Daniel Defoe Quotes

74 Sourced Quotes

I cut every day a notch with my knife, and every seventh notch was as long again as the rest, and every first day of the month, as long again as that long one; and thus I kept my calendar, or weekly, monthly, and yearly reckoning of time.

Daniel Defoe
What are the sorrows of other men to us, and what their joy?...

Daniel Defoe
There was exactly the print of a foot, toes, heel and every part of a foot; how it came thither, I knew not, nor could I in the least imagine.

Daniel Defoe
Never, ladies, marry a fool. Any husband rather than a fool. With some other husband you may be unhappy, but with a fool you will be miserable.

Daniel Defoe
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
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