Fanny Burney Quotes
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To despise riches, may, indeed, be philosophic, but to dispense them worthily, must surely be more beneficial to mankind.
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I am ashamed of confessing that I have nothing to confess.
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I cannot sleep - great joy is as restless as great sorrow.
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No man is in love when he marries. He may have loved before; I have even heard he has sometimes loved after: but at the time never. There is something in the formalities of the matrimonial preparations that drive away all the little cupidons.
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For my part, I confess I seldom listen to the players: one has so much to do, in looking about and finding out one's acquaintance, that, really, one has no time to mind the stage. One merely comes to meet one's friends, and show that one's alive.
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In the bosom of her respectable family resided Camilla.
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You have sensible women here [in England] but then, they are very devils--censorious, uncharitable, sarcastic--the women in Scotland have twice--thrice their freedom, with all their virtue--and are very conversable and agreeable--their educations are more finished.
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Traveling is the ruin of all happiness! There's no looking at a building after seeing Italy.
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But if the young are never tired of erring in conduct, neither are the older in erring of judgment.
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I love and honour [Paulus Aemilius, in Plutarch's Lives], for his fondness for his children, which instead of blushing at, he avows and glories in: and that at an age, when almost all the heros and great men thought that to make their children and family a secondary concern, was the first proof of their superiority and greatness of soul.
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I'd rather be done any thing to than laughed at, for, to my mind, it's one or other the disagreeablest thing in the world.
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Nothing is so delicate as the reputation of a woman; it is at once the most beautiful and most brittle of all human things.
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the mind naturally accommodates itself, even to the most ridiculous improprieties, if they occur frequently.
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This perpetual round of constrained civilities to persons quite indifferent to us, is the most provoking and tiresome thing in theworld, but it is unavoidable in a country town, where everybody is known.... 'Tis a most shocking and unworthy way of spending our precious irrecoverable time, to those who know not its value.
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To Nobody, then, will I write my Journal! since to Nobody can I be wholly unreserved, to Nobody can I reveal every thought, every wish of my heart, with the most unlimited confidence, the most unremitting sincerity, to the end of my life!
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While all the pomp and circumstance of war animated others, it only saddened me; and all of past reflection, all of future dread, made the whole grandeur of the martial scene, and all the delusive seduction of martial music, fill my eyes frequently with tears.
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There si nothing upon the face of the earth so insipid as a medium. Give me love or hate! A friend that will go to jail for me, or an enemy that will run me through the body!
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O, we all acknowledge our faults, now; 'tis the mode of the day: but the acknowledgment passes for current payment; and therefore we never amend them.
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don't be angry with the gentleman for thinking, whatever be the cause, for I assure you he makes no common practice of offending in that way.
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To save the mind from preying inwardly upon itself, it must be encouraged to some outward pursuit. There is no other way to elude apathy, or escape discontent; none other to guard the temper from that quarrel with itself, which ultimately ends in quarreling with all mankind.
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There's no nation under the sun can beat the English for ill-politeness: for my part, I hate the very sight of them; and so I shall only just visit a person of quality or two of my particular acquaintance, and then I shall go back again to France.
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Imagination took the reins, and reason, slow-paced, though sure-footed, was unequal to a race with so eccentric and flighty a companion.
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When young people are too rigidly sequestered from [the world], their lively and romantic imaginations paint it to them as a paradise of which they have been beguiled; but when they are shown it properly, and in due time, they see it such as it really is, equally shared by pain and pleasure, hope and disappointment.
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an old woman ... is a person who has no sense of decency; if once she takes to living, the devil himself can't get rid of her.