Daniel Defoe Quotes
Fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself.
The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond; and must be polished, or the luster of it will never appear.
Middle age is youth without levity, and age without decay.
And of all plagues with which mankind are cursed, Ecclesiastic tyranny's the worst.
I am giving an account of what was, not of what ought or ought not to be.
All men would be tyrants if they could.
In trouble to be troubled, Is to have your trouble doubled.
It is never too late to be wise.
Vice came in always at the door of necessity, not at the door of inclination.
We loved the doctrine for the teacher's sake.
Justice is always violent to the party offending, for every man is innocent in his own eyes.
Necessity makes an honest man a knave.
No sin to cheat the devil.
I saw the Cloud, though I did not foresee the Storm.
As covetousness is the root of all evil, so poverty is, I believe, the worst of all snares.
The best of men cannot suspend their fate:
The good die early, and the bad die late.
In their religion they are so uneven,
That each man goes his own byway to heaven.
He that makes his pleasure his business, will never make his business a pleasure. Innocent pleasures become sinful when they are used to excess.
All our discontents about what we want appeared to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have.
Nature has left this tincture in the blood,
That all men would be tyrants if they could.
I hear much of people's calling out to punish the guilty, but very few are concerned to clear the innocent.
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.
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.
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.
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.
He bade me 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.
I learned to look more upon the bright side of my condition, and less upon the dark side, and to consider what I enjoyed, rather than what I wanted : and this gave me sometimes such secret comforts, that I cannot express them.
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.
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.
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.
