Roxana Quotes

“Misfortunes seldom come alone.”
― Daniel Defoe, Roxana

“If you have regard to your future happiness, any view of living comfortably with a husband, any hope of preserving your fortunes or restoring them after any disaster, never, ladies, marry a fool. Any husband rather than a fool. With some other husband you may be unhappy, but with a fool you will be miserable.”
― Daniel Defoe, Roxana

“I told him I had, perhaps, different notions of matrimony from what the received custom had given us of it; that I thought a woman was a free agent as well as a man, and was born free, and, could she manage herself suitably, might enjoy that liberty to as much purpose as the men do; that the laws of matrimony were indeed otherwise, and mankind at this time acted quite upon other principles, and those such that a woman gave herself entirely away from herself, in marriage, and capitulated, only to be, at best, but an upper servant, and from the time she took the man she was no better or worse than the servant among the Israelites, who had his ears bored—that is, nailed to the door-post—who by that act gave himself up to be a servant during life; that the very nature of the marriage contract was, in short, nothing but giving up liberty, estate, authority, and everything to the man, and the woman was indeed a mere woman ever after—that is to say, a slave.

Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress (1724)”
― Daniel Defoe, Roxana

“But as a fool is the worst of husbands to do a woman good, so a fool is the worst husband a woman can do good to.”
― Daniel Defoe, The Fortunate Mistress; or, a History of the Life of Mademoiselle de Beleau Known by the Name of the Lady Roxana

“So possible is it for us to roll ourselves up in wickedness, till we grow invulnerable by conscience; and that sentinel, once dozed, sleeps fast, not to be awakened while the tide of pleasure continues to flow or till something dark and dreadful brings us to ourselves again.”
― Daniel Defoe, Roxana

“Ismét fiút szültem, pompás fiúcska lett, de csak két hónapig élt; mikor azonban leküzdöttem magamban a gyengéd anyai szeretetet, nem is bántam már annyira, hogy a fiúcska meghalt, hiszen mérhetetlen sok gonddal járt volna egy gyermek visszautazásunk során.”
― Daniel Defoe, Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress

“secrets should never be opened without evident utility. It could be of no manner of use to me or her to communicate”
― Daniel Defoe, The Fortunate Mistress; or, a History of the Life of Mademoiselle de Beleau Known by the Name of the Lady Roxana

“Thus far I am a standing mark of the weakness of great men in their vice, that value not squandering away immense wealth upon the most worthless creatures; or, to sum it up in a word, they raise the value of the object which they pretend to pitch upon by their fancy; I say, raise the value of it at their own expense; give vast presents for a ruinous favour, which is so far from being equal to the price that nothing will at last prove more absurd than the cost men are at to purchase their own destruction.”
― Daniel Defoe, The Fortunate Mistress; or, a History of the Life of Mademoiselle de Beleau Known by the Name of the Lady Roxana

“Thus blinded by my own vanity, I threw away the only opportunity I then had to have effectually settled my fortunes, and secured them for this world; and I am a memorial to all that shall read my story, a standing monument of the madness and distraction which pride and infatuations from hell run us into, how ill our passions guide us, and how dangerously we act when we follow the dictates of an ambitious mind.”
― Daniel Defoe, The Fortunate Mistress; or, a History of the Life of Mademoiselle de Beleau Known by the Name of the Lady Roxana

“I added, that whoever the woman was that had an estate, and would give it up to be the slave of a great man, that woman was a fool, and must be fit for nothing but a beggar; that it was my opinion a woman was as fit to govern and enjoy her own estate without a man as a man was without a woman; and that, if she had a mind to gratify herself as to sexes, she might entertain a man as a man does a mistress; that while she was thus single she was her own, and if she gave away that power she merited to be as miserable as it was possible that any creature could be.

Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress (1724)”
― Daniel Defoe, Roxana

“...For now I had five children by him: the only work perhaps that fools are good for.”
― Daniel Defoe, Roxana

“Under these dreadful apprehensions I looked back on the life I had led with the utmost contempt and abhorrence. I blushed, and wondered at myself how I could act thus, how I could divest myself of modesty and honour, and prostitute myself for gain; and I thought, if ever it should please God to spare me this one time from death, it would not”
― Daniel Defoe, The Fortunate Mistress; or, a History of the Life of Mademoiselle de Beleau Known by the Name of the Lady Roxana

“And here I must take the liberty, whatever I have to reproach myself with in my after conduct, to turn to my fellow-creatures, the young ladies of this country, and speak to them by way of precaution. If you have any regard to your future happiness, any view of living comfortably with a husband, any hope of preserving your fortunes, or restoring them after any disaster, never, ladies, marry a fool; any husband rather than a fool.”
― Daniel Defoe, The Fortunate Mistress; or, a History of the Life of Mademoiselle de Beleau Known by the Name of the Lady Roxana

“By this management I found an opportunity to see what a most insignificant, unthinking life the poor, indolent wretch, who, by his unactive temper, had at first been my ruin, now lived; how he only rose in the morning to go to bed at night; that, saving the necessary motion of the troops, which he was obliged to attend, he was a mere motionless animal, of no consequence in the world; that he seemed to be one who, though he was indeed alive, had no manner of business in life but to stay to be called out of it. He neither kept any company, minded any sport, played at any game, or indeed did anything of moment; but, in short, sauntered about like one that it was not two livres value whether he was dead or alive; that when he was gone, would leave no remembrance behind him that ever he was here; that if ever he did anything in the world to be talked of, it was only to get five beggars and starve his wife.”
― Daniel Defoe, The Fortunate Mistress; or, a History of the Life of Mademoiselle de Beleau Known by the Name of the Lady Roxana

“Unhappy wretch... shall my ill-got Wealth, the Product of prosperous Lust, and of a vile and vicious Life of Whoredom and Adultery, be intermingled with the honest well-gotten Estate of this innocent gentleman, to be a Moth and a Caterpiller among it, and bring the Judgments of Heaven upon him, and upon what he has, for my sake!”
― Daniel Defoe, Roxana

“Unhappy wretch... shall my ill-got Wealth, the Product of prosperous Lust, and of a vile and vicious Life of Whoredom and Adultery, be intermingled with the honest well-gotten Estate of this innocent gentleman, to be a Moth ad a Caterpiller among it, and bring the Judgments of Heaven upon him, and upon what he has, for my sake!”
― Daniel Defoe, Roxana

“If Pride will not turn the Brain, nothing can.”
― Daniel Defoe, Roxana

“Necessity first debauch'd me, and Poverty made me a Whore at the Beginning; so excess of Avarice for getting Money, and Excess of Vanity, continued me in the crime”
― Daniel Defoe, Roxana

“It is for this reason that I have so largely set down the particulars of the caresses I was treated with by the jeweller, and also by this prince; not to make the story an incentive to the vice, which I am now such a sorrowful penitent for being guilty of (God forbid any should make so vile a use of so good a design), but to draw the just picture of a man enslaved to the rage of his vicious appetite; how he defaces the image of God in his soul, dethrones his reason, causes conscience to abdicate the possession, and exalts sense into the vacant throne; how he deposes the man and exalts the brute.”
― Daniel Defoe, The Fortunate Mistress; or, a History of the Life of Mademoiselle de Beleau Known by the Name of the Lady Roxana

“husband; and so it may be supposed at first sight what a kind of life I led with him. However, I did as well as I could, and held my tongue, which was the only victory I gained over him; for when he would talk after his own empty rattling way with me, and I would not answer, or enter into discourse with him on the point he was upon, he would rise up in the greatest passion imaginable, and go away, which was the cheapest way I had to be delivered.”
― Daniel Defoe, The Fortunate Mistress; or, a History of the Life of Mademoiselle de Beleau Known by the Name of the Lady Roxana