Daniel Defoe

“ I don't see any need of such discourse, and you are of opinion that there will be no need of it.'
'Indeed, so I am, Amy; but', said I, 'if there was, I tell you again, I'd die before I would consent, or before you should consent for my sake.'
Hitherto I had not only preserved the virtue itself, but the virtuous inclination and resolution; and had I kept myself there I had been happy,' though I had perished of mere hunger; for, without question, a woman ought rather to die than to prostitute her virtue and honour, let the temptation be what it will. ”

“ I am pleased with it all; ’tis all a new scene of negro life to me, and very moving.
Jacque. For a good while he stood as if he had been thunderstruck and stupid; but, looking steadily at me, though not speaking a word, at last he mutters to himself, with a kind of laugh, “Ay, ay,” says he, “Mouchat see, Mouchat no see; me wakee, me no wakee; no hangee, no hangee; he live truly, very live;” and then on a sudden he runs to me, snatches me away as if I had been a boy of ten years old, and takes me up upon his back and runs away with me, till I was fain to cry out to him to stop. ”

“ So that when we had rowed, or rather were driven about a league and a half, a raging wave, like a lofty mountain, came rolling astern of us, and took us with such fury, that at once it overset the boat. Thus being swallowed up in a moment, we had hardly time to call upon the tremendous name of God; much less to implore, in dying ejaculations, his infinite mercy to receive our departing souls.
Men are generally counted insensible, when struggling in the pangs of death; but while I was overwhelmed with water, I had the most dreadful apprehensions imaginable. ”

“ It was one of the nights in the rainy season in March, the four-and-twentieth year of my first setting foot in this island of solitude, I was lying in my bed or hammock, awake, very well in health, had no pain, no distemper, no uneasiness of body, nor any uneasiness of mind more than ordinary, but could by no means close my eyes, that is, so as to sleep; no, not a wink all night long, otherwise than as follows:
It is impossible to set down the innumerable crowd of thoughts that whirled through that great thoroughfare of the brain, the memory, in this night’s time. ”

“ How absurd a Thing is it to make a Whore of his own Wife; to expose her for a Whore, who he proposes to embrace as an honest Woman ever after; to draw her in to be exposed, to be flouted at, to be jested with, and insulted all her Days, to be the scorn of her Neighbours, slighted and shunned by modest Women, and laughed at by every Body; and all this to gratify a present Gust of vitious Desire, which, in a few Days, would be satisfied without the hazard of Reputation, without Reproach, and without Reproof? ”

“ Grief and fear are easily described: sighs, tears, groans, and a very few motions of the head and hands, make up the sum of its variety; but an excess of joy, a surprise of joy, has a thousand extravagances in it. There were some in tears; some raging and tearing themselves, as if they had been in the greatest agonies of sorrow; some stark raving and downright lunatic; some ran about the ship stamping with their feet, others wringing their hands; some were dancing, some singing, some laughing, more crying, many quite dumb, not able to speak a word; others sick and vomiting ”

“ But I was merely thoughtless of a God or a Providence; acted like a mere brute from the principles of Nature, and by the dictates of common sense only, and indeed hardly that.
When I was delivered and taken up at sea by the Portuguese captain, well used, and dealt justly and honorably with, as well as charitably, I had not the least thankfulness in my thoughts. When again I was shipwrecked, ruined, and in danger of drowning on this island, I was as far from remorse, or looking on it as a judgment; I only said to myself often, that I was an unfortunate dog, and born to be always miserable. ”

“ To what end is France said to be reduced, and peace now concluded, if the same popery, the same tyranny, the same arbitrary methods of government shall be received among you again? Sure your posterity will stand amazed to consider how lavish this age has been of their money, and their blood, and to how little purpose; since no age since the creation of the world can show us a time when ever any nation spent so much blood and treasure to end just where they begun: as, if the hearts of our enemies prevail, we are like to do. ”

