Fanny Kemble Quotes

I want to do everything in the world that can be done.

[On disagreeing with her husband about his slave-holding:] I cannot give my conscience into the keeping of another human being or submit the actions dictated by my conscience to their will.

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?

When marriage is what it ought to be, it is indeed the very happiest condition of existence.

Carols of gladness ring from every tree.

I have been taking my daily walk round the island, and visited the sugar mill and the threshing mill again.

Simplicity is a great element of good breeding.

... it's always determined characters who make the greatest fools.

An actor's life is the shadow of a cloud, the echo of a sound, the memory of a dream, nothing come of nothing. The finest actor does not create, he is but a translator of another man's work.

The death I should prefer would be to break my neck off the back of a good horse at a full gallop on a fine day.

Place, time, life, death, earth, heaven are divisions and distinctions we make, like the imaginary lines we trace upon the surface of the globe.

They frequently find the truth who do not seek it, they who do, frequently lose it.

I have been out again on the river, rowing. I find nothing new.

Those that we love never alter, unless we cease to love them.

cultivate in young minds an equal love of the good, the beautiful and the absurd; most people's lives are too lead-colored to lose the smallest twinkle of light from a flash of nonsense.

[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.

Modesty is a diamond setting to female beauty.

Better trust all, and be deceived, And weep that trust and that deceiving, Than doubt one heart, that if believed Had blessed one's life with true believing.

Assuredly of all earthly conditions uncertainty is the most unblest.

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.

The master's irresponsible power has no such bound.

Maids must be wives, and mothers, to fulfil Th' entire and holiest end of woman's being.

The drama is the looking-glass in which we see the hideousness of vice and the beauties of virtue.

children are made of eyes and ears, and nothing, however minute, escapes their microscopic observation.

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.

The spring is already here with her hands full of flowers.

The large and rapid fortunes by which vulgar and ignorant people become possessed of splendid houses, splendidly furnished, do not of course, give them the feelings and manners of gentle folks.

Rome ... seems to me the place in the world where one can best dispense with happiness.