"Robinson Crusoe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Caroline; and do you not recollect, when you read Robinson Crusoe, that his man Friday made a fire by rubbing two pieces ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... the old man, after gazing spellbound upon it for some seconds. The track of the mysterious footprint in the sand excited no more surprise in the mind of Robinson Crusoe than Grandfather Coster felt at the sight which met his eyes. There, distinctly impressed upon the parchment, was a clear imprint of the bark letters; though, of course, they ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... fourteen more eagerly than by his little sister who cannot understand half of them. A child fond of reading can have no more delightful book than the "Faerie Queene," unless it be the "Arabian Nights," which was not written as a "juvenile." There are pages by the score in "Robinson Crusoe" that a child cannot understand,—and it is all the better reading for him on that account. A child has a comfort in unintelligible words that few men can understand. Homer's "Iliad" is good reading, though only a small part may be comprehended. (We are not, however, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... reef with his indefatigable toil; this solitary spot in the ocean rings with the clamour of his anvil; we see him as he comes and goes, thrown out sharply against the clear background of the sea. And yet his isolation is not to be compared with the isolation of Robinson Crusoe, for example; indeed, no two books could be more instructive to set side by side than LES TRAVAILLEURS and this other of the old days before art had learnt to occupy itself with what lies outside of human will. Crusoe was one sole centre of interest in the midst of a nature ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... paper did come, we literally devoured its contents. With us it was an oracle. If the "Courier" affirmed or denied a thing, that was enough for us. It was an end to all debate. How confiding children are! He who has read "Robinson Crusoe" when a boy, finds it almost impossible to regard it a fable when he is a man. The newspaper, that makes its weekly visit to the family circle in the country, leaves the marks of its influence upon the mind and the morals of the child. It forms ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... Christmas Day—a thick-set, mildewy young man, with short black hair, a long white face and spectacles. He was a medical student, and brought with him his chum, Bob Sawyer, a slovenly, smart, swaggering young gentleman, who smelled strongly of tobacco smoke and looked like a dissipated Robinson Crusoe. Ben intended that his chum should marry his sister Arabella, and Bob Sawyer paid her so much attention that Winkle began to hate ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... Boys in the Mountains," and now the volume before you, which relates the adventures of the three brothers, and some of their friends and enemies, on the sea and on a number of far away islands, where, for a time, all lead a sort of Robinson Crusoe life. ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... with glowing cheeks to Robinson Crusoe and the Arabian Nights, Gulliver's Travels and Don Quixote, both arranged for children, the pretty, stories of Nieritz and others, descriptions of Nature and travel, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... George Curtis ended, "we have lived for nearly two years, like a second Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday, hoping against hope that some natives might come here to help us away, but none have come. Only last night we settled that Jim should leave me, and try to reach Sitanda's Kraal to ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... such natural causes of alarm, that we do not sympathize more readily with Robinson Crusoe's apprehensions when he witnesses the print of the savage's foot in the sand, than in those which arise from his being waked from sleep by some one calling his name in the solitary island, where there existed no man but the shipwrecked mariner himself. Amidst ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... the aid of his servants, most of whom had followed him, had built with a few tools a rough log cabin with six or eight rooms, but without nails, screws, bolts, or glass—almost as primitive a building as Robinson Crusoe's. But, in spite of all drawbacks, the ingenuity and deft hands of the ladies had given to the premises an air of comfort and refinement that was most refreshing. Here I rested two days, enjoying the company of this charming family, with whom Lieutenant Barnwell remained. On the 15th I ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... bedad, man alive, but it's a fine counthry over here, and it bangs all the jewel of a view we do be havin' from the windys, begorra! Knockarney House is in a wild, remoted place at the back of beyant, and faix we're as much alone as Robinson Crusoe on a dissolute island; but when we do be wishful to go to the town, sure there's ivery convaniency. There's ayther a bit of a jauntin' car wid a skewbald pony for drivin', or we can borry the loan of Dinnis ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Mahometans, and the same translated suffice for all. All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning. Joseph Wolff, the missionary, distributed copies of Robinson Crusoe, translated into Arabic, among the Arabs, and they made a great sensation. "Robinson Crusoe's adventures and wisdom," says he, "were read by Mahometans in the market-places of Sanaa, Hodyeda, and Loheya, and admired and believed!" On reading the ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... vanity, as we hoped, leaned, in a most mortifying manner, against the kitchen wall, where the canvas was stretched and painted, much too large to be got through any of the doors, and the jest of all our neighbors. One compared it to Robinson Crusoe's long-boat, too large to be removed; another thought it more resembled a reel in a bottle; some wondered how it could be got out, but still more were amazed how it ever ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... Here is a boy that loves to run, swim, kick football, turn somersets, make faces, whittle, fish, tear his clothes, coast, skate, fire crackers, blow squash "tooters," cut his name on fences, read about Robinson Crusoe and Sinbad the Sailor, eat the widest-angled slices of pie and untold cakes and candies, crack nuts with his back teeth and bite out the better part of another boy's apple with his front ones, turn