...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.

Fanny Kemble

Categorized in : Men Race White Man

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

Fanny Kemble

done want world

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.

Fanny Kemble

husband heart children

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

knowing fear lying

[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.

Fanny Kemble

husband wish men

[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

husband action giving

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.

Fanny Kemble

house giving people

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

Fanny Kemble

ought existence marriage

A sacred burden is this life ye bear,

Fanny Kemble

failure winning life

Modesty is a diamond setting to female beauty.

Fanny Kemble

modesty female diamond

Simplicity is a great element of good breeding.

Fanny Kemble

breeding simplicity elements

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

Fanny Kemble

fool determined character

What shall I do with all the days and hours

Fanny Kemble

letting-go missing-you i-miss-you

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

dream men memories

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

blessed believe lying

[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

roots spring war

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.

Fanny Kemble

stupidity animal men

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

Fanny Kemble

cease

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

horse would-be death

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

light education beautiful

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.

Fanny Kemble

atmosphere distance love-is