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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.

Fanny Burney

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Fanny Burney
Living
Sense
Persons
Person
Decency
Devil
Takes
Age
Woman

More quotes by 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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To a heart formed for friendship and affection the charms of solitude are very short-lived.
Fanny Burney
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Childhood is never troubled with foresight.
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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O! how short a time does it take to put an end to a woman's liberty!
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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We relate all our afflictions more frequently than we do our pleasures.
Fanny Burney
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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
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Far from having taken any positive step, I have not yet even fommed any resolution.
Fanny Burney
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Credulity is the sister of innocence.
Fanny Burney
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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.
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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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 am tired to death! tired of every thing! I would give the universe for a disposition less difficult to please. Yet, after all, what is there to give pleasure? When one has seen one thing, one has seen every thing.
Fanny Burney
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In England, I was quite struck to see how forward the girls are made--a child of 10 years old, will chat and keep you company, while her parents are busy or out etc.--with the ease of a woman of 26. But then, how does this education go on?--Not at all: it absolutely stops short.
Fanny Burney
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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.
Fanny Burney
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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.
Fanny Burney
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To save the mind from preying inwardly upon itself, it must be encouraged to some outward pursuit.
Fanny Burney
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Unused to the situations in which I find myself, and embarassed by the slightest difficulties, I seldom discover, till too late, how I ought to act.
Fanny Burney
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Can any thing, my good Sir, be more painful to a friendly mind than a necessity of communicating disagreeable intelligence? Indeed, it is sometimes difficult to determine, whether the relater or the receiver of evil tidings is most to be pitied.
Fanny Burney