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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

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Fanny Burney
Mind
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Curb
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Diminish
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More quotes by Fanny Burney

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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.
Fanny Burney
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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.
Fanny Burney
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Misery is a guest that we are glad to part with, however certain of her speedy return.
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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!
Fanny Burney
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Childhood is never troubled with foresight.
Fanny Burney
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to diminish expectation is to increase enjoyment.
Fanny Burney
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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.
Fanny Burney
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To despise riches, may, indeed, be philosophic, but to dispense them worthily, must surely be more beneficial to mankind.
Fanny Burney
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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.
Fanny Burney
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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!
Fanny Burney
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But authors before they write should read.
Fanny Burney
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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.
Fanny Burney
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Generosity without delicacy, like wit without judgment, generally gives as much pain as pleasure.
Fanny Burney
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We relate all our afflictions more frequently than we do our pleasures.
Fanny Burney
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to be sure, marriage is all in all with the ladies but with us gentlemen it's quite another thing!
Fanny Burney
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Well of all things in the world, I don't suppose anything can be so dreadful as a public wedding--my stars!--I should never be able to support it!
Fanny Burney
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The laws of custom make our [returning a visit] necessary. O how I hate this vile custom which obliges us to make slaves of ourselves! to sell the most precious property we boast, our time--and to sacrifice it to every prattling impertinent who chooses to demand it!
Fanny Burney
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. . . men seldom risk their lives where an escape is without hope of recompense.
Fanny Burney
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People who live together naturally catch the looks and air of one another and without having one feature alike, they contract a something in the whole countenance which strikes one as a resemblance
Fanny Burney
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the right line of conduct is the same for both sexes, though the manner in which it is pursued, may somewhat vary, and be accommodated to the strength or weakness of the different travelers.
Fanny Burney