“But myself is not listening. She refuses to listen. She’s picking up another letter and another and another, frantically looking for a different answer.”
“You’re no saint, because saints are stupid! You’re stupid! You’re so stupid that you can’t think ahead! You think that sacrificing your life for a bunch of scabby, snot-nosed orphans is going to save them from slavery? You’re out of your mind!”
“They have made Virtue also a goddess, which, indeed, if it could be a goddess, had been preferable to many. And now, because it is not a goddess, but a gift of God, let it be obtained by prayer from Him, by whom alone it can be given.”
“Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.”
“You are young, but you are strong and powerful above your years, and can better protect them then I could. I see darker days yet coming- but it is His will, and who shall doubt that that is right? I pray you not to make your birth and lineage known as yet- it can do no good, and it may do harm-”
“There is hardly any contact more depressing to a young ardent creature than that of a mind in which years full of knowledge seem to have issued a blank absence of interest or sympathy.”