Date: 1719

"At that very Word my Heart, as I thought, died within me, and I fell backwards upon the Side of my Bed where I sat, into the Cabbin."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1719

"[M]y Heart was as it were dead within me, partly with Fright, partly with Horror of Mind and the Thoughts of what was yet before me."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1719

"I say, I do not wonder that they bring a Surgeon with it, to let him Blood that very Moment they tell him of it, that the Surprize may not drive the Animal Spirits from the Heart, and overwhelm him."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1719

"I now began to consider seriously my Condition, and the Circumstance I was reduc'd to, and I drew up the State of my Affairs in Writing, not so much to leave them to any that were to come after me, for I was like to have but few Heirs, as to deliver my Thoughts from daily poring upon them, and a...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

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: 1785

"To apply his great mind to minute particulars, is wrong: it is like taking an immense balance, such as is kept on quays for weighing cargoes of ships, to weigh a guinea. I knew I had neat little scales, which would do better; and that his attention to every thing which falls in his way, and his ...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)