Top 150 Daniel Defoe Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “In trouble to be troubled, Is to have your trouble doubled.”

— Daniel Defoe

52. “Manchester, one of the greatest, if not really the greatest mere village in England.”

— Daniel Defoe

53. “Man is a short-sighted creature, sees but a very little way before him; and as his passions are none of his best friends, so his particular affections are generally his worst counselors.”

— Daniel Defoe

54. “No shoots, says Friday, no yet, me shoot now, me no kill; me stay, give you one more laugh.”

— Daniel Defoe

55. “How strange a Chequer Work of Providence is the Life of Man! and by what secret differing Springs are the Affections hurry’d about as differing Circumstances present! To Day we love what to Morrow we hate; to Day we seek what to Morrow we shun; to Day we desire what to Morrow we fear; nay even tremble at the Apprehensions of;.”

— Daniel Defoe

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

— Daniel Defoe

57. “Not the man in the moon, not the groaning-board, not the speaking of friar Bacon’s brazen- head, not the inspiration of mother Shipton, or the miracles of Dr. Faustus, things as certain as death and taxes, can be more firmly believed.”

— Daniel Defoe

58. “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

59. “Actions receive their tincture from the times, And as they change are virtues made or crimes.”

— Daniel Defoe

60. “In the first place, I was removed from all the wickedness of the world here. I had neither the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, or the pride of life. I had nothing to covet; for I had all that I was now capable of enjoying.”

— Daniel Defoe

61. “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.”

— Daniel Defoe

62. “Thus you see having committed a Crime once, is a sad Handle to the committing of it again; whereas all the Regret, and Reflections wear off when the Temptation renews it self; had I not yielded to see him again, the Corrupt desire in him had worn off, and ’tis very probable he had never fallen into it, with any Body else, as I really believe he had not done before.”

— Daniel Defoe

63. “Diligence and Application have their due Encouragement, even in the remotest Parts of the World, and that no Case can be so low, so despicable, or so empty of Prospect, but that an unwearied Industry will go a great way to deliver us from it, will in time raise the meanest Creature to appear again in the World, and give him a new Case for his Life.”

— Daniel Defoe

64. “Wit is the Fruitful Womb where Thoughts conceive.”

— Daniel Defoe

65. “Necessity makes an honest man a knave.”

— Daniel Defoe

66. “And here I must take the liberty, whatever I have to reproach myself with in my after conduct, to turn to my fellow-creatures, the young ladies of this country, and speak to them by way of precaution. If you have any regard to your future happiness, any view of living comfortably with a husband, any hope of preserving your fortunes, or restoring them after any disaster, never, ladies, marry a fool; any husband rather than a fool.”

— Daniel Defoe

67. “All the good things of the world are no further good to us than as they are of use; and of all we may heap up we enjoy only as much as we can use, and no more.”

— Daniel Defoe

68. “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

69. “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

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

— Daniel Defoe

71. “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; and which I take notice of here, to put those discontented people in mind of it, who cannot enjoy comfortably what God has given them, because they see and covet something that He has not given them.”

— Daniel Defoe

72. “He that opposes his own judgment against the consent of the times ought to be backed with unanswerable truths; and he that has truth on his side is a fool as well as a coward if he is afraid to own it because of other men’s opinions.”

— Daniel Defoe

73. “So little do we see before us in the world and so much reason have we to depend cheerfully upon the great Maker of the world, that He does not leave His creatures so absolutely destitute but that in the worst circumstances they have always something to be thankful for, and sometimes are nearer their deliverance than they imagine; nay, are even brought to their deliverance by the means by which they seem to be brought to destruction.”

— Daniel Defoe

74. “As for Women that do not think their own Safety worth their Thought, that impatient of their present State, resolve as they call it to take the first good Christian that comes, that run into Matrimony, as a Horse rushes into the Battle, I can say nothing to them, but this, that they are a Sort of Ladies that are to be pray’d for among the rest of distemper’d People...”

— Daniel Defoe

75. “Books are useful only to such whose genius are suitable to the subject of them.”

— Daniel Defoe

76. “But,” says he again “if god much strong, much might as the devil, why god no kill the devil, so make him no more do wicked?”

