Top 150 Daniel Defoe Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Another plague year would reconcile all these differences; a close conversing with death, or with diseases that threaten death, would scum off the gall from our tempers, remove the animosities among us, and bring us to see with differing eyes than those which we looked on things with before.”

— Daniel Defoe

102. “Thus fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger it self, when apparent to the eyes; and we find the burthen of anxiety greater by much, than the evil which we are anxious about; and which was worse than all this, I had not that relief in this trouble from the resignation I used to practise, that I hop’d to have.”

— Daniel Defoe

103. “Wit, like the Belly, if it be not fed, Will starve the Members, and distract the Head.”

— Daniel Defoe

104. “Men did then no more die by tale and by number. They might put out a weekly bill, and call them seven or eight thousand, or what they pleased; ’tis certain they died by heaps, and were buried by heaps, that is to say, without account.”

— Daniel Defoe

105. “That all plays, bear baitings, 88 games, singing of ballads, buckler play, 89 or such like causes of assemblies of people, be utterly prohibited, and the parties offending severely punished by every alderman in his ward.”

— Daniel Defoe

106. “I shot at a great bird which I saw sitting upon a tree on the side of a great wood.”

— Daniel Defoe

107. “So sehen wir nie die wahren Vorteile unseres Zustandes, ehe wir die entgegenstehende Nachteile erfahren haben; wir lernen den Wert der Dinge erst dann kennen, wenn wir sie verloren haben!”

— Daniel Defoe

108. “Thus I liv’d mighty comfortably, my Mind being entirely composed by resigning to the Will of God, and throwing my self wholly upon the Disposal of his Providence. This made my Life better than sociable, for when I began to regret the want of Conversation, I would ask my self whether thus conversing mutually with my own Thoughts, and, as I hope I may say, with even God himself by Ejaculations, was not better than the utmost Enjoyment of humane Society in the World.”

— Daniel Defoe

109. “And, young man,” said he, “depend upon it, if you do not go back, wherever you go, you will meet with nothing but disasters and disappointments, till your father’s words are fulfilled upon you.”

— Daniel Defoe

110. “But I must go back here to the particular incidents which occur to my thoughts of the time of the visitation, and particularly to the time of their shutting up the houses in the first part of their sickness; for before the sickness was come to its height people had more room to make their observations than they had afterward; but when it was in the extremity there was no such thing as communication with one another, as before.”

— Daniel Defoe

111. “He that is rich is wise.”

— Daniel Defoe

112. “It was now that I began sensibly to feel how much more happy this life I now led was, with all its miserable circumstances, than the wicked, cursed, abominable life I led all the past part of my days; and now I changed both my sorrows and my joys; my very desires altered, my affections changed their gusts, and my delights were perfectly new from what they were at my first coming, or, indeed, for the two years past.”

— Daniel Defoe

113. “And now, increasing in business and in wealth, my head began to be full of projects and undertakings beyond my reach; such as are indeed often the ruin of the best heads in business.”

— Daniel Defoe

114. “But from these three cats I afterwards came to be so pestered with cats that I was forced to kill them like vermin or wild beasts, and to drive them from my house as much as possible.”

— Daniel Defoe

115. “I then reflected, that as God, who was not only righteous but omnipotent, had thought fit thus to punish and afflict me, so He was able to deliver me: that if He did not think fit to do so, it was my unquestioned duty to resign myself absolutely and entirely to His will; and, on the other hand, it was my duty also to hope in Him, pray to Him, and quietly to attend to the dictates and directions of His daily providence.”

— Daniel Defoe

116. “It is incredible, if their account is to be depended upon, what a prodigious number of those creatures were destroyed. I think they talked of forty thousand dogs and five times as many cats; few houses being without a cat, some having several, sometimes five or six in a house.”

— Daniel Defoe

117. “How frequently in the Course of our Lives, the Evil which in it self we seek most to shun, and which when we are fallen into it, is the most dreadful to us, is oftentimes the very Means or Door of our Deliverance, by.”

— Daniel Defoe

118. “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;.”

— Daniel Defoe

119. “I did what I never had done in all my life – I kneeled down, and prayed to God to fulfil the promise to me, that if I called upon Him in the day of trouble, He would deliver me.”

— Daniel Defoe

120. “Never poor vain creature was so wrapt up with every part of the story as I was, not considering what was before me, and how near my ruin was at the door; indeed, I think I rather wished for that ruin than studied to avoid it.”

— Daniel Defoe

121. “All possible care, however, has been taken to give no lewd ideas, no immodest turns in the new dressing up of this story; no, not to the worst parts of her expressions. To this purpose some of the vicious part of her life, which could not be modestly told, is quite left out, and several other parts are very much shortened.”

— Daniel Defoe

122. “Thus blinded by my own vanity, I threw away the only opportunity I then had to have effectually settled my fortunes, and secured them for this world; and I am a memorial to all that shall read my story, a standing monument of the madness and distraction which pride and infatuations from hell run us into, how ill our passions guide us, and how dangerously we act when we follow the dictates of an ambitious mind.”

— Daniel Defoe

123. “Robinson Kreutznaer; but, by the usual corruption of words in England, we are now called – nay we call ourselves and write our name – Crusoe; and.”

— Daniel Defoe

124. “I had two important things before me; the one was the carrying on my Business and Shop; which was considerable, and in which was embark’d all my Effects in the World; and the other was the Preservation of my Life in so dismal a Calamity, as I saw apparently was coming upon the whole City; and which however great it was, my Fears perhaps as well as other Peoples, represented to be much greater than it could be.”

— Daniel Defoe

125. “Strange to say, the English people were so pleased with this humorous sketch of themselves, that they bought eighty thousand copies of the work. Not often is a truth teller so rewarded.”

