Top 100 Daniel Defoe Quotes
#1. And so my story begins, like so many stories, with a woman
Daniel Defoe
#2. He look'd a little disorder'd, when he said this, but I did not apprehend any thing from it at that time, believing as it us'd to be said, that they who do those things never talk of them; or that they who talk of such things never do them.
Daniel Defoe
#3. Thus fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself when apparent to the eyes ; and we find the burden of anxiety greater, by much, than the evil which we are anxious about : ...
Daniel Defoe
#5. Tis very strange men should be so fond of being wickeder than they are.
Daniel Defoe
#6. Thus we never see the true state of our condition till it is illustrated to us by its contraries, nor know how to value what we enjoy, but by the want of it.
Daniel Defoe
#7. I had been tricked once by that Cheat called love, but the Game was over ...
Daniel Defoe
#8. Man is a short-sighted creature, sees but a very little way before him; and as his passions are none of his best friends, so his particular affections are generally his worst counselors.
Daniel Defoe
#9. No shoots, says Friday, no yet, me shoot now, me no kill; me stay, give you one more laugh.
Daniel Defoe
#10. It is men of desperate fortunes on the one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other, who go abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road.
Daniel Defoe
#11. The height of human wisdom is to bring our tempers down to our circumstances, and to make a calm within, under the weight of the greatest storm without.
Daniel Defoe
#12. Pride the first peer and president of hell.
Daniel Defoe
#13. Those people cannot enjoy comfortably what God has given them because they see and covet what He has not given them. All of our discontents for what we want appear to me to spring from want of thankfulness for what we have.
Daniel Defoe
#14. An Englishman will fairly drink as much As will maintain two families of Dutch.
Daniel Defoe
#15. In their religion they are so uneven,
That each man goes his own byway to heaven.
Daniel Defoe
#16. How frequently in the Course of our Lives, the Evil which in it self we seek most to shun, and which when we are fallen into it, is the most dreadful to us, is oftentimes the very Means or Door of our Deliverance, by
Daniel Defoe
#17. A rich man is an honest man
no thanks to him; for he would be a double knave, to cheat mankind when he had no need of it: he has no occasion to press upon his integrity, nor so much as to touch upon the borders of dishonesty.
Daniel Defoe
#18. The best of men cannot suspend their fate: The good die early, and the bad die late.
Daniel Defoe
#19. For sudden Joys, like Griefs, confound at first.
Daniel Defoe
#20. Things as certain as death and taxes, can be more firmly believed.
Daniel Defoe
#21. For I cannot think that GOD Almighty ever made them [women] so delicate, so glorious creatures; and furnished them with such charms, so agreeable and so delightful to mankind; with souls capable of the same accomplishments with men: and all, to be only Stewards of our Houses, Cooks, and Slaves.
Daniel Defoe
#22. And thus I left the island, the 19th of December, as I found by the ship's account, in the year 1686, after I had been upon it eight-and-twenty years, two months, and nineteen days;
Daniel Defoe
#23. It is as reasonable to represent one kind of imprisonment by another as it is to represent anything that really exists by that which exists not.
Daniel Defoe
#24. No man commits evil for the sake of it; even the Devil himself has some farther design in sinning, than barely the wicked part of it.
Daniel Defoe
#25. When kings the sword of justice first lay down,
They are no kings, though they possess the crown.
Titles are shadows, crowns are empty things,
The good of subjects is the end of kings.
Daniel Defoe
#26. Though this was all but a fiction of his own, yet it had its desired effect; Atkins fell upon his knees to beg the captain to intercede with the governor for his life; and all the rest begged of him, for God's sake, that they might not be sent to England.
Daniel Defoe
#27. That temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society, all agreeable diversions, and all desirable pleasures, were the blessings attending the middle station of life; that
Daniel Defoe
#28. In the first place , I was removed from all the wickedness of the world here. I had neither the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, or the pride of life. I had nothing to covet; for I had all that I was now capable of enjoying.
Daniel Defoe
#29. In trouble to be troubled, Is to have your trouble doubled.
Daniel Defoe
#30. But it was impossible to make any impression upon the middling people and the working labouring poor. Their fears were predominant over all their passions, and they threw away their money in a most distracted manner upon those whimsies.
Daniel Defoe
#31. I should always find that the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind, but that the middle station had the fewest disasters, ...
