Life & Wisdom Quote by Dawn Powell

Sanity, in Dawn Powell's hands, is less a virtue than a social leash. "A capacity for going overboard" treats excess not as immaturity but as proof of adult equipment: the willingness to risk embarrassment, contradiction, even failure in the pursuit of a thought or desire taken seriously. Powell flips the usual moral hierarchy. We tend to praise balance, moderation, good judgment - the traits that keep you employable and pleasantly predictable. She suggests those are often just the mannerisms of fear.

The phrase "capacity for" is doing quiet work. It's not a command to live in constant melodrama; it's an endorsement of range. A "full-grown mind" can hold competing intensities: it can be measured when needed, then deliberately spill over when the situation demands conviction, love, art, or rebellion. Going overboard becomes a test of whether you have anything inside you strong enough to break the container.

Powell wrote in and about a world where sophisticated people perform sophistication - the salon, the party circuit, the urbane novel of manners. In that milieu, restraint is currency; being too earnest is gauche. Her line reads as a dagger aimed at the professionally composed. The subtext is feminist and cultural without preaching: women, especially, were expected to be tasteful, controlled, "sensible". Powell argues that real adulthood includes the right to be excessive - to want too much, to argue too hard, to care beyond the approved limit. The wit lies in making "overboard" sound like a credential.