Daniel Defoe

It is enough to tell you, that as some of my worst comrades, who are out of the way of doing me harm (having gone out of the world by the steps and the string, as I often expected to go), knew me by the name of Moll Flanders, so you may give me leave to speak of myself under that name till I dare own who I have been, as well as who I am.

It mattered not from whence it came; but all agreed it was come into Holland again.

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

I had a most unbounded stock of vanity and pride, and but a very little stock of virtue.

We had no such thing as printed newspapers in those days to spread rumours and reports of things, and to improve them by the invention of men, as I have lived to see practised since.

I had in five or six days got as complete a victory over conscience as any young fellow that resolved not to be troubled with it could desire.

“Prithee, child,” says Robin, “beauty’s a portion, and good-humour with it is a double portion; I wish thou hadst half her stock of both for thy portion.”

Everybody was at peace; there was no occasion for lawyers; besides, it being in the time of the vacation too, they were generally gone into the country.

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

Thus my pride, not my principle, my money, not my virtue, kept me honest

One mischief always introduces another.

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

Vanity is the perfection of a fop.

Death was before their eyes, and everybody began to think of their graves, not of mirth and diversions.

All evils are to be considered with the good that is in them, and with what worse attends them.

But it is none of my talent to preach; these men were too wicked, even for me.

The fire, which consumed what the plague could not touch, defied all the application of remedies; the fire-engines were broken, the buckets thrown away, and the power of man was baffled and brought to an end.

It might be truly said, that now I worked for my bread.

In short, he must have a very contemptible opinion of her capacities, nay, every of her understanding, that, having but one case of her life, shall call that life away at once, and make matrimony, like death, be a leap in the dark.

But though I confined my family, I could not prevail upon my unsatisfied curiosity to stay within entirely myself; and though I generally came frighted and terrified home, yet I could not restrain; only that indeed I did not do it so frequently as at first.