Daniel Defoe: Man

Daniel Defoe was English trader, writer and journalist. Explore interesting quotes on man.

Daniel Defoe: 86 quotes13 likes

“My man Friday.”

First appears in Ch. 14, A Dream Realized.
Robinson Crusoe (1719)

“He told me I might judge of the happiness of this state by this one thing - viz. that this was the state of life which all other people envied; that kings have frequently lamented the miserable consequence of being born to great things, and wished they had been placed in the middle of the two extremes, between the mean and the great; that the wise man gave his testimony to this, as the standard of felicity, when he prayed to have neither poverty nor riches. He bade me observe it, 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.”

Source: Robinson Crusoe (1719), Ch. 1, Start in Life.

“A woman well bred and well taught, furnished with the additional accomplishments of knowledge and behaviour, is a creature without comparison. Her society is the emblem of sublimer enjoyments, her person is angelic, and her conversation heavenly. She is all softness and sweetness, peace, love, wit, and delight. She is every way suitable to the sublimest wish, and the man that has such a one to his portion, has nothing to do but to rejoice in her, and be thankful.”

The Education of Women (1719)

“It happened one day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen on the sand.”

Source: Robinson Crusoe (1719), Ch. 11, Finds Print of Man's Foot on the Sand.

“In their religion they are so uneven,
That each man goes his own byway to heaven.”

Pt. II, l. 104. <br class="br"> The True-Born Englishman http://www.luminarium.org/editions/trueborn.htm (1701)

“What is one man's safety is another man's destruction.”

Source: Robinson Crusoe (1719), Ch. 13, Wreck of a Spanish Ship.