— Daniel Defoe

77. “I have saved your life on no other terms than I would be glad to be saved myself: and it may, one time or other, be my lot to be taken up in the same condition. Besides,” said he, “when I carry you to the Brazils, so great a way from your own country, if I should take from you what you have, you will be starved there, and then I only take away that life I have given.”

— Daniel Defoe

78. “If I swing by the string, I shall hear the bell ring, And then there’s an end of poor Jenny.”

— Daniel Defoe

79. “Reason, it is true, is DICTATOR in the Society of Mankind; from her there ought to lie no Appeal; But here we want a Pope in our Philosophy, to be the infallible Judge of what is or is not Reason.”

— Daniel Defoe

80. “Ero nato demolitore di me stesso.”

— Daniel Defoe

81. “The face of London was now indeed strangely altered:.”

— Daniel Defoe

82. “I was very pensive upon the subject of my present condition, when reason as it were expostulated with me t’other way, thus: Well, you are in a desolate condition, ’tis true, but pray remember, Where are the ten? Why were not they sav’d and you lost? Why were you singled out? Is it better to be here or there, and then I pointed to the sea? All evils are to be consider’d with the good that is in them, and with what worse attends them.”

— Daniel Defoe

83. “This is one of the reasons why I believed then, and do believe still, that the shutting up houses thus by force, and restraining, or rather imprisoning, people in their own houses, as I said above, was of little or no service in the whole. Nay, I am of opinion it was rather hurtful, having forced those desperate people to wander abroad with the plague upon them, who would otherwise have died quietly in their beds.”

— Daniel Defoe

84. “It mattered not from whence it came;.”

— Daniel Defoe

85. “And here I must observe again, that this necessity of going out of our houses to buy provisions was in a great measure the ruin of the whole city; for the people catched the distemper, on these occasions, one of another;.”

— Daniel Defoe

86. “Under these dreadful apprehensions I looked back on the life I had led with the utmost contempt and abhorrence. I blushed, and wondered at myself how I could act thus, how I could divest myself of modesty and honour, and prostitute myself for gain; and I thought, if ever it should please God to spare me this one time from death, it would not.”

— Daniel Defoe

87. “And of all plagues with which mankind are curst, Ecclesiastic tyranny’s the worst.”

— Daniel Defoe

88. “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

89. “I afterwards made it a certain Rule with me, That whenever I found those secret Hints, or pressings of my Mind, to doing, or not doing any Thing that presented; or to going this Way, or that Way, I never fail’d to obey the secret Dictate; though I knew no other Reason for it, than that such a Pressure, or such a Hint hung upon my Mind: I.”

— Daniel Defoe

90. “An Englishman will fairly drink as much As will maintain two families of Dutch.”

— Daniel Defoe

91. “Tis very strange men should be so fond of being wickeder than they are.”

— Daniel Defoe

92. “I could almost set down as many extravagant things done in the excess of their joy as of their grief; but that would be to lessen the value of it.”

— Daniel Defoe

93. “How infinitely good that Providence is which has provided, in its government of mankind, such narrow bounds to his sight and knowledge of things; and though he walks in the midst of so many thousand dangers, the sight of which, if discovered to him, would distract his mind and sink his spirits, he is kept serene and calm by having the events of things hid from his eyes, and knowing nothing of the dangers which surround him!”

— Daniel Defoe

94. “I had dropped a good design, which I had once bent my thoughts upon, and that was to try if I could not make some of my barley into malt, and then try to brew myself some beer.”

— Daniel Defoe

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

— Daniel Defoe

96. “It is very rare that the providence of God casts us into any condition of life so low, or any misery so great, but we may see something or other to be thankful for; and may see others in worse circumstances than our own.”

— Daniel Defoe

97. “But as a fool is the worst of husbands to do a woman good, so a fool is the worst husband a woman can do good to.”

— Daniel Defoe

98. “I rather wished for their ruin, than studied to avoid it.”

— Daniel Defoe

99. “But I, that was born to be my own destroyer...”

— Daniel Defoe

100. “He look’d a little disorder’d, when he said this, but I did not apprehend any thing from it at that time, believing as it us’d to be said, that they who do those things never talk of them; or that they who talk of such things never do them.”

— Daniel Defoe