Defoe's Quotes

#1. 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

#2. As covetousness is the root of all evil, so poverty is the worst of all snares.

Daniel Defoe

#3. 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

#4. Wait on the Lord, and be of good cheer, and he shall strengthen thy heart; wait, I say, on the Lord.

Daniel Defoe

#5. 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

#6. inclinations prompted me to. But being one day at Hull, where

Daniel Defoe

#7. 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

#8. When you get up in the morning and know you're doing something you love, feel fit and look after yourself, it's just a great thing to do.

Jermain Defoe

#9. I feel 21. I've looked after myself and take my football seriously.

Jermain Defoe

#10. 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

#11. 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

#12. 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

#13. The best of men cannot defend their fate: the good die early, the bad die late.

Daniel Defoe

#14. For the first time, Smollett adopted a device that Barbara Foley calls "pseudofactual imposture," a strategy of presentation that we associate with the fictions of Behn, Defoe, and Richardson.

Tobias Smollett

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. 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

#18. 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

#19. In trouble to be troubled, Is to have your trouble doubled.

Daniel Defoe

#20. Before games, people ask whether I get nervous. To be honest, I don't get nervous, I just enjoy it. I am living the dream. When I was a kid I always wanted to play for my country and now I am here, I will enjoy it.

Jermain Defoe

#21. 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

#22. 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

#23. 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

#24. 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

#25. I want to again highlight the desperate need for us to pull together - the world over - to tackle knife crime and teach everyone how sacred a life is.

Jermain Defoe

#26. 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

#27. A True Born Englishman's a contradiction!
In speech and irony, in fact a fiction

Daniel Defoe

#28. You want to play in the best stadiums against the best players - your Real Madrid's and Barcelona's - you want to play those teams.

Jermain Defoe

#29. For me, there's nothing that beats playing. When I'm not playing, I'll watch games on the television, watch stuff on You Tube, everything. I just live for football, love watching great players.

Jermain Defoe

#30. 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

#31. There is always going to be competition. When you play for a top club, you're going to attract top players. It's part and parcel of football.

Jermain Defoe

#32. If you're good to your body, your body's good to you.

Jermain Defoe

#33. I hear much of people's calling out to punish the guilty, but very few are concerned to clear the innocent.

Daniel Defoe

#34. People know what they're getting with me. It's part and parcel of football that people want to see new faces, but all I can do is play games, score goals and prove I can do it. My record is there for everyone to see.

Jermain Defoe

#35. 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

#36. Robbie Keane's not the second choice, he's my first choice. But Jermain Defoe is as well.

Martin Jol

#37. I am a bit of a control freak. If I get married, my wife isn't going out. No way. She's staying at home. She's not going out to clubs without me. I've already decided the rules, whoever she is.

Jermain Defoe

#38. And of all the plagues with which mankind are cursed, Ecclesiastic tyranny's the worst.

Daniel Defoe

#39. I am doing my job and trying to win a game for my team. I shouldn't be getting racially abused; it's silly.

Jermain Defoe

#40. I had to tell Dad, 'It will be okay and be positive; keep praying and have faith'. I have always known about cancer, but to be around someone who has it and to see what it does in such a short space of time was hard. It makes you think about your life, about what is important.

Jermain Defoe

#41. Going to a major tournament, having that buzz - it's hard to put into words. It's a dream to go there, and to play. It's the biggest thing you can achieve in your career, and to go again would be a dream.

Jermain Defoe

#42. I pray every day. In the mornings and, before I go to bed. I think it's important to pray not just when things are going bad. When things are going bad, it's easy to pray and ask God to help you out, but it's also important to pray when things are going well and show your appreciation.

Jermain Defoe

#43. I think my faith is important. Being young as well, sometimes it's difficult, but I've got a good family behind me as well.

Jermain Defoe

#44. When I get up in the morning, I look forward to the games and I'm just buzzing. At the end of the day, if you are nervous or scared before games, you are not going to perform. I just go out there and think, 'If I get a chance, I'm going to score' and that's it.

Jermain Defoe

#45. Babbage's Three Laws of Difference Engines
First Law: A difference engine must have at least six cogs.
Second Law: A difference engine must be able to operate a loom.
Third law: A difference engine must be able to kill a man, should the mood so take it.

Gideon Defoe

#46. This is what I like about life at sea. It's one long voyage of discovery. Solid water! What will they think of next? Hopefully a pony who solves crimes.

Gideon Defoe

#47. I've got a Ferrari 430. It's black. I don't know what it cost but it wasn't cheap. I bought it because I was being a boy. It's fast and looks good.

Jermain Defoe

#48. And of all plagues with which mankind are curst, Ecclesiastic tyranny's the worst.

Daniel Defoe

#49. 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

#50. The Captain's boat inspections were always pretty slapdash, because they mainly just involved him looking at the ropes and planks and barnacles and then nodding to show that he approved of whatever they happened to be doing.

Gideon Defoe

#51. [The Devil's] laws are easy, and his gentle sway, Makes it exceeding pleasant to obey .

Daniel Defoe

#52. When you are young, nothing is more important than football, but as you get older, you get married, have kids and lose people. Then you realise your family is more important. This comes with age.

