Daniel Defoe

Your Roman-Saxon-Danish-Norman English.

Titles are shadows, crowns are empty things,

From this amphibious ill-born mob began

Nature has left this tincture in the blood,

He told me … that mine was the middle state, or what might be called the upper station of low life, which he had found by long experience was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness.

My man Friday.

Things as certain as death and taxes, can be more firmly believed.

The best of men cannot suspend their fate: The good die early, and the bad die late.

And of all plagues with which mankind are curs’d, Ecclesiastic tyranny’s the worst.

All men would be tyrants if they could.

From this amphibious ill-born mob began That vain, ill-natur’d thing, an Englishman.

In their religion they are so uneven, That each man goes his own byway to heaven.

Wherever God erects a house of prayer, The Devil always builds a chapel there; And ’twill be found, upon examination, The latter has the largest congregation.