Robinson Crusoe

by Daniel Defoe

He told me it was men of desperate fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road;

I made many vows and resolutions that if it would please God to spare my life in this one voyage, if ever I got once my foot upon dry land again, I would go directly home to my father, and never set it into a ship again while I lived;

I was made half drunk with it: and in that one night’s wickedness I drowned all my repentance, all my reflections upon my past conduct, all my resolutions for the future.

I thought the bitterness of death had been past, and that this would be nothing like the first; but when the master himself came by me, as I said just now, and said we should be all lost, I was dreadfully frighted.

It was my advantage in one respect, that I did not know what they meant by founder till I inquired.

I had been happy, and my father, as in our blessed Saviour’s parable, had even killed the fatted calf for me;

Perhaps this has all befallen us on your account, like Jonah in the ship of Tarshish.

“And, young man,” said he, “depend upon it, if you do not go back, wherever you go, you will meet with nothing but disasters and disappointments, till your father’s words are fulfilled upon you.”

This was the only voyage which I may say was successful in all my adventures,

This moment my former notions of deliverance darted into my thoughts, for now I found I was likely to have a little ship at my command;

I could have been content to have taken this Moor with me, and have drowned the boy, but there was no venturing to trust him.

I neither saw, nor desired to see any people; the principal thing I wanted was fresh water.

This was game indeed to us, but this was no food; and I was very sorry to lose three charges of powder and shot upon a creature that was good for nothing to us.

“I have saved your life on no other terms than I would be glad to be saved myself: and it may, one time or other, be my lot to be taken up in the same condition.

But, alas! for me to do wrong that never did right, was no great wonder.

Nay, I was coming into the very middle station, or upper degree of low life, which my father advised me to before,

I say, how just has it been, that the truly solitary life I reflected on, in an island of mere desolation, should be my lot, who had so often unjustly compared it with the life which I then led, in which, had I continued, I had in all probability been exceeding prosperous and rich.

But as abused prosperity is oftentimes made the very means of our greatest adversity, so it was with me.

my head began to be full of projects and undertakings beyond my reach; such as are, indeed, often the ruin of the best heads in business.

But I, that was born to be my own destroyer, could no more resist the offer than I could restrain my first rambling designs when my father’ good counsel was lost upon me.

I went on board in an evil hour, the 1st September 1659, being the same day eight years that I went from my father and mother at Hull, in order to act the rebel to their authority, and the fool to my own interests.

It is not easy for any one who has not been in the like condition to describe or conceive the consternation of men in such circumstances.

I believe it is impossible to express, to the life, what the ecstasies and transports of the soul are, when it is so saved, as I may say, out of the very grave:

No one deserves to be a writer who knows the meaning of the words "I can't express..."

I resolved to sit all night, and consider the next day what death I should die, for as yet I saw no prospect of life.

I believe it was the first gun that had been fired there since the creation of the world.

I would expostulate with myself why Providence should thus completely ruin His creatures, and render them so absolutely miserable; so without help, abandoned, so entirely depressed, that it could hardly be rational to be thankful for such a life.

Is it better to be here or there?” And then I pointed to the sea. All evils are to be considered with the good that is in them, and with what worse attends them.

That is the question

I confess I had not entertained any notion of my ammunition being destroyed at one blast—I mean my powder being blown up by lightning; and this made the thoughts of it so surprising to me, when it lightened and thundered, as I observed just now.

I wanted nothing that he could fetch me, nor any company that he could make up to me; I only wanted to have him talk to me, but that would not do.

and I shall show that while my ink lasted, I kept things very exact, but after that was gone I could not,

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 began to comfort myself as well as I could, and to set the good against the evil, that I might have something to distinguish my case from worse; and I stated very impartially, like debtor and creditor, the comforts I enjoyed against the miseries I suffered, thus:—

I could not forbear getting up to the top of a little mountain and looking out to sea, in hopes of seeing a ship; then fancy at a vast distance I spied a sail, please myself with the hopes of it, and then after looking steadily, till I was almost blind, lose it quite, and sit down and weep like a child, and thus increase my misery by my folly.

“The Island of Despair”;