Date: 1700, 1705

"Wit is a Flux, a Looseness of the Brain, / And Sense-abstract has too much Pride to reign."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1700, 1705

"Abstracted-Wit 'Tis own'd is a Disease, / But Sense-abstracted has no Power to please."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1700, 1705

"Sense without Wit is Flegmatick and pale, / And is all Head, forsooth, without a Tail: / Wit without Sense is Cholerick and Red, / Has Tail enough indeed, but has no Head."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1700, 1705

"Wit, like the Belly, if it be not fed, / Will starve the Members, and distract the Head."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1700, 1705

"Wit is the Fruitful Womb where Thoughts conceive, / Sense is the Vital Heat which Life and Form must give: / Wit is the Teeming Mother brings them forth, / Sense is the Active Father gives them Worth."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1715

"The Temper of a Child misled by Vice or Mistake, like a dislocated Bone, is easie to be reduc'd into its Place, if taken in time; but if suffer'd to remain in its dislocated Position, a callous Substance fills up the empty Space, and by neglect grows equally hard with the Bone, and resisting the...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1719

"I expected every Wave would have swallowed us up, and that every time the Ship fell down, as I thought, in the Trough or Hollow of the Sea, we should never rise more; and in this Agony of Mind, I made many Vows and Resolutions, that if it would please God here to spare my Life this one Voyage, i...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1719

"In a Word, I had nothing about me but a Knife, a Tobacco-pipe, and a little Tobacco in a Box; this was all my Provision, and this threw me into terrible Agonies of Mind, that for a while I run about like a Mad-man."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1719

"I threw down the Book, and with my Heart as well as my Hands lifted up to Heaven, in a Kind of Extasy of Joy, I cry'd out aloud, Jesus, thou Son of David, Jesus, thou exalted Prince and Saviour, give me Repentance!

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1719

"I found indeed some Intervals of Reflection, and the serious Thoughts did, as it were, endeavour to return again sometimes, but I shook them off, and rouz'd my self from them as it were from a Distemper, and applying my self to Drinking and Company, soon master'd the Return of those Fits, for so...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)