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Generosity without delicacy, like wit without judgment, generally brings as much pain as pleasure.

— Frances Burney Evelina (1778)

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More quotes by Frances Burney

Money is the source of the greatest vice, & that Nation which is most rich, is most wicked.

To despise riches may, indeed, be philosophic; but to dispense them worthily must, surely, be more beneficial to mankind.

Evelina (1778)

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

Remember, my dear Evelina, nothing is so delicate as the reputation of a woman; it is at once the most beautiful and most brittle of all human things.

Evelina (1778)

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.

Evelina (1778)

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Wit's an unruly engine, wildly striking
Sometimes a friend, sometimes the engineer.

George Herbert The Temple (1633)

A tragedy can never suffer by delay: a comedy may, because the allusions or the manners represented in it maybe temporary.

Horace Walpole

The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel– a solution of why Democritus laughed and Heraclitus wept.

Horace Walpole

Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.

Karl Barth The Harper Book of Quotations (1993)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Frances Burney (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.