Solitary Walker Quotes

“What do I have to fear from them now that everything is over? Since they can no longer make things any worse for me, they can no longer frighten me. Anxiety and terror are ills from which they have delivered me for ever: this is real relief for me. Real ills have little hold over me; I deal easily with those that I actually experience, but not with those that I fear. My fevered imagination adds them together, turns them over and over, draws them out and increases them. The expectation of them tortures me a hundred times more than their actual presence, and the threat of them is far worse than the blow itself. As soon as they happen, the experience of them strips them of their imagined aura and cuts them down to their true size.”
― Rousseau Jean-Jacques 1712-1778