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Politics of all sorts, I confess, are far beyond my limited powers of comprehension. Those of this country as far as I have been able to observe, resolve themselves into two great motives. The aristocratic desire of elevation and separation, and the democratic desire of demolishing and levelling.

Fanny Kemble

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Fanny Kemble
Age: 83 †
Born: 1809
Born: November 27
Died: 1893
Died: January 15
Diarist
Playwright
Stage Actor
Writer
London
England
Fanny Kemble
Frances Anne Butler
Frances Kemble
Great
Powers
Confess
Democratic
Motives
Beyond
Observe
Politics
Sorts
Levelling
Desire
Resolve
Demolishing
Two
Motive
Aristocratic
Able
Separation
Elevation
Country
Limited
Comprehension

More quotes by Fanny Kemble

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Place, time, life, death, earth, heaven are divisions and distinctions we make, like the imaginary lines we trace upon the surface of the globe.
Fanny Kemble
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I want to do everything in the world that can be done.
Fanny Kemble
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Assuredly of all earthly conditions uncertainty is the most unblest.
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In the north we could not hope to keep the worst and poorest servant for a single day in the wretched discomfort in which our negro servants are forced habitually to live.
Fanny Kemble
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Rome ... seems to me the place in the world where one can best dispense with happiness.
Fanny Kemble
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Carols of gladness ring from every tree.
Fanny Kemble
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What shall I do with all the days and hours That must be counted ere I see thy face? How shall I charm the interval that lowers Between this time and that sweet time of grace?
Fanny Kemble
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Your theory of partial immortality is abhorrent to me. I would rather disbelieve in the immortality of my own soul than suppose the boon given to me was withheld from any of my fellow creatures.
Fanny Kemble
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I am persuaded that we are all surrounded by an atmosphere - a separate, sensitive, distinct envelope extending some distance from our visible persons - and whenever my invisible atmosphere is invaded, it affects my whole nervous system. The proximity of any bodies but those I love best is unendurable to my body.
Fanny Kemble
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The whole gamut of good and evil is in every human being, certain notes, from stronger original quality or most frequent use, appearing to form the whole character but they are only the tones most often heard. The whole scale is in every soul, and the notes most seldom heard will on rare occasions make themselves audible.
Fanny Kemble
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... it's always determined characters who make the greatest fools.
Fanny Kemble
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Simplicity is a great element of good breeding.
Fanny Kemble
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...I cannot help being astonished at the furious and ungoverned execration which all reference to the possibility of a fusion of the races draws down upon those who suggest it, because nobody pretends to deny that, throughout the South, a large proportion of the population is the offspring of white men and colored women.
Fanny Kemble
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The most intense curiosity and excitement prevailed, and though the weather was uncertain, enormous masses of densely packed people lined the road, shouting and waving hats and handkerchiefs as we flew by them.
Fanny Kemble
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I never desire to know anything of the detail of political measures, lest even those which I think best should lose anything of their intrinsic value to me, by seeing what low, paltry, personal motives and base machinery and dirty hands have helped to bring them about.
Fanny Kemble
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The drama is the looking-glass in which we see the hideousness of vice and the beauties of virtue.
Fanny Kemble
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A great number of the women are victims to falling of the womb and weakness in the spine but these are necessary results of their laborious existence, and do not belong either to climate or constitution.
Fanny Kemble
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[On John Brown:] The poor wretch is hanged, but from his grave a root of bitterness will spring, the fruit of which at no distant day may be disunion and civil war.
Fanny Kemble
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Christmas is a season of such infinite labour, as well as expense in the shopping and present-making line, that almost every woman I know is good for nothing in purse and person for a month afterwards, done up physically, and broken down financially.
Fanny Kemble
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The master's irresponsible power has no such bound.
Fanny Kemble