“ Had we not much better deny our God, our baptism, our religion, and our lives, than deny our lawful prince, our next male in a right line? If popery comes, passive obedience is still our friend; we are protestants; we can die, we can burn, we can do anything but rebel; and this being our first duty, viz., to recognise our rightful sovereign, are we not to do that first? And if popery or slavery follow, we must act as becomes us. This being then orthodox doctrine, is equally a substantial reason why we should be against the Hanover succession. ”

“ I have been a whore to two men, and have lived a wretched abominable life of vice and wickedness for fourteen years. Oh, madam, you know it, and God knows it; and now I am to die, to be drowned. Oh! what will become of me? I am undone for ever! Ay, madam, for ever! to all eternity! Oh, I am lost! I am lost! If I am drowned I am lost for ever!”
All these, you will easily suppose, must be so many stabs into the very soul of one in my own case. It immediately occurred to me, ”Poor Amy! what art thou that I am not? ”

“ It had for a while been a little kind of excuse to me that I was engaged with this wicked old lord, and that I could not in honour forsake him; but how foolish and absurd did it look to repeat the word of honour on so vile an occasion. As if a woman should prostitute her honour in point of honour—horrid inconsistency. Honour called upon me to detest the crime and the man too, and to have resisted all the attacks which from the beginning had been made upon my virtue; and honour, had it been consulted, would have preserved me honest from the beginning:
For honesty and honour are the same. ”

“ If ever I had a grain of true repentance for a vicious and abominable life for twenty-four years past, it was then. Oh, what a felicity is it to mankind, said I to myself, that they cannot see into the hearts of one another! How happy had it been for me if I had been wife to a man of so much honesty, and so much affection from the beginning!
Then it occurred to me, “What an abominable creature am I! and how is this innocent gentleman going to be abused by me! ”

“ The Truth and Justice of the Cause, for which I suffer, makes my Death a Duty, a Vertue, and an Honour. Remember that I laid down my Life for asserting the Right of my only Lawful Sovereign, King James the Third; That I offer my self as a Victim for the Liberties and Happiness of my dear Country, and my beloved Fellow-Subjects; That I fall a Sacrifice to Tyranny, Oppression and Usurpation. In short, consider that I suffer in defence of the Commands of God, and the Laws and Hereditary Constitution of the Land: and then know and be assur’d that I am not a Traitor, but a Martyr. ”

“ For a tradesman to follow his pleasures, which indeed is generally attended with a slighting of his business, leaving his shop to servants or others, it is evident to me that he is indifferent whether it thrives or no; and, above all, it is evident that his heart is not in his business; that he does not delight in it, or look on it with pleasure. To a complete tradesman there is no pleasure equal to that of being in his business, no delight equal to that of seeing himself thrive, to see trade flow in upon him, and to be satisfied that he goes on prosperously. ”

“ And here we pretend liberty, property, constitutions, rights of subjects, and such stuff as that, and with all these fine gewgaws, which we pretend propagate trade, and increase the wealth of the nation, we are every day declining, and become poor; how long will this nation be blinded by their own foolish customs? And when will they learn to know, that the absolute government of a virtuous prince, who makes the good of his people his ultimate end, and esteems their prosperity his glory, is the best, and most godlike, government in the world. ”

“ Age has no pains, and youth no snare.
But in the middle of all this felicity, one blow from unforeseen Providence unhinged me at once; and not only made a breach upon me, inevitable and incurable, but drove me, by its consequence, upon a deep relapse into the wandering disposition; which, as I may say, being born in my very blood, soon recovered its hold of me, and, like the returns of a violent distemper, came on with an irresistible force upon me; so that nothing could make any more impression upon me. This blow was the loss of my wife. ”

“ The contagion despised all medicine; death raged in every corner; and had it gone on as it did then, a few weeks more would have cleared the town of all, and everything that had a soul. Men everywhere began to despair; every heart failed them for fear; people were made desperate through the anguish of their souls, and the terrors of death sat in the very faces and countenances of the people. ”

