Fanny Kemble Quotations

Simplicity is a great element of good breeding.

The master's irresponsible power has no such bound.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

[When her husband said her earnings as a married woman belonged to him:] I cannot persuade myself that that which I invent - create, in fact - can belong to anyone but myself! I wish that women could be dealt with, not mercifully, not compassionately, nor affectionately, but justly; it would be so much better - for the men.

The Southern newspapers, with their advertisements of negro sales and personal descriptions of fugitive slaves, supply details of misery that it would be difficult for imagination to exceed. Scorn, derision, insult, menace - the handcuff, the last - the tearing away of children from parents, of husbands from wives - the weary trudging in droves along the common highways, the labor of body, the despair of mind, the sickness of heart - these are the realities which belong to the system, and form the rule, rather that the exception, in the slave's experience.

A good many causes tend to make good masters and mistresses quite as rare as good servants.... 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, or in any way really raise them above the servants they employ, who are quite aware of this fact, and that the possession of wealth is literally the only superiority their employers have over them.

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.

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

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?

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.

[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.

...I cannot help being astonished at the furious and ungoverned execration which all reference to the possibility of a fusion of the races draws down upon those who suggest it, because nobody pretends to deny that, throughout the South, a large proportion of the population is the offspring of white men and colored women.

[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.

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.

I am persuaded that we are all surrounded by an atmosphere - a separate, sensitive, distinct envelope extending some distance from our visible persons - and whenever my invisible atmosphere is invaded, it affects my whole nervous system. The proximity of any bodies but those I love best is unendurable to my body.

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.

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.

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.

The whole gamut of good and evil is in every human being, certain notes, from stronger original quality or most frequent use, appearing to form the whole character; but they are only the tones most often heard. The whole scale is in every soul, and the notes most seldom heard will on rare occasions make themselves audible.

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

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.

My chief time for reading is at night while brushing my hair before I go to bed, and as you may suppose, but little profit and pleasure can be derived from such mere sips at the well of knowledge. 'Tis a great privation to me, for my desire for information increases instead of diminishing, and I look forward with great anxiety to the time when I can improve my poor neglected mind and learn some of the few exhaustless store of things which I wish to know.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Carols of gladness ring from every tree.

Though the Negroes are fed, clothed, and housed, and though the Irish peasant is starved, naked, and roofless, the bare name of freemen-the lordship over his own person, the power to choose and will-are blessings beyond food, raiment, or shelter; possessing which, the want of every comfort of life is yet more tolerable than their fullest enjoyment without them.

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.

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

Modesty is a diamond setting to female beauty.

American gentlemen are a cross between English and French men, and yet really altogether like neither. They are more refined and modest than Frenchmen, and less manly, shy, and rough, than Englishmen. Their brains are finer and flimsier, their bodies less robust and vigorous than ours. We are the finer animals, and they the subtler spirits. Their intellectual tendency is to excitement and insanity, and ours to stagnation and stupidity.

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.

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

assuredly of all earthly conditions uncertainty is the most unblest ...

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

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

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