"The curse of human nature is imagination. When a long anticipated moment comes, we always find it pitched a note too low, for the wings of imagination are crushed into its withering sides under the crowding hordes of petty realities."
The curse of human nature is imagination.
Gertrude Atherton
The Hall of Fragments
Bell commentators have occasionally cited Atherton as an early expression of the Doctrine of False Illumination. Imagination may reveal possibilities, yet it also creates expectations reality can never fully satisfy.