Quotes from Daniel Defoe

I could almost set down as many extravagant things done in the excess of their joy as of their grief; but that would be to lessen the value of it.

obedecer la llamada interior o la inspiración secreta de hacer algo o de seguir algún camino cada vez que la sintiera, aunque no tuviera razón alguna para hacerlo

For now I had five children by him: the only work perhaps that fools are good for.

Thus blinded by my own vanity, I threw away the only opportunity I then had to have effectually settled my fortunes, and secured them for this world; and I am a memorial to all that shall read my story, a standing monument of the madness and distraction which pride and infatuations from hell run us into, how ill our passions guide us, and how dangerously we act when we follow the dictates of an ambitious mind.

I shot at a great bird which I saw sitting upon a tree on the side of a great wood.

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

Thus 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.

I had two important things before me; the one was the carrying on my Business and Shop; which was considerable, and in which was embark'd all my Effects in the World; and the other was the Preservation of my Life in so dismal a Calamity, as I saw apparently was coming upon the whole City; and which however great it was, my Fears perhaps as well as other Peoples, represented to be much greater than it could be.

Thus fear of danger is often thousand times more terrifying than danger itself when apparent to the eyes; and we find the burden of anxiety greater, by much, than the evil which we are anxious about;

I was very pensive upon the subject of my present condition, when reason as it were expostulated with me t'other way, thus: Well, you are in a desolate condition, 'tis true, but pray remember, Where are the ten? Why were not they sav'd and you lost? Why were you singled out? Is it better to be here or there, and then I pointed to the sea? All evils are to be consider'd with the good that is in them, and with what worse attends them.

And now, increasing in business and in wealth, my head began to be full of projects and undertakings beyond my reach; such as are indeed often the ruin of the best heads in business.

estas cosas suelen pasarles a los jóvenes y la reflexión sobre ellas, es, normalmente, ejercicio de la edad avanzada o de una experiencia que se paga demasiado cara.

the height of human wisdom was to bring our tempers down to our circumstances

Ahora miraba el mundo como algo remoto, con lo que yo no tenía nada que ver y de lo que nada esperaba, y de hecho nada deseaba: en pocas palabras, no tenía nada que ver con ese mundo, y difícilmente algún día tendría que ver algo con él; por tanto, pensé que así debía de verse después de la muerte.

How mercifully can our Creator treat His creatures, even in those conditions in which they seemed to be overwhelmed in destruction!

I added 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 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; for the people catched the distemper, on these occasions, one of another;

It is incredible, if their account is to be depended upon, what a prodigious number of those creatures were destroyed. I think they talked of forty thousand dogs and five times as many cats; few houses being without a cat, some having several, sometimes five or six in a house.

for me to think of such a voyage was the most preposterous thing that ever man in such circumstances could be guilty of.

Jesus, thou son of David!

For sudden joys, like grief's, confound at first.

I was gotten into an employment quite remote to my genius, and directly contrary to the life I delighted in

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, and was not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind;

abused prosperity is oftentimes made the very means of our greatest adversity