Fanny Burney Quotes

I am ashamed of confessing that I have nothing to confess.

O! how short a time does it take to put an end to a woman's liberty!

to diminish expectation is to increase enjoyment.

A little alarm now and then keeps life from stagnation.

We relate all our afflictions more frequently than we do our pleasures.

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

Concealment is the foe of tranquility.

Travelling is the ruin of all happiness. There's no looking at a building here after seeing Italy.

How little has situation to do with happiness. The happy individual uses their intelligence to realise things could be worse and therefore is grateful and happy. The unhappy individual does the opposite!

To have some account of my thoughts, manners, acquaintance and actions, when the hour arrives in which time is more nimble than memory, is the reason which induces me to keep a journal: a journal in which I must confess my every thought, must open my whole heart!

How truly does this journal contain my real and undisguised thoughts--I always write it according to the humour I am in, and if astranger was to think it worth reading, how capricious--insolent & whimsical I must appear!--one moment flighty and half mad,--the next sad and melancholy. No matter! Its truth and simplicity are its sole recommendations.

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.

But authors before they write should read.

Wealth per se I never too much valued, and my acquaintance with its possessors has by no means increased my veneration for it.

Credulity is the sister of innocence.

You must learn not only to judge but to act for yourself.

Those who wander in the world avowedly and purposely in pursuit of happiness, who view every scene of present joy with an eye to what may succeed, certainly are more liable to disappointment, misfortune and unhappiness, than those who give up their fate to chance and take the goods and evils of fortune as they come, without making happiness their study, or misery their foresight.

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!

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

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.

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.

Tis best to build no castles in the air.

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.

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

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.