Daniel Defoe

But not to weigh the Particulars, and come to reckon by Ounces and Drams, this is certain, and will be granted, that the Product of our improved Colonies raises infinitely more Trade, employs more Hands, and I think, I may say by …

Often massacred and butcher’d, and sometimes quite driven away by the Fury of the Savages, often starv’d out and famished, and either the whole Body of Planters wasted, and perishing with Cold and Want, and as often being reduc’d to …

Not discouraged by the Severity of the Cold, by the Surface over-grown with Briars and Thorns, by the early Opposition of the Natives, a Race of People fierce and false, untractable, treacherous, irreconcilable, bloody and merciless, even …

[T]he Art of War is so well study’d, and so equally known in all Places, that ’tis the longest Purse that conquers now, not the longest Sword. If there is any Country whose People are less martial, less enterprising, and less able for the …

Thus Trade is the Foundation of Wealth, and Wealth of Power.

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 …

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 …

All the reproaches and ill names we bestow on the sex, as fickle, weak, and inconstant, are owing to the want of education.

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 …

There are some secret springs in the affections which, when they are set a-going by some object in view, or, though not in view, yet rendered present to the mind by the power of imagination, that motion carries out the soul, by its …

What is one man's safety is another man's destruction.

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 …

It is never too late to be wise.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 …

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.

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 …

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

For justice is the end of government.