Daniel Defoe Quotes: Sources, Meanings & Themes
Browse quotations by Daniel Defoe with named works, context notes, meanings and recurring themes.
Source identified1
Image design Botanical Sage
Read & copy
“But nobody can account for the possession of fear when it takes hold of the mind.”
Meaning & context
Defoe’s narrator observes how fear can persist and spread beyond what the immediate facts justify, especially during collective crisis and rumor.
Source details
A Journal of the Plague Year, Project Gutenberg #376. The remark follows a false rumor that meat in Newgate Market was infected. It is historical-literary plague narration, not modern psychological or medical guidance.
Source identified2
Image design Botanical Sage
Read & copy
“I saw the cloud, though I did not foresee the storm.”
Meaning & context
Moll recognizes warning signs in the household’s changing treatment of her but admits she did not understand how serious the coming consequences would become.
Source details
Moll Flanders, Project Gutenberg #370. The fictional first-person narrator uses weather metaphor while recalling an early relationship crisis and the family’s growing hostility toward her.
Source identified3
Image design Linen
Read & copy
“It is never too late to be wise;”
Meaning & context
Crusoe reflects that judgment can improve even after years of mistakes, using later experience to reinterpret earlier choices and warnings he once ignored.
Source details
Robinson Crusoe, represented by Project Gutenberg #38705. Crusoe says this while reflecting on what he interprets as secret intimations of Providence; the sentence is fictional first-person religious reflection, not evidence for supernatural guidance.