Daniel Defoe
#32. But how just it has been! And how should all men reflect, that when they compare their present conditions with others that are worse, Heaven may oblige them to make the exchange, and be convinced of their former felicity by their experience ...
Daniel Defoe
#33. The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond, and must be polished, or the luster of it will never appear.
Daniel Defoe
#34. The best of men cannot defend their fate: the good die early, the bad die late.
Daniel Defoe
#35. Robinson Kreutznaer; but, by the usual corruption of words in England, we are now called - nay we call ourselves and write our name - Crusoe; and
Daniel Defoe
#36. Thus the Government of our Virtue was broken and I exchang'd the Place of Friend for that unmusical harsh-sounding Title of Whore.
Daniel Defoe
#37. Wealth, howsoever got, in England makes lords of mechanics, gentlemen of rakes; Antiquity and birth are needless here; 'Tis impudence and money makes a peer.
Daniel Defoe
#38. Now, said I aloud, My dear Father's Words are come to pass: God's Justice has overtaken me, and I have none to help or hear me: I rejected the Voice of Providence.
Daniel Defoe
#39. inclinations prompted me to. But being one day at Hull, where
Daniel Defoe
#40. I had more wealth, indeed, than I had before, but was not at all the richer; for I had no more use for it than the Indians of Peru had before the Spaniards came there.
Daniel Defoe
#41. Wait on the Lord, and be of good cheer, and he shall strengthen thy heart; wait, I say, on the Lord.
Daniel Defoe
#42. As covetousness is the root of all evil, so poverty is the worst of all snares.
Daniel Defoe
#43. Fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself.
Daniel Defoe
#44. Another plague year would reconcile all these differences; a close conversing with death, or with diseases that threaten death, would scum off the gall from our tempers, remove the animosities among us, and bring us to see with differing eyes than those which we looked on things with before.
Daniel Defoe
#45. Self-destruction is the effect of cowardice in the highest extreme.
Daniel Defoe
#46. It happen'd one Day about Noon going towards my Boat, I was exceedingly surpriz'd with the Print of a Man's naked Foot on the Shore.
Daniel Defoe
#48. For now I had five children by him: the only work perhaps that fools are good for.
Daniel Defoe
#50. I rather wished for their ruin, than studied to avoid it.
Daniel Defoe
#51. In the middle of these cogitations, apprehensions, and reflections,
Daniel Defoe
#52. [The Devil's] laws are easy, and his gentle sway, Makes it exceeding pleasant to obey .
Daniel Defoe
#53. If a young women once thinks herself handsome, she never doubts the truth of any man that tells her he is in love with her; for if she believes herself charming charming enough to captive him, 'tis natural to expect the effects of it.
Daniel Defoe
#54. I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs in the world, considering us as a civilized and a Christian country, that we deny the advantages of learning to women.
Daniel Defoe
#55. Wit is the Fruitful Womb where Thoughts conceive.
Daniel Defoe
#56. Books are useful only to such whose genius are suitable to the subject of them
Daniel Defoe
#57. Call on me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver, and thou shalt glorify me.
Daniel Defoe
#58. Why then should women be denied the benefits of instruction? If knowledge and understanding had been useless additions to the sex, God almighty would never have given them capacities.
Daniel Defoe
#59. I spent eighteen days entirely in widening and deepening my cave,
Daniel Defoe
#60. He that hath truth on his side is a fool as well as a coward if he is afraid to own it because fo other mens's opinions.
Daniel Defoe
#61. Was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but, by the usual corruption of words in England, we are now called - nay we call ourselves and write our name - Crusoe; and so my companions
Daniel Defoe
#62. And of all plagues with which mankind are curst, Ecclesiastic tyranny's the worst.
Daniel Defoe
#63. What are the sorrows of other men to us, and what their joy? ...
Daniel Defoe
#64. I am giving an account of what was, not of what ought or ought not to be.
Daniel Defoe
#65. Reason, it is true, is DICTATOR in the Society of Mankind; from her there ought to lie no Appeal; But here we want a Pope in our Philosophy, to be the infallible Judge of what is or is not Reason.
Daniel Defoe
#66. In the course of our lives, the evil which in itself we seek most to shun, and which, when we are fallen into, is the most dreadful to us, is oftentimes the very means or door of our deliverance, by which alone we can be raised again from the affliction we are fallen into ...
Daniel Defoe
#67. miserable of all conditions in this world: that we may always find in it something to comfort ourselves from, and
Daniel Defoe
#68. He that is rich is wise, And all men learned poverty despise.