up coppers, "stick" knives, call names, ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... read about, no doubt; and Tom, like all boys, had revelled in the portrayals of such a situation which he had encountered in his reading. No one had entered with more zest than he into the pages of Robinson Crusoe, and no one had enjoyed more than he the talks which boys love to have about their possible doings under such circumstances. But now, to be here, and find himself in such a place,—to be brought face to face with the hard, stern, dismal fact,—was another ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... a copy of Robinson Crusoe, or had his grandmother not cast The Lady of the Lake, mistaking it for an idol, if not to the moles and the bats, yet to the mice and the black-beetles, he might have been lying reading it, blind and deaf to the face and the voice of Nature, and years might have passed before ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... books together when I was a boy, 'Robinson Crusoe' being the first (and the second), and the 'Arabian Nights' should have been the next, for we got it out of the library (a penny for three days), but on discovering that they were nights when we had paid for knights we sent ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... broken by the braying of a donkey. Marie went quickly back to the hut, and the party started. Galope-Chopine, armed with a double-barrelled gun, wore a long goatskin, which gave him something the look of Robinson Crusoe. His blotched face, seamed with wrinkles, was scarcely visible under the broad-brimmed hat which the Breton peasants still retain as a tradition of the olden time; proud to have won, after their servitude, the right to wear the former ornament of seignorial heads. This nocturnal caravan, ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... order to save the rest of it. Discussing this matter one day, he said: "One cannot have an omelet without breaking eggs. By joining the League of Nations, a nation loses, not its individual freedom, but its selfish isolation. The only freedom it loses is the freedom to do wrong. Robinson Crusoe was free to shoot in any direction on his island until Friday came. Then there was one direction in which he could not shoot. His freedom ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... consisting of Sallengre, St. Hyacinthe, Prosper Marchand, &c., who carried on a smart review for those days, published at the Hague under the title of "Journal Litteraire." They all composed in French; and Van Effen gave the first translations of our "Guardian," "Robinson Crusoe," and the "Tale of a Tub," &c. He did something more, but not better; he attempted to imitate the "Spectator," in his "Le Misanthrope," 1726, which exhibits a picture of the uninteresting manners of a nation whom he ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... you. I never knew what Robinson Crusoe felt like before!' said Felix, as Lance came on a wrist-band ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... illusion is therefore perfect. The big child who played with his puppet theatre until after he was grown up is quite visible in every line. He is as much absorbed in the story as any of his hearers. He is all in the game with the intense engrossment of a lad I knew, who, while playing Robinson Crusoe, ate snails with ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... swaggering gait peculiar to young gentlemen who smoke in the streets by day, and shout and scream in the same by night, calling waiters by their Christian names, and altogether bearing a resemblance upon the whole to something like a dissipated Robinson Crusoe. Habited, Bob still doubtless was, in the plaid trousers and the large, rough coat and double-breasted waistcoat, but as for the "swaggering gait" just mentioned not a vestige of it remained. Nor could that be wondered at, indeed, for an instant, beholding and hearing, ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... practically stark naked, but fat as curlews, being full of wild berries with which their bodies were stained bright blues and reds. They were a jolly little couple, as unconcerned about their environment as Robinson Crusoe after five years on his island. Soon the father came home. I can see him still—the vacant brown face of a very feeble-minded half-breed, ragged and tattered and almost bootless. He was carrying an aged single-barrelled boy's gun in one hand and a belated ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... friend, when he had built his log house, and was his own servant-of-all-work; and gave us an account of an attack of the Indians upon Fort Talbot. He gives me the idea of the most cool courage imaginable. I could not help looking at him, as if he were Robinson Crusoe come to life again, and continuing stories from his own book. He has now a very good house, or palace I should say; for he is not only lord of all ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... Among the books were Robinson Crusoe, Midshipman Easy, Peter Simple, three or four of Cooper's Indian tales, Dana's Life before the Mast, and several of Kingston's and Ballantyne's books. These opened a wonderland of life and adventure to the boys. The ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... shore up to the club landing and waited for the troop to come and go to work on the houseboat. But instead of that, I kept looking around and pretty soon what do you think I saw? I saw a footprint. Some Robinson Crusoe, hey? ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... some bit of rock, or mound of aboriginal soil, will crop out with the wild-flowers growing upon it, sweetening the air. When the boy throws his Delectus or his Euclid aside, and takes passionately to the reading of "Robinson Crusoe" or Bruce's "African Travels," do not shake your head despondingly over him and prophesy evil issues. Let the wild hawk try its wings. It will be hooded, and will sit quietly enough on the falconer's perch ere long. Let the wild horse career over its boundless pampas; ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... Caius, to which he might harness his horse, and in which he might sit snug among oxskins if he preferred that sort of travelling to riding. Madame Le Maitre still rode, and Caius discarded his sleigh and rode also. Missing the warmth of the skins, he was soon compelled by the cold to copy Robinson Crusoe and make himself breeches and leggings of ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... Goose or David Copperfield or Ivanhoe or Cinderella or Blue Beard or Robinson Crusoe