All the good things of this world are no further good than as they are of use; and whatever we may heap up to give to others, we enjoy only as much as we can make useful to ourselves and others, and no more.
—Daniel Defoe
Topics: Usefullness
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.
—Daniel Defoe
Justice is always violent to the party offending, for each man is innocent in his own eyes.
—Daniel Defoe
Topics: Justice
Why then should women be denied the benefits of instruction? If knowledge and understanding had been useless additions to the sex, God almighty would never have given them capacities.
—Daniel Defoe
Topics: Women
The height of human wisdom is to bring our tempers down to our circumstances, and to make a calm within, under the weight of the greatest storm without.
—Daniel Defoe
Topics: Wisdom
He that is rich is wise.
—Daniel Defoe
Topics: Wealth
Self-destruction is the effect of cowardice in the highest extreme.
—Daniel Defoe
Topics: Self-Discovery
Wealth, howsoever got, in England makes lords of mechanics, gentlemen of rakes; Antiquity and birth are needless here; ‘Tis impudence and money makes a peer.
—Daniel Defoe
Topics: Wealth
Pride the first peer and president of hell.
—Daniel Defoe
Topics: Pride
Vice came in always at the door of necessity, not at the door of inclination.
—Daniel Defoe
Topics: Necessity
All our discontents spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have.
—Daniel Defoe
Topics: Contentment
When flatterers meet the devil goes to dinner.
—Daniel Defoe
Topics: Flattery
Nature has left this tincture in the blood, That all men would be tyrants if they could.
—Daniel Defoe
And of all plagues with which mankind are cursed, ecclesiastic tyranny’s the worst.
—Daniel Defoe
Topics: Churches, Religion
He that opposes his own judgment against the consent of the times ought to be backed with unanswerable truths; and he that has truth on his side is a fool, as well as a coward, if he is afraid to own it because of other men’s opinions.
—Daniel Defoe
Topics: Truth
Necessity makes an honest man a knave.
—Daniel Defoe
Topics: Necessity
Middle age is youth without its levity, and age without decay.
—Daniel Defoe
Topics: Youth, Aging, Age
And lords, whose parents were the Lord knows who.
—Daniel Defoe
Topics: Aristocracy
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