Matilda longed for her parents to be good and loving and understanding and honourable and intelligent. The fact that they were none of these things was something she had to put up with. It was not easy to do so. But the new game she had invented of punishing one or both of them each time they were beastly to her made her life more or less bearable. Being very small and very young, the only power Matilda had over anyone in her family was brain-power. For sheer cleverness she could run rings around them all. But the fact remained that any five-year-old girl in any family was always obliged to do as she was told, however asinine the orders might be.

He had power only to feel, and feeling was torment.

She knew few words and believed in none.

Only a weak person needed someone else around all the time.

Evil has only the power that we give it.

Nothing has any power over me other than that which I give it through my conscious thoughts.

Intellect has powerful muscles, but no personality.

I can give her no greater power than she has already, said the woman; don't you see how strong that is? How men and animals are obliged to serve her, and how well she has got through the world, barefooted as she is. She cannot receive any power from me greater than she now has, which consists in her own purity and innocence of heart. If she cannot herself obtain access to the Snow Queen, and remove the glass fragments from little Kay, we can do nothing to help her.

She didn't read books so she didn't know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop.

He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone.

"We'll send only a brain," he said.

For obstinacy standing alone is the weakest of all things in one whose mind is not possessed by wisdom.

I can give her no greater power than she has already... don’t you see how strong that is? How men and animals are obliged to serve her and how well she has got through the world, barefoot as she is. She cannot receive from me any power greater than she now has, which consists in her own purity and innocence of heart.

we humans have little or no influence on the two most important moments of our life. Being born and dying.