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Daniel Defoe

6 free books by Daniel Defoe. 6 you can read right here.

Died 1731 in Moorfields

writer, novelist, poet, journalist · Kingdom of England

Notable works: Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, A Journal of the Plague Year

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Facts from Wikidata (Q40946), retrieved 2026-09-26.

Also by Daniel Defoe: read here

Quotes from Daniel Defoe’s books

Verified word for word in the text: each quote is copied exactly from the book’s text in this site’s reader (the Project Gutenberg e-text named under each book) and links to its passage; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against that text. How RedLectern is built.

Robinson Crusoe

From Project Gutenberg e-text #70841 (public domain in the USA).

Thus fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself when apparent to the eyes; and we find the burden of anxiety greater, by much, than the evil which we are anxious about; and, which was worse than all this, I had not that relief in this trouble from the resignation I used to practise, that I hoped to have.

Chapter XVIIRead in context →

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

Chapter XIVRead in context →

The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe

From Project Gutenberg e-text #521 (public domain in the USA).

But it is never too late to be wise; and I cannot but advise all considering men, whose lives are attended with such extraordinary incidents as mine, or even though not so extraordinary, not to slight such secret intimations of Providence, let them come from what invisible intelligence they will.

XII. A CAVE RETREATRead in context →

Moll Flanders

From Project Gutenberg e-text #370 (public domain in the USA).

She is always married too soon who gets a bad husband, and she is never married too late who gets a good one; in a word, there is no woman, deformity or lost reputation excepted, but if she manages well, may be married safely one time or other; but if she precipitates herself, it is ten thousand to one but she is undone.

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“Where love is the case, The doctor’s an ass.”

— Spoken by a character

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All 14 quotes from Moll Flanders →

The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe

From Project Gutenberg e-text #561 (public domain in the USA).

what business had I to rush into new hazards, and put myself upon adventures fit only for youth and poverty to run into?

I. REVISITS ISLANDRead in context →

I got so much money by my first adventure, and such an insight into the method of getting more, that had I been twenty years younger, I should have been tempted to have stayed here, and sought no farther for making my fortune; but what was all this to a man upwards of threescore, that was rich enough, and came abroad more in obedience to a restless desire of seeing the world than a covetous desire of gaining by it?

X. HE IS LEFT ON SHORERead in context →

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