Fanny Kemble Quotes

#1. 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.

Fanny Kemble

#2. 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.

Fanny Kemble

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

Fanny Kemble

#4. 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

#5. [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

#6. 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

#7. 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

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

Fanny Kemble

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

Fanny Kemble

#10. Simplicity is a great element of good breeding.

Fanny Kemble

#11. Children are made of eyes and ears, and nothing, however minute, escapes their microscopic observation.

Fanny Kemble

#12. 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

#13. A sacred burden is this life ye bear,
Look on it, lift it, bear it solemnly,
Stand up and walk beneath it steadfastly;
Fail not for sorrow, falter not for sin,
But onward, upward, till the goal ye win.

Fanny Kemble

#14. I said I thought female labour of the sort exacted from these slaves, and corporal chastisement such as they endure, must be abhorrent to any manly or humane man.

Fanny Kemble

#15. 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

#16. 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.

Fanny Kemble

#17. [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.

Fanny Kemble

#18. 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

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

Fanny Kemble

#20. Assuredly of all earthly conditions uncertainty is the most unblest ...

Fanny Kemble

#21. The master's irresponsible power has no such bound.

Fanny Kemble

#22. Carols of gladness ring from every tree.

Fanny Kemble

#23. The vast concourse of people who had assembled to witness the triumphant arrival of the successful travellers was of the lowest orders of mechanics and artisans, among whom great distress and a dangerous spirit of discontent with the government at that time prevailed.

Fanny Kemble

#24. 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.

Fanny Kemble

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

Fanny Kemble

#26. Yesterday morning I amused myself with an exercise of a talent I once possessed, but have so neglected that my performance might almost be called an experiment. I cut out a dress for one of the women.

Fanny Kemble

#27. 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

#28. But I do not admit the comparison between your slaves and even the lowest class of European free labourers, for the former are allowed the exercise of no faculties but those which they enjoy in common with the brutes that perish.

Fanny Kemble

#29. 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

#30. It's always determined characters who make the greatest fools.

Fanny Kemble

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

Fanny Kemble

#32. 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

#33. Maids must be wives and mothers to fulfill the entire and holiest end of woman's being.

Fanny Kemble

#34. The plodding thrift and scrupulous integrity and long-winded patient industry of our business men of the last century are out of fashion in these "giddy-paced" times, and England is forgetting that those who make haste to be rich can hardly avoid much temptation and some sin.

Fanny Kemble

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

Fanny Kemble

#36. Modesty is a diamond setting to female beauty.

Fanny Kemble

#37. I have sometimes been haunted with the idea that it was an imperative duty, knowing what I know, and having seen what I have seen, to do all that lies in my power to show the dangers and the evils of this frightful institution.

Fanny Kemble

#38. 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.

Fanny Kemble

#39. The white man's blood and bones have begotten this bronze race, and bequeathed to it in some degree qualities, tendencies, capabilities, such as are the inheritance of the highest order of human animals.

Fanny Kemble

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

Fanny Kemble

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

Fanny Kemble

#42. Yet thousands of slaves throughout the southern states are thus handed over by the masters who own them to masters who do not; and it does not require much demonstration to prove that their estate is not always the more gracious.

Fanny Kemble