or Jane Eyre or Alice in Wonderland or a word of Rudyard Kipling. I didn't know that Henry the Eighth was married more than once or that Shelley was a poet. I didn't know that people used to be monkeys and that ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... close of the fortnight they one day came upon the footprints of men in the mud of the western bank—a Robinson Crusoe experience which carries an electric shiver with it yet, when one stumbles on it in print. They had been warned that the river Indians were as ferocious and pitiless as the river demon, and destroyed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... America, where it attracted the notice of Roberts Brothers' publishing house. They were charmed with it, and published an edition in America. The "Painter's Camp" was well received by the Press of both nations, and the reviews were numerous. It was compared to "Robinson Crusoe" and called "unique." The author was very much amused to hear that "Punch" had given an illustrated notice of it under the title of "A Painter Scamp ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... shame exist in every man who is not utterly depraved, and honor is everywhere recognized as something particularly valuable. The reason of this is as follows. By and in himself a man can accomplish very little; he is like Robinson Crusoe on a desert island. It is only in society that a man's powers can be called into full activity. He very soon finds this out when his consciousness begins to develop, and there arises in him the desire ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... who had blackened his face to represent an Egyptian page, not only carried her train, but held over the head of the daughter of Hamilcar an umbrella of Robinson Crusoe dimensions. Her gold crown fell off once while walking about, and Choiseul made every one laugh when he picked it up and put it on his own black locks. She walked on all unconscious, and ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... horses despatched to the Indian market. Guy shows the "Lives of the Poets," Vivian asks if it is possible to get the Life of Clive, or Napoleon, or a copy of Plutarch. Guy shakes his head; says if a Robinson Crusoe will do as well, he has seen one in a very tattered state, but in too great request ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for a baked potato. Then he goes back. He is Robinson Crusoe on an island that never keeps still a single instant. It is all he has, and he never looks away, and never wants anything more. So I have him to watch. Think of living so near a beaver or a water-rat with clothes on! Good-by. Leave the door ajar, it ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... find treasure buried on their island to make it really interesting," she told her chum. "Think of poor Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday. Wouldn't they have been just tickled to death to have found anything like this ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... what Sir Willoughby calls him," young Crossjay excused himself to her look of surprise. "Do you know what he makes me think of?—his eyes, I mean. He makes me think of Robinson Crusoe's old goat in the cavern. I like him because he's always the same, and you're not positive about some people. Miss Middleton, if you look on at cricket, in comes a safe man for ten runs. He may get more, and he never gets less; and you should hear the old farmers ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... surf, on that leeward side of the island, is little or none the whole year round. With these low cliffs, in strongest contrast to the stately and precipitous southern point of St. Lucia, the southern point of Grenada slides into the sea, the last of the true Antilles. For Tobago, Robinson Crusoe's island, which lies away unseen to windward, is seemingly a fragment of South America, like the island of Trinidad, to which the steamer now ran dead south ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... lunch off him. Found him a bit down the road from his house trying out this game leg of his. By Jove, he was no end bucked to see me. Came bounding along, dot and carry one, beaming all over his old phiz, and wrung my honest hand as if he was Robinson Crusoe discovering Man Friday on a desert island. I know I'm called Popular Percy by thousands who can only admire me from afar, but I tell you old Sabre fairly overwhelmed me. And talk! He simply jabbered. I said, 'By Jove, Sabre, one would think you hadn't met any one for a month the way you're unbelting ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... "Robinson Crusoe!" exclaimed Glover. "I never thought of that. Wal, let's see. Oh, we kin tow her astarn in plain sailin', 'n' when we come to a cataract we can put Sweeny in an' let ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... which I may avoid, I hope, the sacred wrath of St. Stephen's. Ages ago a savage mode of keeping accounts on notched sticks was introduced into the Court of Exchequer, and the accounts were kept, much as Robinson Crusoe kept his calendar on the desert island. In the course of considerable revolutions of time, the celebrated Cocker was born, and died; Walkinghame, of the Tutor's Assistant, and well versed in figures, was also born, and died; a multitude of accountants, book- keepers, and actuaries, were ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... corporeal phenomenon and doubtless it perishes when the body perishes." But here again the conclusion, though specious at first, soon appears to be quite inadequate. For though it is possibly true that a man, if left alone in a Robinson Crusoe life on a desert island, might ultimately subside into a mere gratification of his corporeal needs and of those mental needs which were directly concerned with the body, yet we know that such a case would by no means be representative. ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... children of the desert, no longer nomads and gipsies, my brothers and I set to work with a hearty good-will that astonished even ourselves. In preparing our new homes we, and all the other settlers of this infant colony as well, enjoyed the same kind of pleasure that Robinson Crusoe must have done when he and his man Friday set up house for themselves in the ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... away to a coffee-house after his dinner and have a small pot o' coffee and four crumpets. He fell ill and sent for the doctor. Doctor comes in a green fly vith a kind o' Robinson Crusoe set o' steps as he could let down ven he got out, and pull up arter him ven he got in, to perwent the necessity o' the coachman's gettin' down, and thereby undeceivin' the public by lettin' 'em see that it wos only a livery coat he'd got on, and not the trousers ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... we've gone through with that makes you feel that way, Sam," came from Tom Rover. "Just think of being cast away on a lonely island like Robinson Crusoe! Why, half the folks won't believe our ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... for classical students modern stories in ancient Latin, in the belief that modern students will acquire a practical knowledge of the language more readily from such textbooks than from any parts of the ancient literature.