Quotes from Fanny Burney

. . . men seldom risk their lives where an escape is without hope of recompense.

Far from having taken any positive step, I have not yet even fommed any resolution.

I cannot sleep - great joy is as restless as sorrow.

How little has situation to do with happiness.

Imagination took the reins, and reason, slow-paced, though sure-footed, was unequal to a race with so eccentric and flighty a companion.

A little alarm now and then keeps life from stagnation.

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

She [Evelina] is not, indeed, like most modern young ladies; to be known in half an hour; her modest worth, and fearful excellence, require both time and encouragement to show themselves.

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

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

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

Money is the source of the greatest vice, and that nation which is most rich, is most wicked.

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.

It is sometimes dangerous to make requests to men, who are too desirous of receiving them.

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

When once--which every body must be--you are convinced of the wickedness and deceit of men, it is impossible to preserve untainted your own innocence of heart.

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.

It seldom happens that a man, though extolled as a saint, is really without blemish; or that another, though reviled as a devil, is really without humanity.

Let me counsel you to remember that a lady, whether so called from birth or only from fortune, should never degrade herself by being put on a level with writers, and such sort of people.

We are almost all, my good General, of a nature so pitifully plastic, that we act from circumstance, and are fashioned by situation.

It has been long and justly remarked, that folly has ever sought alliance with beauty.

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

Why he's a poet, you know, so he may live upon learning.

You are made a slave in a moment by the world, if you don't begin life by defying it.