Top 15 Quotes & Sayings by Frances Burney

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English novelist Frances Burney.
Last updated on December 21, 2024.
Frances Burney

Frances Burney, also known as Fanny Burney and later Madame d'Arblay, was an English satirical novelist, diarist and playwright. In 1786–1790 she held the post as "Keeper of the Robes" to Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, George III's queen. In 1793, aged 41, she married a French exile, General Alexandre d'Arblay. After a long writing career and wartime travels that stranded her in France for over a decade, she settled in Bath, England, where she died on 6 January 1840. The first of her four novels, Evelina (1778), was the most successful and remains her most highly regarded. Most of her plays were not performed in her lifetime. She wrote a memoir of her father (1832) and many letters and journals that have been gradually published since 1889.

To whom, then, must I dedicate my wonderful, surprising and interesting adventures? to whom dare I reveal my private opinion of my nearest relations? the secret thoughts of my dearest friends? my own hopes, fears, reflections and dislikes? Nobody!
In the bosom of her respectable family resided Camilla.
To despise riches, may, indeed, be philosophic, but to dispense them worthily, must surely be more beneficial to mankind.
There is something in age that ever, even in its own despite, must be venerable, must create respect and to have it ill treated, is to me worse, more cruel and wicked than anything on earth.
I cannot sleep - great joy is as restless as great sorrow.
We continually say things to support an opinion, which we have given, that in reality we don't above half mean.
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.
The mind is but too naturally prone to pleasure, but too easily yielded to dissipation. — © Frances Burney
The mind is but too naturally prone to pleasure, but too easily yielded to dissipation.
Insensibility, of all kinds, and on all occasions, most moves my imperial displeasure.
Traveling is the ruin of all happiness! There's no looking at a building after seeing Italy.
But if the young are never tired of erring in conduct, neither are the older in erring of judgment. — © Frances Burney
But if the young are never tired of erring in conduct, neither are the older in erring of judgment.
I am ashamed of confessing that I have nothing to confess.
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.
I cannot be much pleased without an appearance of truth; at least of possibility I wish the history to be natural though the sentiments are refined; and the characters to be probable, though their behaviour is excelling.
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.
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