[76] The story of Robinson Crusoe was translated into Latin by G. F. Goffeaux, and this version has been edited and republished by Dr. Arcadius Avellanus, Philadelphia, 1900 (173 pages). An abridgement of the original edition was edited by P. A. Barnett, under the title The Story of Robinson Crusoe ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... and delusive. These picturesque tales have been read with wonder and admiration, as they successively appeared, for three hundred and fifty years; though shown to be romances, they will continue to be read as Robinson Crusoe is read, not because they are true, but because they are pleasing. The psychological revelation is the eager, undefinable interest aroused by any picture of ancient society. It is felt by every stranger when he first walks the streets of Pompeii, ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... 'Robinson Crusoe' and your 'Swiss Family Robinson' and you will know. We must make a kind of raft, so that we can go back and forth to the houseboat without getting wet every time ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... no doubt be understood that George Vavasor did not roam about in the woods unshorn, or wear leathern trappings and sandals, like Robinson Crusoe, instead of coats and trousers. His wildness was of another kind. Indeed, I don't know that he was in truth at all wild, though Lady Macleod had called him so, and Alice had assented to her use ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... was "printed for W. Taylor, at the Ship, in Paternoster Row," as an octavo volume, in the early part of the year 1719. The title runs thus:—"The Life, and strange surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner," and has a full-length picture of Crusoe, as a frontispiece, "Clarke and Pine, sc."; which is the type of all future representations of the hero, who is depicted in his skin-dress upon ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Those pressing prevailers, The ready-made tailors, Quote me as their great double-barrel; I allow them to do so, Though ROBINSON CRUSOE Would jib at their wearing apparel! I sit, by selection, Upon the direction Of several Companies bubble; As soon as they're floated I'm freely bank-noted - I'm pretty well paid ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... ships which appeared to be men-of-war sailing toward them, they hurriedly left the island, abandoning there one of their Indian allies because he could not be found in time. Thus a second Man Friday was deposited upon Robinson Crusoe's island. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... sash, with a relic, or some sacred charm like the bonbon off a twelfth- cake, hanging round the neck. The old man is very anxious to convert me to the Catholic faith, and exhorts me frequently. We sit upon a stone by the door, sometimes in the evening, like Robinson Crusoe and Friday reversed; and he generally relates, towards my conversion, an abridgment of the History of Saint Peter- -chiefly, I believe, from the unspeakable delight he has in his ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... passed several pretty islands covered thickly with trees, among which, Fanny said, she should like to have a hut and live like Robinson Crusoe. ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... afterwards at York, from whence he 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 English, we are now called—nay, we call ourselves and write our name—Crusoe" (Robinson Crusoe, ch. i.). ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... finished their luncheon and were smoking. The animated Henshaw continued his talk. "And about that other thing we were discussing, Governor, I want to go into that with you. I tell you if we can do Robinson Crusoe, and do it right, a regular five-thousand-foot program feature, the thing ought to gross a million. A good, clean, censor-proof picture—great kid show, run forever. Shipwreck stuff, loading the raft, island stuff, hut stuff, goats, finding the footprint, cannibals, the man Friday—can't ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... covered from end to end with those painted masterpieces, the Life of Robinson Crusoe, the Hunting of Chevy-Chase, the History of Jack the Giant-Killer, and all the little eager faces and trembling hands bent over these, and filling them up with some choice quotation, sacred or profane;—no, the galleries of art, the theatrical exhibitions, the reviews and ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... are creators, as well as executants. Certainly, the singer would sing for pure pleasure in singing if stranded alone upon a desert island, and marooned men would write books or music if they could, and stranded painters would paint. Would an actor in the position of Robinson Crusoe act to amuse himself—at least, would he do so before he had his man Friday as an involuntary and ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... family had gone to bed, he would sit up and read his favorite books by the light of the great blazing logs heaped up on the open fire. He had not more than half a dozen books in all. They were "Robinson Crusoe," "Pilgrim's Progress," AEsop's[4] Fables, the Bible, a Life of Washington, and a small History of the United States. The boy read these books over and over till he knew a great deal of them by heart and could repeat whole ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... able to make that for myself. I am playing at 'Robinson Crusoe,' not 'The Swiss Family Robinson.' And now, my dear Friday, if you will kindly take off those boots, we can explore the island before we ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... splendid victories abroad. It was a time, too, when there were almost as many able writers as in Queen Elizabeth's time. The two books written at that day, which you are most likely to have heard of, are