Don't let your special character and values, the secret that you know and no one else does, the truth - don't let that get swallowed up by the great chewing complacency.

But a caution, Harriet! — Never, never, let foolish dreams claim a moment of your attention — Imminent as seemed the danger, your superstition made more dreadful to you than otherwise it would have been. You have a mind superior to such foibles: Act up to its native dignity, and let not the follies of your nurses, in your infantile state, be carried into your maturer age, to depreciate your womanly reason. Do you think I don’t dream, as well as you?

Are you enjoying your suffering? You must be, to hold on to it so tightly.

What I wanted, frankly, was someone who would argue me out of the things that I was thinking.

Only, my dear Love, my Harriet, the support of my life, and comfort of my evil days, endeavour, for my sake, and for the sake of us all, to restrain so far your laudable inclination, as that, if it be not your happy lot to give us, as well as yourself, so desirable a blessing, you may not suffer in your health (an health so precious to me) and put yourself on a soot with vulgar girls run away with by their headstrong passions. The more desirable the object, the nobler the conquest of your passion, if it is to be overcome.

Friend, lay hold with a desperate grasp, ere it is too late, on Freedom, on Tranquility, on Greatness of soul!

" — I'm a slave to my emotions, to my likes, to my hatred of boredom, to most of my desires — —
"You are not!" She brought one little fist down onto the other. "You're a slave, a bound helpless slave to one thing in the world, your imagination.

She said sorcery is a sword without a hilt. There is no safe way to grasp it.

A wise woman...A sword without a hilt is still a sword, though, and a sword is a fine thing to have when foes are all about.

Yes, I need you, my fairy-tale. Because you are the only person I can talk with about the shade of a cloud, about the song of a thought — and about how, when I went out to work today and looked a tall sunflower in the face, it smiled at me with all of its seeds.

Never,” said he, as he ground his teeth, “never was anything at once
so frail and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my hand!” (And he
shook me with the force of his hold.) “I could bend her with my finger
and thumb: and what good would it do if I bent, if I uptore, if I crushed
her? Consider that eye: consider the resolute, wild, free thing looking
out of it, defying me, with more than courage — with a stern triumph.
Whatever I do with its cage, I cannot get at it — the savage, beautiful
creature! If I tear, if I rend the slight prison, my outrage will only let the
captive loose. Conqueror I might be of the house; but the inmate would
escape to heaven before I could call myself possessor of its clay dwellingplace.
And it is you, spirit — with will and energy, and virtue and purity — that I want: not alone your brittle frame. Of yourself you could
come with soft flight and nestle against my heart, if you would: seized
against your will, you will elude the grasp like an essence — you will vanish
ere I inhale your fragrance.

"All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... <i>fantasies</i> to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little — "

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE <i>LITTLE</i> LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN <i>SHOW</i> ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET — Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME <i>RIGHTNESS</i> IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have <i>got</i> to believe that, or what's the <i>point</i> — "

MY POINT EXACTLY.

The truth is, I hoped the cure would dislike me. I tried to think of disagreeable things to say to him — I could hit on nothing that wasn't charming. It's wonderful how hard I find it not to be fascinating.

It was a fairy tale, no fooling. It was unreality becoming real. This frightened her. Because people don't care for unreality becoming real. It pricks their well-fed minds, you see, with something like a hunger pang. They prefer the logical stuffiness of expectancy. It is only at certain times that they weaken, letting imagination in. That's the time to get them. (“The Disinheritors”)

Be careful what you wish for, lest it come true.