Daniel Defoe Quotes

A true-bred merchant is the best gentleman in the nation.

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.

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

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

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.

Next, bring some lawyers to thy bar,
By innuendo they might all stand there;
There let them expiate that guilt,
And pay for all that blood their tongues have spilt.
These are the mountebanks of state,
Who by the sleight of tongues can crimes create,
And dress up trifles in the robes of fate,
The mastiffs of a Government,
To worry and run down the innocent.

We loved the doctrine for the teacher's sake.

It is never too late to be wise.

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

In a word, the nature and experience of things dictated to me, upon just reflection, that all the good things of this world are no farther good to us than they are for our use; and that, whatever we may heap up to give others, we enjoy just as much as we can use, and no more.

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

For I cannot think that God Almighty ever made them 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 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.

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

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 on the sand.