Quotes from Daniel Defoe

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.

and 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.

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

I am giving an account of what was, not of what ought or ought not to be.

I had been tricked once by that Cheat called love, but the Game was over...

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...

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.

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

Justice is always violent to the party offending, for every man is innocent in his own eyes.

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