How Strange A Checker-work Of Providence Is

Business Neglected Is Business Lost.

The Height Of Human Wisdom Is To Bring Our Tempers Down To Our Circumstances, And To Make A Calm Within, Under The Weight Of The Greatest Storm Without.

I Learned To Look More Upon The Bright Side Of My Condition, And Less Upon The Dark Side, And To Consider What I Enjoyed, Rather Than What I Wanted : And This Gave Me Sometimes Such Secret Comforts, That I Cannot Express Them ; And Which I Take Notice Of Here, To Put Those Discontented People In Mind Of It, Who Cannot Enjoy Comfortably What God Has Given Them, Because They See And Covet Something That He Has Not Given Them. All Our Discontents About What We Want Appeared To Me To Spring From The Want Of Thankfulness For What We Have.

Reason, It Is True, Is Dictator In The Society Of Mankind; From Her There Ought To Lie No Appeal; But Here We Want A Pope In Our Philosophy, To Be The Infallible Judge Of What Is Or Is Not Reason.

I Was Born In The Year 1632, In The City Of York, Of A Good Family, Tho' Not Of That Country, My Father Being A Foreigner Of Bremen, Who Settled First At Hull; He Got A Good Estate By Merchandise, And Leaving Off His Trade, Lived Afterward At York, From Whence He Had Married My Mother, Whose Relations Were Named Robinson, A Very Good Family In That Country, And From Whom I Was Called Robinson Kreutznaer; But By The Usual Corruption Of Words In England, We Are Now Called, Nay We Call Ourselves, And Write Our Name Crusoe, And So My Companions Always Call'd Me.