Daniel Defoe Quotes

And I add this part here, to hint to whoever shall read it, that whenever they come to a true sense of things, they will find deliverance from sin a much greater blessing than deliverance from affliction.

All evils are to be considered with the good that is in them, and with what worse attends them.

I have since often observed, how incongruous and irrational the common temper of mankind is, especially of youth, to that reason which ought to guide them in such cases - viz. they are not ashamed to sin, and yet are ashamed to repent. Not ashamed of the action for which they ought justly to be esteemed fools, but are ashamed of the returning, which can only make them be esteemed wise men.

He told me I might judge of the happiness of this state by this one thing - viz. that this was the state of life which all other people envied; that kings have frequently lamented the miserable consequence of being born to great things, and wished they had been placed in the middle of the two extremes, between the mean and the great; that the wise man gave his testimony to this, as the standard of felicity, when he prayed to have neither poverty nor riches. 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.

But English gratitude is always such
To hate the hand which doth oblige too much.

For justice is the end of government.

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.

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

For Englishmen are ne'er contented long.

Restraint from ill is freedom to the wise;
But Englishmen do all restraint despise.

No panegyric needs their praise record;
An Englishman ne'er wants his own good word.

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

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

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.

That heterogeneous thing, an Englishman.