Quotes from Daniel Defoe

Y tomad nota de lo que os digo: la lista siguiente será mejor, y veréis que se recobra mucha más gente que antes; porque si bien hay ahora muchísimos contagiados por todas partes, y son otros tantos los que enferman diariamente, no morirán tantos como hasta ahora, pues la malignidad de la epidemia ha mermado.

In 1719—at the age of 59—Defoe turned his attention for the first time to an extended work of prose fiction, presenting his account of events of which he had no direct experience. Robinson Crusoe, the account of the shipwreck and survival of one man, became a great success, and Defoe turned his full attention to his lucrative writing career.

very bad indeed. Defoe never acquired a really good style, and can in no true sense be called a master of the English tongue. Nature had gifted Defoe with untiring energy, a keen taste for public affairs

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.

All Evills are to be consider'd with the Good that is in them, and with what worse attends them.

He had in his army 44,000 old soldiers, every way answerable to what I have said of them before; and I shall only add, a better army, I believe, never was so soundly beaten.

we baked all our own bread;

And this is the reason why it is impossible in a visitation to prevent the spreading of the plague by the utmost human vigilance: viz., that it is impossible to know the infected people from the sound, or that the infected people should perfectly know themselves.

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

they are not asham'd to sin, and yet are asham'd to repent; not asham'd of the action for which they ought justly to be esteemed fools, but are asham'd of the returning...

El bote era en verdad mucho mayor que todas las canoas o piraguas hechas de troncos que yo viera en mi vida. Muchos hachazos me había costado por cierto, y ahora solo faltaba botarlo al agua; de haberlo conseguido hubiera yo emprendido a su bordo el más alocado e imposible viaje de que se tenga memoria alguna.

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.

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

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.

I could fill this account with the strange relations such people gave every day of what they had seen; and every one was so positive of their having seen what they pretended to see, that there was no contradicting them without breach of friendship, or being accounted rude and unmannerly on the one hand, and profane and impenetrable on the other.

Não se deve entender como pirata uma pessoa agindo sob constrangimento, mas sim alguém que age livremente. Pois nesse caso, não é o ato em si mesmo que torna alguém culpado, mas sim a sua livre vontade de cometê-lo.

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.

invisible creatures, who enter into the body with the breath, or even at the pores with the air, and there generate or emit most acute poisons, or poisonous ovae or eggs

There are some secret moving Springs in the Affections, which when they are set a going by some Object in View, or be it some Object, tho' not in View, yet render'd present to the Mind by the Power of Imagination, that Motion carries out the Soul by its Impetuosity to such violent eager Embracings of the Object, that the Absence of it is insupportable.

Some endeavors were used to suppress the printing of such books as terrified the people, and to frighten the dispersers of them, some of whom were taken up, but nothing done in it, as I am informed; the government being unwilling to exasperate the people, who were, as I may say, all out of their wits already.

deixar-se abater pela desgraça é redobrar seu peso, e quem acha ela lhe custará a vida de fato há de morrer.

the just reflections of conscience oftentimes snatch a man, especially a man of sense, from the arms of a mistress, as it did him at last, though on another occasion.

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.

I had set the Evening wholly apart to consider seriously about it, and was all alone; for already People had, as it were by a general Consent, taken up the Custom of not going out of Doors after Sun-set, the Reasons I shall have Occasion to say more of by-and-by.