Daniel Defoe Quotes

74 Sourced Quotes

Manchester, one of the greatest, if not really the greatest mere village in England.

Daniel Defoe
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
Abused prosperity is oftentimes made the very means of our greatest adversity.

Daniel Defoe
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
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
He that is rich is wise, And all men learned poverty despise.

Daniel Defoe
He bid me [Robinson Crusoe] observe it, and 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
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
This grieved me heartily ; and now I saw, though too late, the folly of beginning a work before we count the cost, and before we judge rightly of our own strength to go through with it.

Daniel Defoe
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
It happened one day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand. I stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an apparition.

Daniel Defoe
Justice is always violent to the party offending, for every man is innocent in his own eyes.

Daniel Defoe
These reflections made me very sensible of the goodness of Providence to me, and very thankful for my present condition, with all its hardships and misfortunes ; and this part also I cannot but recommend to the reflection of those who are apt, in their misery, to say, Is any affliction like mine? Let them consider how much worse the cases of some people are, and their case might have been, if Providence had thought fit.

Daniel Defoe
He told me…that mine was the middle state, or what might be called the upper station of low life, which he had found by long experience was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness.

Daniel Defoe
Hail, hieroglyphic State machine,
Contrived to punish fancy in;
Men that are men in thee can feel no pain,
And all thy insignificance disdain!

Daniel Defoe
The royal refugee our breed restores
With foreign courtiers and with foreign whores,
And carefully repeopled us again,
Throughout his lazy, long, lascivious reign.

Daniel Defoe
He that makes his pleasure be his business, will never make his business be a pleasure.

Daniel Defoe
In trouble to be troubled
Is to have your trouble doubled.

Daniel Defoe
'Tis very strange Men should be so fond of being thought wickeder than they are.

Daniel Defoe
Actions receive their tincture from the times,
And as they change are virtues made or crimes.

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

Daniel Defoe
My island was now peopled, and I thought my self very rich in subjects; and it was a merry reflection which I frequently made, how like a king I looked.

Daniel Defoe
Fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself.

Daniel Defoe
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
I am giving an account of what was, not of what ought or ought not to be.

Daniel Defoe
Great families of yesterday we show,
And lords whose parents were the Lord knows who.

Daniel Defoe
Vice came in always at the door of necessity, not at the door of inclination.

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

Daniel Defoe
Call upon me in the Day of Trouble, and I will deliver, and thou shalt glorify me...Wait on the Lord, and be of good Cheer, and he shall strengthen thy Heart; wait, I say, on the Lord:' It is impossible to express the Comfort this gave me. In Answer, I thankfully laid down the Book, and was no more sad, at least, not on that Occasion.

Daniel Defoe
A woman well bred and well taught, furnished with the additional accomplishments of knowledge and behaviour, is a creature without comparison. Her society is the emblem of sublimer enjoyments, her person is angelic, and her conversation heavenly. She is all softness and sweetness, peace, love, wit, and delight. She is every way suitable to the sublimest wish, and the man that has such a one to his portion, has nothing to do but to rejoice in her, and be thankful.

Daniel Defoe