Robinson Crusoe, written by Daniel Defoe, and Alexander ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... been best acquainted with them; I am no judge as to the merits of the controversy between them and their fellow-countrymen, but I have read their works and am of opinion that they will not hold their own against such masterpieces of modern literature as, we will say, The Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels or Tom Jones. "Whether there be prophecies," exclaims the Apostle, "they shall fail." On the whole I should say that Isaiah and Jeremiah must be held to ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... individual in turn would be something utterly different if he could be separated from society. A great deal of him would not exist at all. Even if he himself could maintain physical existence by the luck and skill of a Robinson Crusoe, his mental and moral being would, if it existed at all, be something quite different from anything that we know. By language, by training, by simply living with others, each of us absorbs into his system the social atmosphere that surrounds us. In particular, in the matter of rights and duties ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... lucky fellow. He is read and understood. I met ladies carrying snugly under their arms the little yellow volume just issued. Alas, for us poor poets! It is all very well for us to rank ourselves above and beyond the crowd. It is for the crowd, after all, that we write. When Robinson Crusoe was on his desert island, cut off from all the world and without so much as the hope of seeing a sail on the horizon, would he have written verses, even if he had been a poetic genius? Thought about this a great deal as I tramped through the Champs Elysees, lost, ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... should be asked my opinion of some book or subject of which I had never even heard, and in trying to appear well-educated, make as horrible a blunder as poor Madame Talleyrand committed, when she talked to Denon about his man Friday, believing that he wrote 'Robinson Crusoe.' At that time I had never read either Mill or Ruskin; but my profound reverence for the wisdom of your opinions taught me how shamefully ignorant I was, and thus, to fit myself for your companionship, I immediately bought their books. Lo, to my indescribable ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... under those hedge-rows." I agreed in the observation, and repeat it as conveying an idea of the character of the scenery. The gates and stiles to these several fields seemed as if they had been made by Robinson Crusoe: there is nothing in America more rough and aukward. We passed several cottages very delightfully situated, and without a single exception covered with grapes. The gradual approach to them had something which spoke both to the imagination and the ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... written upon his brow, nor tied upon his sleeve. He had none of the pale fervor of precocity, or the shyness of premature conceit. He was absorbed in childish things, loved play, shirked his studies, dreamed of a life on the ocean wave, and regarded "Robinson Crusoe" and "Sinbad the Sailor" as the end of all literary things. The savagery of boyhood he lacked. He was fond of playing battle, but could not bear to see his schoolfellows publicly thrashed, according to the amiable custom of that day. Otherwise he was all that a mother ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... of his work one day,—his second day of concealment, it was,—he had a little experience that produced quite as disturbing a sensation in him as Robinson Crusoe felt when he came across the footprints. While he was busy in front of his mirror, in the afternoon, he heard steps on the stairs outside. He waited for them, as usual, to pass his door and go on, as happened when lodgers went in and out. But these steps halted at his ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... sure we eagerly looked out for the ship, but she was nowhere to be seen. 'Then, lads,' exclaimed the mate, in a cheerful voice, 'what we have now to do is to steer for the island I have been telling Mr Dicey about. No fear as to getting there, and we may live like Robinson Crusoe, the lords of all we survey, till some craft comes by to take us off, and then we can go or not as we have a mind to do.' 'Hurra for Trinidada,' shouted the men, inquiring of the mate what sort of a place it was. As the wind was ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... to Americans; but the incidents of his subsequent career have been veiled in obscurity, which is dissipated by this biography. A book like this, narrating the actions of such a man, ought to meet with an extensive sale, and become as popular as Robinson Crusoe in fiction, or Weems's Life of Marion and Washington, and similar books, in fact. It contains 400 pages, has a handsome portrait and medallion likeness of Jones, and is illustrated with numerous original wood engravings ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... ROBINSON CRUSOE at that place. Only this morning (May twenty-first, Eighteen hundred and fifty), came my lady's nephew, Mr. Franklin Blake, and held a short ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... great-grandson of the man who has given so much to all ages of Englishmen,—De Foe,—was made happy with a relief of L2 a month. Dickens was (as might have been expected) amongst the most liberal subscribers to the little fund. If everybody who has derived delight from the perusal of "Robinson Crusoe" had but contributed a single farthing to his descendant, that descendant would become a wealthy man. When De Foe was asked what he knew of his great ancestor's writings, he answered (though doubtless without any intentional comment on his ancestor's reputation) ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... Robinson Crusoe redivivus with modern settings and a very pretty love story added. The hero and heroine are the only survivors of a wreck, and have many thrilling adventures on ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... Navarre's aspect appeared strange and forbidding, and savage as the locality in which he lived. The fact was, that, like Robinson Crusoe, he was frequently arrayed in a suit of skins of which he had been the architect, on a fantastic pattern, that his ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... we read of exist here. The life of the owners or managers is a very Robinson Crusoe kind of existence. Miles probably from any rail, and miles also from their nearest