Daniel Defoe
#69. But, he says again, if God much strong, much might as the Devil, why God no kill the Devil, so make him no more do wicked?
I was strangely surprised at his question, [ ... ] And at first I could not tell what to say, so I pretended not to hear him ...
Daniel Defoe
#70. If God much strong, much might, as the devil, why God not kill the devil, so make him no more wicked?
Daniel Defoe
#71. Today we love what tomorrow we hate,
today we seek what tomorrow we shun,
today we desire what tomorrow we fear,
nay, even tremble at the apprehensions of.
Daniel Defoe
#72. A True Born Englishman's a contradiction!
In speech and irony, in fact a fiction
Daniel Defoe
#73. All evils are to be considered with the good that is in them, and with what worse attends them.
Daniel Defoe
#74. Wherever God erects a house of prayer
the Devil always builds a chapel there;
And t'will be found, upon examination,
the latter has the largest congregation.
- Defoe's The True-Born Englishman, 1701
Daniel Defoe
#75. Bad as he is, the Devil may be abus'd, Be falsly charg'd, and causelesly accus'd, When Men, unwilling to be blam'd alone, Shift off these Crimes on Him which are their Own.
Daniel Defoe
#76. And of all the plagues with which mankind are cursed, Ecclesiastic tyranny's the worst.
Daniel Defoe
#77. My father, a wise and grave man, gave me serious and excellent counsel against what he foresaw was my design.
Daniel Defoe
#78. She is always married too soon, who gets a bad husband, and she is never married too late, who gets a good one.
Daniel Defoe
#80. And now, increasing in business and in wealth, my head began to be full of projects and undertakings beyond my reach; such as are indeed often the ruin of the best heads in business.
Daniel Defoe
#81. Redemption from sin is greater then redemption from affliction.
Daniel Defoe
#83. Manchester, one of the greatest, if not really the greatest mere village in England.
Daniel Defoe
#84. He had in his army 44,000 old soldiers, every way answerable to what I have said of them before; and I shall only add, a better army, I believe, never was so soundly beaten.
Daniel Defoe
#85. Vice came in always at the door of necessity, not at the door of inclination.
Daniel Defoe
#86. Alas the Church of England! What with Popery on one hand, and schismatics on the other, how has she been crucified between two thieves!
Daniel Defoe
#87. And in that one night's wickedness I drowned all my repentance,all my reflections upon my past conduct,and all my resolution for the future.
Daniel Defoe
#89. Actions receive their tincture from the times,
And as they change are virtues made or crimes
Daniel Defoe
#90. How strange a checker-work of Providence is the life of man!
Daniel Defoe
#92. We are very fond of some families because they can be traced beyond the Conquest, whereas indeed the farther back, the worse, as being the nearer allied to a race of robbers and thieves.
Daniel Defoe
#93. He that opposes his own judgment against the consent of the times ought to be backed with unanswerable truths; and he that has truth on his side is a fool as well as a coward if he is afraid to own it because of other men's opinions.
Daniel Defoe
#94. Very bad indeed. Defoe never acquired a really good style, and can in no true sense be called a "master of the English tongue." Nature had gifted Defoe with untiring energy, a keen taste for public affairs,
Daniel Defoe
#95. Expect nothing and you'll always be surprised
Daniel Defoe
#96. In a word, the nature and experience of things dictated to me, upon just reflection, that all the good things of this world are no farther good to us than they are for our use; and that, whatever we may heap up to give others, we enjoy just as much as we can use, and no more.
Daniel Defoe
#97. So possible is it for us to roll ourselves up in wickedness, till we grow invulnerable by conscience; and that sentinel, once dozed, sleeps fast, not to be awakened while the tide of pleasure continues to flow or till something dark and dreadful brings us to ourselves again.
Daniel Defoe
#98. This town of Sheffield is very populous and large, the streets narrow, and the houses dark and black, occasioned by the continued smoke of the forges, which are always at work: Here they make all sorts of cutlery-ware, but especially that of edged-tools, knives, razors, axes, &. and nails
Daniel Defoe
#99. Sure we are all made by some secret Power, who formed the earth and sea, the air and sky.
Daniel Defoe
#100. I had, even in this miserable condition, been comforted with the knowledge of Himself, and the hope of His blessing: which was a felicity more than sufficiently equivalent to all the misery which I had suffered, or could suffer.
Daniel Defoe
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