanderbeg: A Tragedy (1733).

Sometimes I wonder if it's not a lot easier to pioneer a country than it is to settle down in it.
~ William Motter Inge, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1957).

Worry is interest paid on trouble before it falls due.
~ William Ralph (Dean) Inge, Observer (London, 14 February 1932).

The exercise of prayer, in those who habitually exert it, must be regarded by us doctors as the most adequate and normal of all pacifiers of the mind and the calmers of nerves.
~ William James, Presidential Address, American Philosophical Association. Columbia University (28 December 1906). The Energies of Men

The sovereign cure for worry is religious faith.
~ William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology: and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (March 1899). The Gospel of Relaxation

Worry is the traitor in our camp that dampens our powder, weakens our aim.
~ William George Jordan, The Kingship of Self-Control: Individual Problems and Possibilities (1899). V: Worry, The Great American Disease

My guilt is all I have left. If I lose it, I have stood for nothing, done nothing, been nothing.
~ William J. Kennedy, Ironweed (1983).

There smites nothing so sharp, nor smelleth so sour as shame.
~ William Langland, A Vision of William Concerning Piers Plowman (or Visio Willelmi de Petro Ploughman; c. 1362).

With what a leaden and retarding weight
Does expectation load the wings of time?
~ William Mason, from Poems (1764). Elfrida (first published in 1751)

I'm a confirmed negaholic. I don't just see a glass that's half full and call it half-empty; I see a glass that's completely full and worry that someone's going to tip it over.
~ Peter McWilliams

It's enough to give a gopher the heartburn.
~ William Ormond (W.O.) Mitchell

I think that at some point in your life you realize you don't have to worry if you do everything you're supposed to do right. Or if not right, if you do it the best you can ... what can worry do for you? You are already doing the best you can.
~ Joe "Willie" Namath

The advent of the Christian God, as the maximum god attained so far, was ... accompanied by the maximum feeling of guilty indebtedness on Earth. Presuming we gradually enter upon the reverse course, there is no small probability that with the irresistible decline of faith in the Christian god, there is now a considerable decline in mankind's feeling of guilt; indeed, the prospect cannot be dismissed that the complete and definitive victory of Atheism might free mankind of this whole feeling of guilty in-debtedness towards its origin. ... Atheism and a kind of second innocence belong together.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (1887).

To take upon oneself not punishment, but guilt -- that alone would be godlike.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Avoid questions and strife; it shows a busy and contentious disposition.
~ William Penn, Advice to His Children (1699).

[A]fter years of conditioning, most people see pressure as an obstacle, not the powerful, driving force it really is. ... You see, the truth of the matter is that it's through pressure or "stress" that we evolve -- that we grow.
~ William Nathaniel ("Bill") Phillips, Body for Life: 12 Weeks to Mental and Physical Strength (1999).

[S]weating like a pitcher with ice-water in it, and looking all-fired tired.
~ William Trotter Porter, Tales of the Southwest

I highly recommend worrying. It is much more effective than dieting.
~ William Powell

For every nation and every individual, the principal worry is debt.
~ Will Rogers, quoted in Criswell Freeman The Wisdom of the West (1997).

Worrying is like paying on a debt that may never come due.
~ Will Rogers

The trouble with most nervous people is that they are bestowing too much thought and sympathy on themselves. They are wasting on themselves those very things the world is dying for the need of -- love, pity, and sympathy.
~ William S. Sadler, The Quest for Happiness; How You Can Keep Happy (1938).

And then it started like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons.
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet. Act I, scene i

Courage and comfort! all shall yet go well.
~ William Shakespeare, King John. Act III, scene iv

Have you no modesty, no maiden shame,
No touch of bashfulness?
~ William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream

[H]e was not born to shame:
Upon his brow shame is ashamed to sit.
~ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet. Act III, scene ii

I durst not laugh for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air.
~ William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar. Act I, scene ii

Out, damned spot! out, I say!
~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth. Act V, scene i

Since thou hast far to go, bear not along
The clogging burthen of a guilty soul.
~ William Shakespeare, King Richard II. Act I, scene iii

So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet

So shaken as we are, so wan with care.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part I

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind;
The thief doth fear each bush an officer.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part III. Act V, scene vi

Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority; envy our uneasiness under it.
~ William Shenstone, in Works in Verse and Prose, Vol. II (1764). Essays on Men, Manners, and Things. Of Men and Manners

Oh! chase the clouds of guilt away,
And turn my darkness into day!
~ William Shrubsole, Jr., in the Christian Observer (August 1813). Daily Duties, Dependence, and Enjoyment

You only have a few years to play this game and you can't play it if you're all tied up in knots.
~ Wilver Dornel "Willie" Stargell

[A]ll anxiety is ultimately the fear of annihilation of the ego -- is, in fact, the fear of death.
~ Wilhelm Stekel, Conditions of Nervous Anxiety and Their Treatment (1923).

Anxiety ... can also be fear of one's self.
~ Wilhelm Stekel, Conditions of Nervous Anxiety and Their Treatment (1923).

[Writing] is fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats as I am most of the time -- for jittery people.
~ William Styron, Interview in The Paris Review, Issue 5 (Spring 1954). The Art of Fiction No. 5

I'm so pressed and badgered, I don't know where to turn. I shall go mad; by Jove, I shall.
~ William Makepeace Thackeray, The History of Pendennis (1848-1850), Volume II. Chapter V: In Which The Colonel Narrates Some Of His Adventures

By worry is meant undue self-consciousness, introspectiveness. The worrier permits himself unduly and insistently to think of self, and to be harassed by anything that may, in any way, do harm to that self.
~ William Sebastian Walsh, Yours For Sleep (1920). Chapter IV: Worry

Don't worry about things you can't change. Focus on making your part of the world better, because when they click your lights out for the last time, you can't have any regrets.
~ A.L. ("Art") Williams, All You Can Do Is All You Can Do, But All You Can Do Is Enough! (1988).

In my experience of shame, the other sees all of me and all through me, even if the occasion of shame is on my surface -- for instance, in my appearance; and the expression of shame, in general, as well as in the particular form of it that is embarrassment, is not just the desire to hide, or to hide my face, but the desire to disappear, not to be there. It is not even the wish, as people say, to sink through the floor, but rather the wish that the space occupied by me should be instantaneously empty. With guilt it is not like this. I am more dominated by the thought that even if I disappeared, it would come with me.
~ Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity (1993).

I have to be me. I feel like if I was nervous or I had butterflies, it would take away from my experience.
~ Jay Williams, in The Chicago Tribune (31 October 2002). Williams gives bright preview of the future

I believe in guilt. There's not enough guilt around these days for my taste.
~ Joy Williams, Shifting Things (Essay)

We're from the ghetto. Venus is a ghetto Cinderella. People from the ghetto don't get nervous.
~ Richard Williams, quoted in African Perspective.com (29 July 2000). The Williams: Inspiring Role Models

Venus told me the other day that champions don't get nervous in tight situations. That really helped me a lot. I decided I shouldn't get nervous and just do the best I can.
~ Serena Williams, The Associated Press (5 September 2001).

Guilt is universal.
~ Thomas Lanier ("Tennessee") Williams, Sweet Bird of Youth (1959). Forward

He was fizzing like an impatient soda fountain.
~ Harry Leon Wilson, The Boss of Little Arcady (1905). Chapter VIII: Adventure of Billy Durgin, Sleuth

The burden of guilt is fatal, and relief from it may often restore a human soul to virtue.
~ John Wilson, in 'Christopher North': A Memoir of John Wilson (1852). Chapter IX: The Moral Philosophy Chair

I try not to worry about the future -- so I take each day just one anxiety attack at a time.
~ Tom Wilson, Ziggy

There's no future in spending our present worrying about our past.
~ Tom Wilson, Ziggy

Heaven grants even to the guiltiest mind
An amnesty for what is past.
~ William Wordsworth, in The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. VI. The Forsaken (1800)

That blessed mood,
In which the burden of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened.
~ William Wordsworth, from Lyrical Ballads (1798). Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey

The fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart.
~ William Wordsworth, from Lyrical Ballads (1798). Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey

False the logic that breeds the fear.
Buds will blossom, and pipes will play.
So it was in that early year;
So shall it be till the world is gray.
~ William Young, in An American Anthology, 1787-1900 (1900). Judith