Daniel Defoe

"Who only knows Latin can go across the whole Poland from one side to the other one just like he was at his own home, just like he was born there. So great happiness! I wish a traveler in England could travel without knowing any other language than Latin!"

"We loved the doctrine for the teacher's sake."

"Alas the Church of England! What with Popery on one hand, and schismatics on the other, how has she been crucified between two thieves!"

"Hail, hieroglyphic State machine, Contrived to punish fancy in; Men that are men in thee can feel no pain, And all thy insignificance disdain!"

"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."

"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."

"All men would be tyrants if they could."

"The best of men cannot suspend their fate: The good die early, and the bad die late."

"'Tis very strange Men should be so fond of being thought wickeder than they are."

"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."

"Wise men affirm it is the English way Never to grumble till they come to pay."

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

"Above all, I have followed that sure Rule in our Tongue, and which, were it observed, would, I believe, be acknowledged to be the best Rule in all Tongues, (viz) to make the Language plain, artless, and honest, suitable to the Story, and in a Stile easie and free, with as few exotick Phrases and obsolete Words as possible, that the meanest Reader may meet with no Difficulty in the Reading, and may have no Obstruction to his searching the History of things by their being obscurely represented."

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

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

"Like Eden Fruitful, like Arabia Gay, So blest, they scarcely know for what to pray; England in native Glory ever springs; A Country fitted for the View of Kings."

"I cannot believe that God ever design'd the Riches of the World to be useless to the World; that the Gold, the Silver, the Diamonds, and other Species of such Immense Worth and Value, was ever created in the Bowels of the Mountains, and the most hidden Parts of the World to lye buried there, and remain unprofitable, till they come to be melted down again in the General Conflagration."

"To know Trade then is to know the World: And I may farther observe, That if any one Nation could govern Trade, that Nation would govern the World; could it give Laws to the Commerce, it would give Laws to the People, and the whole World would be its Dependents and Subjects."

"Let us see in a few Words what Nature and Providence has done for us; nay, what they have done for us exclusive of the rest of the World. The Bounty of Heaven has stor'd us with the Principles of Commerce, fruitful of a vast variety of Things essential to Trade, and which call upon us as it were in the Voice of Nature, bidding us work, and with annex'd Encouragement to do so from the visible apparent Success of Industry. Here the Voice of the World, is plain, like the Answer of an Oracle, thus Dig and Find, Plow and Reap, Fish and Take, Spin and Live; in a word, Trade and Thrive; and this with such extraordinary Circumstances, that it is as if there was a Bar upon the neighbouring Nations, and it had been spoken from Heaven thus: These are for you only, and not for any other Nation; you, my Favourites, of England; you singled out to be great, opulent, powerful, above all your Neighbours, and to be made so by your own Industry and my Bounty."

"The art of war, which I take to be the highest perfection of human knowledge."

"Self-destruction is the effect of cowardice in the highest extreme."

"Women, in my observation, have little or no difference in them, but as they are or are not distinguished by education."

"The grand contention's plainly to be seen, To get some men put out, and some put in."

"Wherever God erects a house of prayer, The Devil always builds a chapel there; And 'twill be found, upon examination, The latter has the largest congregation."

"From this amphibious ill-born mob began That vain, ill-natured thing, an Englishman."

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

"That heterogeneous thing, an Englishman."

"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."

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

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

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

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

"For Englishmen are ne'er contented long."

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

"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 justice is the end of government."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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. All our discontents about what we want appeared to me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself."

"It is never too late to be wise."

"How frequently, in the course of our lives, the evil which in itself we seek most to shun, and which, when we are fallen into, is the most dreadful to us, is oftentimes the very means or door of our deliverance, by which alone we can be raised again from the affliction we are fallen into."