109 Quotes by Fanny Burney

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

How little has situation to do with happiness.

There's no nation under the sun can beat the English for ill-politeness: for my part, I hate the very sight of them; and so I shall only just visit a person of quality or two of my particular acquaintance, and then I shall go back again to France.

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!

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

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.

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!

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

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