“Grown people with rational minds somehow do not know what's best for them.”

“Curious creatures we mortals are-how we do not know what we want, or how to get it if we do.”

“Perhaps grown women are beings of a good deal more complexity than cats”

“I will do what I can”

“We always think we know what we want: when in truth there is nothing we are less likely to know.”

“And what does she mean by love, anyway? People use that word and mean all sorts of things by it.”

“So this, Harriet thought, gazing at her black-clad reflection, was what bearing up looked like. The eyes in the mirror stared at her, somehow, while fixing themselves far away.Bearing up, then, must be this: the feeling of perfect frozen stillness, so that to raise your hand was a wrenching and unnatural event. It was not being able to sleep or eat, and the small placid tone in which she heard herself decline the food. It was the presentiment that there must be a crack or a hole somewhere at hand down which she was to throw and extinguish herself, since there must surely be something provided to make this bearable.”