FANNY BURNEY QUOTES

English novelist & playwright (1752-1840)

When once--which every body must be--you are convinced of the wickedness and deceit of men, it is impossible to preserve untainted your own innocence of heart.

FANNY BURNEY

The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney


It is sometimes dangerous to make requests to men, who are too desirous of receiving them.

FRANCES BURNEY

Evelina


It has been long and justly remarked, that folly has ever sought alliance with beauty.

FRANCES BURNEY

Evelina


I wish the opera was every night. It is, of all entertainments, the sweetest and most delightful. Some of the songs seemed to melt my very soul.

FANNY BURNEY

Evelina

Tags: opera


To despise riches may, indeed, be philosophic; but to dispense them worthily must, surely, be more beneficial to mankind.

FRANCES BURNEY

Evelina


It seldom happens that a man, though extolled as a saint, is really without blemish; or that another, though reviled as a devil, is really without humanity.

FANNY BURNEY

Evelina


Money is the source of the greatest vice, and that nation which is most rich, is most wicked.

FANNY BURNEY

The Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney


Let me counsel you to remember that a lady, whether so called from birth or only from fortune, should never degrade herself by being put on a level with writers, and such sort of people.

FANNY BURNEY

Cecilia


Why he's a poet, you know, so he may live upon learning.

FANNY BURNEY

Evelina


We are almost all, my good General, of a nature so pitifully plastic, that we act from circumstance, and are fashioned by situation.

FRANCES BURNEY

Camilla


A youthful mind is seldom totally free from ambition; to curb that, is the first step to contentment, since to diminish expectation is to increase enjoyment.

FANNY BURNEY

Evelina


You are made a slave in a moment by the world, if you don't begin life by defying it.

FANNY BURNEY

Camilla


Nothing is so delicate as the reputation of a woman: it is, at once, the most beautiful and most brittle of all human things.

FANNY BURNEY

Evelina


I am too inexperienced and ignorant to conduct myself with propriety in this town, where every thing is new to me, and many things are unaccountable and perplexing.

FANNY BURNEY

Evelina


He has no more manners than a bear.

FANNY BURNEY

Evelina


One indulgence alone from time to time I allow myself -- 'tis Music! which has power to delight me even to rapture! it quiets all anxiety, it carries me out of myself, I forget through it every calamity, even the bitterest anguish.

FANNY BURNEY

Cecilia


Pleasure given in society, like money lent in usury, returns with interest to those who dispense it.

FANNY BURNEY

Cecilia


Unused to the situations in which I find myself, and embarrassed by the slightest difficulties, I seldom, till too late, discover how I ought to act.

FANNY BURNEY

Evelina


Generosity without delicacy, like wit without judgement, generally gives as much pain as pleasure.

FRANCES BURNEY

Evelina