“ No merit can their favour reobtain;
And if they’re not vindictive in their fury,
’Tis their unconstant temper does secure ye.
Their brain’s so cool, their passion seldom burns,
For all’s condensed before the flame returns;
The fermentation’s of so weak a matter,
The humid damps the fume, and runs it all to water.
So, though the inclination may be strong,
They’re pleased by fits, and never angry long.
Then, if good-nature shows some slender proof,
They never think they have reward enough,
But, like our modern Quakers of the town,
Expect your manners, and return you none. ”

“ I need not say I learnt Italian too, for I got pretty well mistress of that before I had been there a year; and as I had leisure enough and loved the language, I read all the Italian books I could come at.
I began to be so in love with Italy, especially with Naples and Venice, that I could have been very well satisfied to have sent for Amy and have taken up my residence there for life.
As to Rome, I did not like it at all. The swarms of ecclesiastics of all kinds on one side, and the scoundrel rabbles of the common people on the other, make Rome the unpleasantest place in the world to live in. ”

“ Here Friday expressed a great concern: Ah, poor mans! cried he, naughty wonians! naughty devil! make God not love de mans, made mans like devil himself.
'Friday,' said I, 'God still loved mankind, and though the devil tempted human nature so far, he would not suffer him to have an absolute power over them. I have told you before of his tender love to his people, till they, like Lucifer, disobeyed his commands and rebelled against him; and even then, how Jesus Christ, his only Son, came to save sinners. But still every man that lives in the world is under temptation and trial. ”

“ I hate this out-o'-season repentance. What occasion had he, in his repentance, to be off of taking a good wife? I should have been glad to see you have been a princess, and all that; but if it can't be, never afflict yourself; you are rich enough to be a princess to yourself; you don't want him, that's the best of it.'
Well, I cried for all that, and was heartily vexed, and that a great while; but, as Amy was always at my elbow, and always jogging it out of my head with her mirth and her wit, it wore off again. ”

“ Payment of interest, to a tradesman, is like Cicero bleeding to death in a warm bath; [4] the pleasing warmth of the bath makes him die in a kind of dream, and not feel himself decay, till at last he is exhausted, falls into convulsions, and expires.
A tradesman held up by money at interest, is sure to sink at last by the weight of it, like a man thrown into the sea with a stone tied about his neck, who though he could swim if he was loose, drowns in spite of all his struggle. ”

“ Away runs the Englishman, frightened and amazed, as if he was bewitched, to the governor Spaniard, and tells him they were all undone, for there were strangers upon the island, but he could not tell who they were. The Spaniard, pausing a while, says to him, "How do you mean—you cannot tell who? They are the savages, to be sure." "No, no," says the Englishman, "they are men in clothes, with arms." "Nay, then," says the Spaniard, "why are you so concerned! If they are not savages they must be friends; for there is no Christian nation upon earth but will do us good rather than harm." ”

“ The circumstances I was in made the offer of a good husband the most necessary thing in the world to me, but I found soon that to be made cheap and easy was not the way. It soon began to be found that the widow had no fortune, and to say this was to say all that was ill of me, for I began to be dropped in all the discourses of matrimony. Being well-bred, handsome, witty, modest, and agreeable; all which I had allowed to my character—whether justly or no is not the purpose—I say, all these would not do without the dross, which way now become more valuable than virtue itself. ”

“ I could not without blushing, as wicked as I was, answer that I loved it for the sake of the vice, and that I delighted in being a whore as such—I say I could not say this even to myself, and all alone, nor indeed would it have been true. I was never able in justice and with truth to say I was so wicked as that, but as necessity first debauched me and poverty made me a whore at the beginning, so excess of avarice for getting money and excess of vanity continued me in the crime, not being able to resist the flatteries of great persons ”

