Daniel Defoe

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ I could not digest it very well that I should all this while conceal myself thus from my own child, and make all this favour due, in his opinion, to a stranger, and yet I could not find in my heart to let my son know what a mother he had and what a life she lived, when at the same time that he must think himself infinitely obliged to me, he must be obliged, if he was a man of virtue, to hate his mother and abhor the way of living by which all the bounty he enjoyed was raised. ”