Daniel Defoe Quotes

74 Sourced Quotes

Self-destruction is the effect of cowardice in the highest extreme.

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

Daniel Defoe
The power of nations is not now measured, as it has been, by prowess, gallantry, and conduct. 'Tis the wealth of nations that makes them great.

Daniel Defoe
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
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. We reproach the sex every day with folly and impertinence; while I am confident, had they the advantages of education equal to us, they would be guilty of less than ourselves.

Daniel Defoe
Nature has left this tincture in the blood,
That all men would be tyrants if they could.

Daniel Defoe
Wherever God erects a house of prayer,
The Devil always builds a chapel there;
And 'twill be found, upon examination,
The latter has the largest congregation.

Daniel Defoe
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
The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond; and must be polished, or the lustre of it will never appear. And 'tis manifest, that as the rational soul distinguishes us from brutes; so education carries on the distinction, and makes some less brutish than others.

Daniel Defoe
I might, at sixty-one years of age, have been a little inclined to stay at home.

Daniel Defoe
Things as certain as death and taxes, can be more firmly believed.

Daniel Defoe
I could not forbear getting up to the top of a little mountain, and looking out to sea, in hopes of seeing a ship : then fancy that, at a vast distance, I spied a sail, please myself with the hopes of it, and, after looking steadily, till I was almost blind, lose it quite, and sit down and weep like a child, and thus increase my misery by my folly.

Daniel Defoe
As covetousness is the root of all evil, so poverty is the worst of all snares.

Daniel Defoe
An Englishman will fairly drink as much As will maintain two families of Dutch.

Daniel Defoe