“ If it be a crime of the highest consequence both against the peace and welfare of the nation, the glory of God, the good of the Church, and the happiness of the soul, let us rank it among capital offences, and let it receive a punishment in proportion to it.
We hang men for trifles, and banish them for things not worth naming; but an offence against God and the Church, against the welfare of the world and the dignity of religion, shall be bought off for five shillings! This is such a shame to a Christian Government that it is with regret I transmit it to posterity. ”

“ If ever any man in the world was truly valuable for the strictest honesty of intention, this was the man; and if ever woman in her senses rejected a man of merit on so trivial and frivolous a pretence, I was the woman; but surely it was the most preposterous thing that ever woman did.
He would have taken me as a wife, but would not entertain me as a whore. Was ever woman angry with any gentleman on that head? And was ever woman so stupid to choose to be a whore, where she might have been an honest wife? But infatuations are next to being possessed of the devil. ”

“ What can be a closer stroke at the poor tradesman? He knows not what his partner has done; he has reason to fear the worst; he even knows not himself, for a while, whether he can steer clear of the rocks or no; but soon recovers, knows his own circumstances, and struggles hard with the world, pays out his partner's stock, and gets happily over it. And it is well he does so, for that he is at the brink of ruin must be granted; and where one stands and keeps up his reputation and his business, there are twenty would be undone in the same circumstance. ”

“ When should laws and limits be useful to mankind but in their youth, when unlimited liberty is most fatal to them, and when they are least capable of governing themselves? To have youth left without government, is leaving fire in a magazine of powder, which will certainly blow it all up at last, and ruin all the houses that are near it.
If there is any duty on the side of a master to his servant, any obligation on him as a Christian, and as a trustee for his parents, it lies here—to limit and restrain them, if possible, in the liberty of doing evil ”

“ That tradesman who does not delight in his family, will never long delight in his business; for, as one great end of an honest tradesman's diligence is the support of his family, and the providing for the comfortable subsistence of his wife and children, so the very sight of, and above all, his tender and affectionate care for his wife and children, is the spur of his diligence; that is, it puts an edge upon his mind, and makes him hunt the world for business, as hounds hunt the woods for their game. ”

“ Credit is the choicest jewel the tradesman is trusted with; it is better than money many ways; if a man has £10,000 in money, he may certainly trade for £10,000, and if he has no credit, he cannot trade for a shilling more.
But how often have we seen men, by the mere strength of their credit, trade for ten thousand pounds a-year, and have not one groat of real stock of their own left in the world! Nay, I can say it of my own knowledge, that I have known a tradesman trade for ten thousand pounds a-year, and carry it on with full credit to the last gasp, then die, and break both at once ”

“ Trade is not a ball, where people appear in masque, and act a part to make sport; where they strive to seem what they really are not, and to think themselves best dressed when they are least known: but it is a plain visible scene of honest life, shown best in its native appearance, without disguise; supported by prudence and frugality; and like strong, stiff, clay land, grows fruitful only by good husbandry, culture, and manuring.
A tradesman dressed up fine, with his long wig and sword, may go to the ball when he pleases, for he is already dressed up in the habit ”

“ For a tradesman, therefore, to commit his business thus into the hand of a false, a negligent, and a thievish servant, is like a man that travels a journey, and takes a highwayman into the coach with him: such a man is sure to be robbed, and to be fully and effectually plundered, because he discovers where he hides his treasure. Thus the tradesman places his confidence in the thief, and how should he avoid being robbed? ”

“ I might instance here the miserable, anxious, perplexed life, which the poor tradesman lives under; the distresses and extremities of his declining state; how harassed and tormented for money; what shifts he is driven to for supporting himself; how many little, mean, and even wicked things, will even the religious tradesman stoop to in his distress, to deliver himself—even such things as his very soul would abhor at another time, and for which he goes perhaps with a wounded conscience all his life after! ”