Date: 1719

"[B]ut to see with what Fear I went forward, how often I look'd behind me, how I was ready every now and then to lay down my Basket, and run for my Life, it would have made any one have thought I was haunted with an evil Conscience, or that I had been lately most terribly frighted, and so indeed ...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1719

"It would take up a larger Volume than this whole Work is intended to be, to set down all the Contrivances I hatch'd, or rather brooded upon in my Thought."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1719

"As long as I kept up my daily Tour to the Hill to look out, so long also I kept up the Vigour of my Design, and my Spirits seem'd to be all the while in a suitable Form for so outragious an Execution as the killing twenty or thirty naked Savages, for an Offence which I had not at all entred into...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1719

"It is as impossible as needless, to set down the innumerable Crowd of Thoughts that whirl'd through that great Thorowfair of the Brain, the Memory, in this Night's Time."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1719

There may be a "Flood of Joy" in the breast

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1719

One may have "several times loud Calls from [his] Reason and [his] more composed Judgment to go home"

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1719

"[N]ay, they were not subjected to so many Distempers and Uneasinesses either of Body or Mind, as those were, who by vicious Living, Luxury and Extravagancies on one Hand, or by hard Labour, want of Necessaries, and mean or insufficient Diet on the other Hand, bring Distempers upon themselves by ...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1719

I struggled with the Power of my Imagination, reason'd myself out of it, as I believe People may always do in like Cases, if they will; and, in a Word, I conquer'd it

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1719

"I thought he was not a Monarch only, but a great Conqueror; for that he that has got a Victory over his own exorbitant Desires, and has the absolute Dominion over himself, whose Reason entirely governs his Will, is certainly greater than he that conquers a City"

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1719

"But it was all to no Purpose, I had an irresistible Desire to the Voyage; and I told her, I thought there was something so uncommon in the Impressions I had upon my Mind for the Voyage, that it would be a Kind of resisting Providence, if I should attempt to stay at Home."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)