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But authors before they write should read.

Fanny Burney

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Fanny Burney
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More quotes by 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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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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Tired, ashamed, and mortified, I begged to sit down till we returned home, which I did soon after. Lord Orville did me the honour to hand me to the coach, talking all the way of the honour I had done him ! O these fashionable people!
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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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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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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Credulity is the sister of innocence.
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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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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while we all desire to live long, we have all a horror of being old!
Fanny Burney
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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.
Fanny Burney
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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.
Fanny Burney
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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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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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We continually say things to support an opinion, which we have given, that in reality we don't above half mean.
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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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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Far from having taken any positive step, I have not yet even fommed any resolution.
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