Daniel Defoe

that these things were all either too

He bade me observe it, and I should always find that th

miseries and hardships,

make them amends

not bred to any trade

What became of my second brother I never knew, any more than my father or mother knew what became of

Books are useful only to such whose genius are suitable to the subject of them;

This and travel make a true-bred merchant the most intelligent man in the world,

but when by the errors of a man’s youth he has reduced himself to such a degree of distress as to be absolutely without three things—money, friends, and health—he dies in a ditch, or in some worse place, a hospital.

Death is the universal deliverer, and therefore some who want courage to bear what they see before them, hang themselves for fear; for certainly self-destruction is the effect of cowardice in the highest extreme.