Jermain Defoe

#53. An Englishman will fairly drink as much As will maintain two families of Dutch.

Daniel Defoe

#54. The pirates left the boat in the Thames, next to the Palace of Westminster. They deliberately parked across two disabled spaces, because that kind of behaviour was pretty much the whole point of being a pirate.

Gideon Defoe

#55. They both fell silent. For a while the only sound they could hear was the noise of books resting on shelves, which wasn't really enough of a sound to distract them from the awkwardness of the moment.

Gideon Defoe

#56. When you play with good players, they will always create chances for the forwards to score.

Jermain Defoe

#57. 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

#58. Pride the first peer and president of hell.

Daniel Defoe

#59. 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

#60. 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

#61. Not only a fanatic and an incendiary (two of the insults that dogged Defoe most closely in his lifetime), the author of Robinson Crusoe was also an egregious spiv, and a slave to bling.

Daniel Defoe

#62. No shoots, says Friday, no yet, me shoot now, me no kill; me stay, give you one more laugh.

Daniel Defoe

#63. It was easy to get wrapped up in some of the negative stuff, but obviously I chose not to. I didn't want to get in trouble and end up in prison where I can't play football. It was as simple as that.

Jermain Defoe

#64. 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

#65. In their religion they are so uneven,
That each man goes his own byway to heaven.

Daniel Defoe

#66. I had been tricked once by that Cheat called love, but the Game was over ...

Daniel Defoe

#67. 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

#68. Tis very strange men should be so fond of being wickeder than they are.

Daniel Defoe

#69. walked about a furlong

Daniel Defoe

#70. 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

#71. 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

#72. Here's your first problem," he said, pointing at a sentence. "'Religion is the opium of the people.' Well, I don't know about people, but I think you'll find that the opium of pirates is actual opium.

Gideon Defoe

#73. It's like my old Aunt Joan always used to say: if you're going to end up fighting monsters, Pirate Captain, try to stick to ventriloquist's dummies who have gone alive.

Gideon Defoe

#74. I know not what to call this, nor will I urge that it is a secret, overruling decree, that hurries us on to be the instruments of our own destruction, even though it be before us, and that we rush upon it with our eyes open.

Daniel Defoe

#75. Defoe was level and anyone who says otherwise is picking hairs

John Motson

#76. And so my story begins, like so many stories, with a woman

Daniel Defoe

#77. Things as certain as death and taxes, can be more firmly believed.

Daniel Defoe

#78. The key for me is movement. When the ball comes into the box, or when the wide players get it, that's where I have to be clever and make my runs. That's where I come alive.

Jermain Defoe

#79. 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

#80. 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

#81. To conclude: having staid near four mouths in Hamburgh, I came from thence over land to the Hague, where I embarked in the packet, and arrived in London the tenth of January 1705, having been gone from England ten years and nine months.

Daniel Defoe

#82. The best thing about football is that the rules are so simple. Anyone can play anywhere.

Jermain Defoe

#83. It is better to have a lion at the head of an army of sheep than a sheep at the head of an army of lions.

Daniel Defoe

#84. 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

#85. If the pirate with a scarf had been more poetically minded he'd have thought that her eyes were like a thousand emeralds, glittering in a far-off pirate treasure chest. But he wasn't, so he just thought that she had really really green eyes, a bit like seaweed.

Gideon Defoe

#86. With a sound like a bat hitting a watermelon, pirate fist connected with pirate jaw and a gold tooth bounced across the deck.

Gideon Defoe

#87. Pleasure is a thief to business.

Daniel Defoe

#88. England are very light up front. Eriksson's decision not to include Jermaine Defoe can be declared an error of judgment, regardless of Rooney's situation. The Swede should have forgone one of his nine midfield players; much will have to go wrong for Jermaine Jenas to get a game.

Matt Dickinson

#89. I don't do chat-up lines. Girls often tell me I'm cheeky. Being cheeky seems to work OK for me.

Jermain Defoe

#90. I prefer not to fly, but sometimes it's unavoidable.

Jermain Defoe

#91. For sudden Joys, like Griefs, confound at first.

Daniel Defoe

#92. The best of men cannot suspend their fate: The good die early, and the bad die late.

Daniel Defoe

#93. 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

#94. I don't feel like I'm getting older. I think it's the way I've looked after myself. I take my football seriously. I love scoring goals and I get a good feeling from it, so I'll do whatever it takes to be fit and feel good in games.

Jermain Defoe

#95. If I ever score against Spurs, I won't celebrate. Even if it's the best goal in the world, I'll keep it subdued. It's a respect thing. The fans were brilliant towards me; I'll be playing against my friends and I can't forget that.

Jermain Defoe

#96. It doesn't matter who you are, football's a business. At some stage you're going to have to leave a football club; that's just normal.

Jermain Defoe

#97. 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

#98. I understand it's difficult but you've got to think about yourself, you know, and not just follow the crowd.

Jermain Defoe

#99. That explains a lot,' he said. 'I suppose it's also why we've never glimpsed that giant compass in the corner of the Atlantic. I have to say, I'm a little disappointed.

Gideon Defoe

#100. I scored in a World Cup and I want that buzz again.

Jermain Defoe