neighbours, the solitude is extreme. Women delight them not, for there are none. An occasional newspaper finds its way there, but complete ignorance of the affairs ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... single letter tells you as much as a whole chapter; in which if you find one little fact, and know what it really means, it makes you certain that a thousand other great facts have happened. You may be astonished: but you cannot deny your own eyes, and your own common sense. You feel like Robinson Crusoe when, walking along the shore of his desert island, he saw for the first time the print of a man's foot in the sand. How it could have got there without a miracle he could not dream. But there it was. One footprint was as good as the footprints of a whole army would have ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... should agitate several successive generations of men, even though far below the higher efforts of human creative art—as, for example, the "De Imitatione Christi," or "The Pilgrim's Progress," or" Robinson Crusoe," or "The Vicar of Wakefield,"—was worth any conceivable amount of attainments when rated as an evidence of anything that could justly denominate a man "admirable." One felicitous ballad of forty lines might have enthroned Crichton as really admirable, whilst ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... imagination in the young. Indeed there may be two words to that. It is, in some ways, but a pedestrian fancy that the child exhibits. It is the grown people who make the nursery stories; all the children do, is jealously to preserve the text. One out of a dozen reasons why ROBINSON CRUSOE should be so popular with youth, is that it hits their level in this matter to a nicety; Crusoe was always at makeshifts and had, in so many words, to PLAY at a great variety of professions; and then the book is all about tools, and there is nothing that delights a ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unconsciously and aimlessly on the world. They are in themselves generally useless, like footprints; and yet almost any sign of man's passage might, under certain conditions, interest a man. A footprint could fill Robinson Crusoe with emotion, the devastation wrought by an army's march might prove many things to a historian, and even the disorder in which a room is casually left may express very vividly ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... the Mountaineer of the Atlas," published by Putnam, promises to be scarcely less popular than his "Kaloolah." The Evening Post says of it: "Kaloolah was a sprightly narrative of the wanderings of a Yankee, who seemed to combine in his person the characteristics of Robinson Crusoe with those of Baron Munchausen; but the Berber professes to be nothing more than a novel; or, as the author says in his preface, his principal object has been to tell an agreeable story in an agreeable way. In doing so, however, an eye has been had to the illustration of Moorish ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... said that many an unlucky urchin is induced to run away from his family and betake himself to a seafaring life from reading the history of Robinson Crusoe; and I suspect that, in like manner, many of those worthy gentlemen who are given to haunt the sides of pastoral streams with angle-rods in hand may trace the origin of their passion to the seductive pages of ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... say that I have," returned Dick, with a mighty self-satisfied air, as he looked around his parlour, already quite gay with the Robinson Crusoe pattern. "I've done more, too, than you can see," he added, striking his hand on the ladder of Spelling, which he had placed by the wall; "I've learned every sentence in this ladder as perfectly as any man can learn them, and ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... unbounded. Partly from the subject, partly from the shortness, partly from the signal truth and force of the poem, it rose rapidly to fame. It became "everybody's Grave." The poem was copied into all school collections. It lay along with 'Robinson Crusoe' and Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress', in the windows of cottages, and on the tables of wayside inns—achieving thus what Coleridge predicated over that well-thumbed copy of 'Thomson's Seasons', in the Welsh ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... keen sense of humour, though in other respects he was simple and unpretending. He was a great reader of old-fashioned novels, which indeed in those days were the only works of the kind to be met with. The Arabian Nights, Robinson crusoe, The Mysteries of Udolpho, and such like, were his favourites, and gave a healthy filip to his imagination. He had also a keen relish for music, and used to whistle melodies and overtures as he went along with his work. He acquired a fair skill in violin playing. ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... knowledge. An Eton boy's knowledge of the St. Lawrence, Mississippi, Missouri, Orellana, &c. will be, generally, found in exact proportion to his knowledge of the Ilissus, Hebrus, Orontes, &c.; inasmuch as modern travels and voyages are more entertaining and fascinating than Cellarius; or Robinson Crusoe, Dampier, and Captain Cook, than the Periegesis. Compare the lads themselves from Eton and Harrow, &c. with the alumni of the New-Broom Institution, and not the lists of school-lessons; and be ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... pretty good-sized piece of dead-wood on 'em. Th' way things are goin', we may have a rumpus a'most any time, I s'pose; and if it does come to a rumpus, they'll be a badly struck lot when we open on 'em. Robinson Crusoe cleaned out a whole outfit of Indians with just an old flint-lock musket; and I should say that we'd simply paralyze this crowd when we all get goin' at once with our revolvers an' Winchesters. Isn't that ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... opinion of the world, with which it is necessary that every man of spirit should keep upon equal terms, I, for my part, would have always been contented with the humblest portion. Now here, to all intents and purposes, one was as far removed from the world as in the wilds of Siberia, or in Robinson Crusoe's Island. And I reasoned with myself thus:—'Now you are caught, there is no use in repining: make the best of your situation, and get all the pleasure you can out of it. There are a thousand opportunities ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... times, swept the air like clouds. And then there was the intense excitement of occasionally bringing down a deer, and even of shooting a ferocious grizzly bear or wolf or catamount. The romance of the sea creates a Robinson Crusoe. The still greater romance of the forest creates a Kit Carson. It often makes even an old man's blood thrill in his veins, to contemplate the wild and wondrous adventures, which this majestic continent opened to the pioneers of ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... cap from its peg, and, in as ill humour as can well be imagined, went out to search for his ball. He took what revenge he could on his formidable uncle, while amusing himself that afternoon by looking over his "Robinson Crusoe." Johnny was fond of his pencil, though he had never learned to draw; and the margins of his books were often adorned with grim heads or odd figures by his hand. There was a picture in "Robinson Crusoe" representing a party of cannibals, as hideous as fancy could represent ...
