Daniel Defoe Quotes

“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.”

“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.”

“All our discontents about what we want appeared to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Middle age is youth without its levity And age without decay.”

“...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,...”

“I had great Reason to consider it as a Determination of Heaven, that in this desolate Place, and in this desolate Manner I should end my life; the Tears would run plentifully down my Face when I made these Reflections, and sometimes I would expostulate with myself, Why Providence should thus compleately ruine its Creatures, and render them so absolutely miserable, so without Help abandon'd, so entirely depress'd, that it could be hardly rational to be thankful for such a Life.”

“Those people cannot enjoy comfortably what God has given them because they see and covet what He has not given them. All of our discontents for what we want appear to me to spring from want of thankfulness for what we have.”

“Diligence and Application have their due Encouragement, even in the remotest Parts of the World, and that no Case can be so low, so despicable, or so empty of Prospect, but that an unwearied Industry will go a great way to deliver us from it, will in time raise the meanest Creature to appear again in the World, and give him a new Case for his Life.”

“In the first place , I was removed from all the wickedness of the world here. I had neither the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, or the pride of life. I had nothing to covet; for I had all that I was now capable of enjoying.”