Daily Inspiration Quote by Logan Pearsall Smith

Fantasy is safest at arm’s length. Logan Pearsall Smith’s line lands because it punctures the sentimental assumption that desire is a reliable compass. He takes the cozy, half-conscious pleasure of daydreaming and flips it: the moment your private script is exposed to reality’s sharp edges, it doesn’t just disappoint you - it terrifies you. The wit is in the conditional clause, “were there a danger,” treating fulfillment like a public hazard, as if getting what you want should come with warning labels.

Smith, a critic by trade and a master of the aphorism, is doing critic-work on the self. The subtext is that daydreams aren’t plans; they’re emotional prototypes. They’re allowed to be inconsistent, selfish, inflated, even a little cruel, because they don’t have to survive friction: other people’s needs, time, money, consequences, your own boredom once the chase is over. The dream’s power often depends on its unreality. Make it real and the fantasy loses its flattering edit - and you lose the excuse of “someday.”

Context matters: Smith writes out of an early 20th-century sensibility suspicious of grand romantic narratives and equally skeptical of modern ambition. He isn’t preaching prudence so much as exposing a quiet hypocrisy: we claim to want certain things, but we also rely on not having them. The nightmare isn’t failure; it’s contact.