— Daniel Defoe

126. “The art of writing an English prose at once scholarly, clear-cut, and vigorous, was well understood by Defoe’s great contemporaries, Dryden, Swift, and Congreve; it does not seem to have occurred to Defoe that he could learn anything from their practice. He has his reward. “Robinson Crusoe” may continue to hold the child and the kitchen wench; but the “Essay on Dramatic Poesy,” “The Battle of the Books,” and “Love for Love,” are for the men and women of culture.”

— Daniel Defoe

127. “He knew as well the stories of generosity and courage and self-sacrifice: the clergy who encouraged and comforted all who came – including the outcast Catholics, Jews, and Dissenters; the doctors who tended the poor without fees; the officials working quickly to calm panic and stave off disaster; the watchmen, the deadcart drivers, the ‘buryers’ at the pits; the parents and children and servants and friends who encouraged, comforted, tended, worked, saved, and mourned.”

— Daniel Defoe

128. “A woman’s ne’er so ruined but she can Revenge herself on her undoer, Man.”

— Daniel Defoe

129. “To conclude: having staid near four mouths in Hamburgh, I came from thence over land to the Hague, where I embarked in the packet, and arrived in London the tenth of January 1705, having been gone from England ten years and nine months.”

— Daniel Defoe

130. “How mercifully can our Creator treat His creatures, even in those conditions in which they seemed to be overwhelmed in destruction!”

— Daniel Defoe

131. “We drank the rum, and I forgot my promise to God.”

— Daniel Defoe

132. “I would expostulate with myself why Providence should thus completely ruin His creatures, and render them so absolutely miserable; so without help, abandoned, so entirely depressed, that it could hardly be rational to be thankful for such a life.”

— Daniel Defoe

133. “And thus I left the island, the 19th of December, as I found by the ship’s account, in the year 1686, after I had been upon it eight-and-twenty years, two months, and nineteen days;.”

— Daniel Defoe

134. “This is written in miserable doggerel verse. That Defoe should have mistaken it for poetry, and should have prided himself upon it accordingly, is only a proof of how incompetent an author is to pass judgment upon what is good and what is bad in his own work.”

— Daniel Defoe

135. “I never had so much as one thought of it being the hand of God, or that it was a just punishment for my sin – my rebellious behaviour against my father – or my present sins, which were great – or so much as a punishment for the general course of my wicked life.”

— Daniel Defoe

136. “To give the history of a wicked life repented of, necessarily requires that the wicked part should be make as wicked as the real history of it will bear, to illustrate and give a beauty to the penitent part, which is certainly the best and brightest, if related with equal spirit and life.”

— Daniel Defoe

137. “Some Endeavors were used to suppress the Printing of such Books as terrify’d the People, and to frighten the dispersers of them, some of whom were taken up, but nothing was done in it, as I am inform’d; The Government being unwilling to exasperate the People, who were, as I may say, all out of their Wits already.”

— Daniel Defoe

138. “What Discoveries they may have made in the other and greater Worlds, than this Earth, we have not yet had an account; possibly they are conversant with other Parts of God’s Creation, besides this little little Globe, which is but as a Point in comparison of the Rest; and with other of God’s Creatures besides Man, who may, according to the Opinion of our Philosophers, inhabit those Worlds; but as no body knows that Part but the Devil, we shall not trouble our selves with the Enquiry.”

— Daniel Defoe

139. “Though this was all but a fiction of his own, yet it had its desired effect; Atkins fell upon his knees to beg the captain to intercede with the governor for his life; and all the rest begged of him, for God’s sake, that they might not be sent to England.”

— Daniel Defoe

140. “That they’re no longer ashamed to sin, and but are ashamed to repent; no longer ashamed of the motion for which they ought justly to be esteemed fools, however are ashamed of the returning, which only can make them be esteemed smart men.”

— Daniel Defoe

141. “Jesus, thou son of David!”

— Daniel Defoe

142. “In short, they robbed together, lay together, were taken together, and at last were hanged together.”

— Daniel Defoe

143. “Daniel Defoe – arguably the most prolific writer in the English language and considered by many the father of the novel and the founder of modern journalism –.”

— Daniel Defoe

144. “I made no more resistance to him, but let him do just what he pleased, and as often as he pleased; and thus I finished my own destruction at once, for from this day, being forsaken of my virtue and my modesty, I had nothing of value left to recommend me, either to God’s blessing or man’s assistance.”

— Daniel Defoe

145. “So certainly does interest banish all matters of affection, and so naturally do men give up honour and justice, humanity, and even Christianity, to secure themselves.”

— Daniel Defoe

146. “In this agony of mind, I made many vows and resolutions that if it would please God to spare my life in this one voyage, if ever I got once my foot upon dry land again, I would go directly home to my father, and never set it into a ship again while I lived; that I would take his advice, and never run myself into such miseries as these any more.”

— Daniel Defoe

147. “But these were thoughts of no weight, and whenever he came to me they vanished; for his company was so delightful, that there was no being melancholy when he was there; the reflections were all the subject of those hours when I was alone.”

— Daniel Defoe

148. “I was struck with this letter as with a thousand wounds, such as I cannot describe; the reproaches of my own conscience were such as I cannot express, for I was not blind to my own crime;.”

— Daniel Defoe

149. “It was some time, indeed, before it came to this, for, but I know not by what ill fate guided, everything went wrong with us afterwards, and that which was worse, my husband grew strangely altered, forward, jealous, and unkind, and I was as impatient of bearing his carriage, as the carriage was unreasonable and unjust.”

— Daniel Defoe

150. “I had more wealth, indeed, than I had before, but was not at all the richer; for I had no more use for it than the Indians of Peru had before the Spaniards came there.”

— Daniel Defoe