— False Friends, and The Sailor's Resolve • Unknown
... group of figures which stand out as distinctly as those which were drawn more than a century later by the hand of Thackeray, our greatest painter of manners. De Foe had not yet published the first of the great modern novels of incident and adventure in 'Robinson Crusoe,' and Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett were unborn or unknown, when Addison was sketching Sir Roger de Coverley and Will Honeycomb, and filling in the background with charming studies of life in London and in the country. The world has instinctively selected ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... author of "Robinson Crusoe," "the observations on this most preposterous piece of Church work are so many, they cannot come into the compass of this paper; but if the money raised here be employed to re-edify this chapel, I would have it, as ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... fine female Robinson Crusoe," laughed Tom. "This is real 'roughing it.' I expect all you girls will weaken ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... William, I have been shipwrecked; but I never heard of Robinson Crusoe. So many have been wrecked and undergone great hardships, and so many more have never lived to tell what they have suffered, that it's not very likely that I should have known that one man you speak of, ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... few days I was quietly established in my new quarters; my books all arranged, my writing desk placed by a window looking out into the field; and I felt as snug as Robinson Crusoe, when he had finished his bower. For several days I enjoyed all the novelty of change and the charms which grace a new lodgings before one has found out their defects. I rambled about the fields where I fancied Goldsmith had rambled. I explored merry Islington; ate my solitary ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... not see what reason or excuse Talfourd could have for not publishing the critical paper on De Foe's Secondary Novels, which Lamb contributed to Walter Wilson's Life of De Foe. The author of "Robinson Crusoe" was a great favorite with Lamb, and his criticism of "Colonel Jack," "Moll Flanders," etc., was written con amore, and is, perhaps, the very best thing ever said about those remarkable works. Those who have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... Consulate] Venezuela Marcus Island (Minami-tori-shima) Japan Mariana Islands Guam; Northern Mariana Islands Marion Island South Africa Marmara, Sea of Atlantic Ocean Marquesas Islands French Polynesia (Iles Marquises) Marseille [US Consulate General] France Martin Vaz, Ilhas Brazil Mas a Tierra Chile (Robinson Crusoe Island) Mascarene Islands Mauritius; Reunion Maseru [US Embassy] Lesotho Matamoros [US Consulate] Mexico Mazatlan [US Consulate] Mexico Mbabane [US Embassy] Swaziland McDonald Islands Heard Island and McDonald Islands Medan [US Consulate] Indonesia Mediterranean Sea Atlantic Ocean Melbourne [US Consulate ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... in all cases only by God's permission, the latter is responsible for all the former's wrongdoing. The principal, and not the agent, must bear the guilt. And this suggests a curious problem. Readers of "Robinson Crusoe" will remember that when Man Friday was undergoing a course of theological instruction, he puzzled his master by asking why God did not convert the Devil. To his unsophisticated mind it was plain that the conversion of the Devil would annihilate sin. Robinson Crusoe changed the subject to avoid ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... sugar savages here, roasting and eating some poor traveller like me," she said, thinking of Robinson Crusoe and ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... the entirely self-centred man—the Robinson Crusoe of a desert island of egoism—is unhappy. At least if he is not he belongs to a low intellectual and moral type: the proof being that all development above the level of the oyster and the slug has involved more or less surrender of the immediate claims of "number ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... which employment she was soon assisted by Willie, who took the matter in hand in a very masterly manner, showing his sister what were and what were not "Sunday books" with the air of a person entirely at home in the business. Robinson Crusoe and the many-volumed Peter Parley were put by without hesitation; there was, however, a short demurring over a North American Review, because Willie said he was sure his father read something one Sunday out of one of them, while Susan averred that he did not commonly read in it, and only read ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and Lightwood drops into his old place over against Lady Tippins, she can be fended off no longer. 