Quotes from Daniel Defoe

Ismét fiút szültem, pompás fiúcska lett, de csak két hónapig élt; mikor azonban leküzdöttem magamban a gyengéd anyai szeretetet, nem is bántam már annyira, hogy a fiúcska meghalt, hiszen mérhetetlen sok gonddal járt volna egy gyermek visszautazásunk során.

my thoughts were so entirely bent upon seeing the world

I recommend it to the Charity of all good People to look back, and reflect duly upon the Terrors of the Time; and whoever does so will see, that it is not an ordinary Strength that cou'd support it; it was not like appearing in the Head of an Army, or charging a Body of Horse in the Field; but it was charging Death itself on his pale Horse; to stay indeed was to die, and it could be esteemed nothing less.

Hoy amamos lo que mañana odiaremos. Hoy buscamos lo que mañana rehuiremos. Hoy deseamos lo que mañana nos asustará e, incluso, nos hará temblar de miedo.

This grieved me heartily; 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.

He asked me what reasons, more than a mere wandering inclination, I had for leaving father's house and my native country, where I might be well introduced, and had a prospect of raising my fortune by application and industry, with a life of ease and pleasure. 

as this is ordinarily the fate of young heads, so reflection upon the folly of it, is as ordinarily the exercise of more years, or of the dear-bought experience of time....

expostulated

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.

This is a world of corpses strewn in streets and pits, yet in the deadcart itself a drunken piper wakes up to cry, 'But I an't dead tho', am I?' (p. 89).

How infinitely good that Providence is which has provided, in its government of mankind, such narrow bounds to his sight and knowledge of things; and though he walks in the midst of so many thousand dangers, the sight of which, if discovered to him, would distract his mind and sink his spirits, he is kept serene and calm by having the events of things hid from his eyes, and knowing nothing of the dangers which surround him!

was called 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 so my companions

todos somos como la arcilla en manos del alfarero y ninguna vasija podía preguntarle: «¿por qué me has hecho así?».

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.

fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself

I had never handled a tool in my life, and yet in time, by labour, application, and contrivance, I found at last that I wanted nothing but I could have made it.

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!

after some time continually driving them from me, and letting

here I cannot but take notice that the strange temper of the people of London at that time contributed extremely to their own destruction.

to think that this was all my own; that I was king and lord of all this country indefensibly, and had a right of possession; and if I could convey it, I might have it in inheritance as completely as any lord of a manor in England.

But as abused prosperity is oftentimes made the very means of our greatest adversity, so it was with me

Upon the whole, here was an undoubted testimony that there was scarce any condition in the world so miserable but there was something negative or something positive to be thankful for in it; and let this stand as a direction from the experience of the most miserable of all conditions in this world: that we may always find in it something to comfort ourselves from, and to set, in the description of good and evil, on the credit side of the account.

A True Born Englishman's a contradiction! In speech and irony, in fact a fiction

seguir el camino de nuestra perdición por nuestra propia elección.