'Long banished Robinson Crusoe,' says the charmer, exchanging salutations, 'how did you ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... a bumper, and began in a solemn matter-of-fact way, the following speech: "You are a great traveller in our eyes; for none of us ever went further than Syrmium. The greatest traveller of your country that we know of was that wonderful navigator, Robinson Crusoe, of York, who, poor man, met with many and great difficulties, but at length, by the blessing of God, was restored to his native country, his family, and his friends. We trust that the Almighty will guard over you, and that you ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... those stories of bloodshed and violence. Stevenson wrote that boys read for some element of the brute instinct in them. His two wonderful books Treasure Island and Kidnapped are full of fight and the killing of men. Robinson Crusoe is the only great boy's book I ever read that did not owe its charm to fighting. But still did not old Crusoe fight to live on his lonely island? And this wonderful tale is full of hunting, and has at the ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... our new and keener insight into literature is to prove to us how indifferently great authors understood their own masterpieces. Shakespeare, we are told, knew comparatively little about "Hamlet," and he is to be congratulated on his limitations. Defoe would hardly recognize "Robinson Crusoe" as "a picture of civilization," having innocently supposed it to be quite the reverse; and he would be as amazed as we are to learn from Mr. Frederic Harrison that his book contains "more psychology, more political economy, and more anthropology than are to ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... Shorty, Robinson Crusoe was a tenement-dweller, and Jonah, weekending in the whale, had a perfectly uproarious time; but Shorty thrives on a solitude that is too vast for imagining. He would not trade jobs with the most potted ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... bands would be,—could be heard at a distance; whilst overhead the soft cooing of the wild pigeons, and the hoarse croak of the ka-ka or native parrot, made up the music of the birds' orchestra. Ah, how delicious it all was,—the Robinson Crusoe feel of the whole thing; the heavenly air, the fluttering leaves, the birds' chirrups and whistle, and the foreground of ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... "let us by way of amusement draw plans of a castle in Spain. Let us forget all the houses that ever were built and fancy ourselves, not Adam and Eve, with the responsibility of setting the housekeeping pace for the rest of the human family nor Robinson Crusoe, whose domestic arrangements were somewhat handicapped, but a wise pair of semi-Bourbons, at the end of the 19th century, who forget nothing old but are willing to learn and adopt anything new, provided ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... discoveries that signalized the first part of the nineteenth century. He mused over the glory of the Mungo Parks, the Bruces, the Caillies, the Levaillants, and to some extent, I verily believe, of Selkirk (Robinson Crusoe), whom he considered in no wise inferior to the rest. How many a well-employed hour he passed with that hero on his isle of Juan Fernandez! Often he criticised the ideas of the shipwrecked sailor, and sometimes discussed ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... other men that we can predicate justice or injustice. One's conduct may result in good or evil to himself and so be wise or unwise, but assuming, what probably is never the fact, that it affects only himself, in no way affects any other, his conduct is neither just nor unjust. Robinson Crusoe, until the arrival of the man Friday, had no occasion to ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... visibly annoyed by this delay, resigned herself to her fate, and watched the rain falling in torrents. O Robinson Crusoe, how I envied you, at that moment, your famous goat-skin umbrella! how gracefully would I have offered its shelter to this beauty as far as Pont de l'Arche, for she was going to Pont de l'Arche, right into the lion's mouth. Time passed. The vehicle would not return until the next ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... that a smaller city like Boston would not tolerate. In any case, and this is the point of these observations, even in the most casual relations of life, people do not behave in the presence of others as if they were living alone like Robinson Crusoe, each on his individual island. The very fact of their consciousness of each other tends to maintain and enforce a great body of convention and usage which otherwise falls into abeyance and is forgotten. Collective behavior, then, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... understand the natives, sympathize with the missionaries, talk with profound theorists, recite well in Greek or mathematics, conduct an advanced class in geometry, and make no end of fun for little children." He had had the training of a missionary station in a Robinson Crusoe-like variety of functions. A knight-errant to the core, the atmosphere of Williams under Hopkins gave him his consecration. His comrades recognized him as an intellectual leader, essentially religious but often startlingly unconventional, "under great terrestrial headway," "the most ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... appear to be huge balks of timber, rising up into space. These timbers are interspersed with rubber pipes for lighting purposes. Leaning against the wall is a dilapidated structure, very much like a huge Robinson Crusoe umbrella out of repair, which, on closer inspection, proves to be the hovel used in "King Lear." Close to it is affixed a placard giving directions how to manipulate the celebrated Lyceum thunder. A little beyond is a narrow flight of stone steps leading to Mr. Craven's ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... I unhappy Robinson Crusoe, having suffered shipwreck, was driven on this desolate island, which I named the Desolate Island of Despair, my companions being swallowed up in the tempestous ocean. The next day I spent in consideration ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... impossible for me to move in an erect position, but I crawled about my den for exercise. One day I hit my head against something, and found it was a gimlet. My uncle had left it sticking there when he made the trap-door. I was as rejoiced as Robinson Crusoe could have been at finding such a treasure. It put a lucky thought into my head. I said to myself, "Now I will have some light. Now I will see my children." I did not dare to begin my work during the daytime, for fear of attracting ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... railway train, worked at the speed of the Great Western Express, accomplishes easily a thousand miles in twenty-four hours; consequently in two hundred and forty days or eight months it would run into the moon with its buffers, and break up the quarters of that Robinson Crusoe who (and without any Friday) is the only policeman that parades that little pensive appendage or tender to our fuming engine of an earth. But the English law—oh frightful reader, don't even think of such a question as its relation in ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey |
