"Robinson Crusoe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the ubiquitous white man leaves its marks on all the fair places of the Earth, and scores thereon an even more gigantic track than that which affrighted Robinson Crusoe in his solitude. It crushes down the forests, beats out roads, strides across the rivers, kicks down native institutions, and generally tramples on the growths of nature, and the works of primitive man, reducing all things to that dead ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... desks 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 Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... spirits, these are what they seek alike in their romantic enterprises and their unromantic dissipations. When they are taken in some pinch closer than the common, they cry, 'Catch me here again!' and sure enough you catch them there again—perhaps before the week is out. It is as old as Robinson Crusoe; as old as man. Our race has not been strained for all these ages through that sieve of dangers that we call Natural Selection, to sit down with patience in the tedium of safety; the voices of its fathers call it forth. Already in our society as it exists, the bourgeois is ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... when they slowly learned by vague and uncertain tidings that the intrepid girl who had been used to break their vicious horses for them was reigning in sovereignty over the wandering tribes of Western Asia! I know that her name was made almost as familiar to me in my childhood as the name of Robinson Crusoe—both were associated with the spirit of adventure; but whilst the imagined life of the cast-away mariner never failed to seem glaringly real, the true story of the Englishwoman ruling over Arabs always sounded to me like fable. I never had heard, nor indeed, I ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... idealist and poet whose inspiration has kindled so many souls; as the romancer who has given an atmosphere to the hard outlines of our stern New England; as that unique individual, half college-graduate and half Algonquin, the Robinson Crusoe of Walden Pond, who carried out a school-boy whim to its full proportions, and told the story of Nature in undress as only one who had hidden in her bedroom could have told it. I need not lengthen the catalogue ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... 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
... may usually have been stored, like that of Robinson Crusoe, in baskets;[27] for basket-making was a peculiarly British industry, and Posidonius found "British baskets" in use on the Continent. But probably it was also hoarded—again in Crusoe fashion—in the large ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... laughing, "and if I don't give our war whoop you may be sure this is not me—I am still on the Robinson ranch—there, that was an unpremeditated pun; I mean the old Robinson Crusoe and I forgot that he was great-grandfather to the present ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... party then set to work to prepare for their Robinson Crusoe life, while the Opal stood away to the northward. Tents were set up, a hut for the blacksmith's forge, and another for the carpenter close to the beach, before which a coral reef made a secure harbour for the ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... exclaimed Grace, pointing to a man clothed in goatskins, the hair outside. "Is that Robinson Crusoe?" ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... river. And he was always ready to lead a huckleberry-party or a search for chestnuts or grapes. Talking, one day, of a public discourse, Henry remarked, that whatever succeeded with the audience was bad. I said, "Who would not like to write something which all can read, like 'Robinson Crusoe'? and who does not see with regret that his page is not solid with a right materialistic treatment, which delights everybody?" Henry objected, of course, and vaunted the better lectures which reached only a few persons. But, at supper, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... narrative has been dug out is practically unknown to the general reader, yet good judges have perceived its merit, and it has been named (with flattering wit) 'The Romance of Stone and Lime' and 'The Robinson Crusoe of Civil Engineering.' The tower was but four years in the building; it took Robert Stevenson, in the midst of his many avocations, no less than fourteen to prepare the Account. The title-page is a solid piece of literature of upwards of a hundred words; the table of contents ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... believe he had been practically lifeless since the year 1753. When he returned he had on a hairy cap, with large covers for the ears, and a big flap behind that fell to below his collar, and was almost as long as his hair. He wanted but a couple of muskets and an umbrella to closely resemble Robinson Crusoe, as he is made to figure in most of the cuts I have seen. He produced a pipe of the Dutch pattern, with a bowl carved into a death's head, and great enough to hold a cake of tobacco. The skull might have been a child's for size, and though it was dyed with tobacco juice and the top blackened, ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... boulevard called the Avenue Louise. In the middle of this Bois de la Cambre there is a lake with an island, on which stands a little coffee-house, the Chalet Robinson; so called, perhaps, after Robinson Crusoe, who lived on an island. Belgian families often go there to spend the summer afternoons. There are lots of pigeons on the island, so tame that they run about on the grass, and eat out of the children's hands, while the fathers and mothers sit ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Belgium • George W. T. Omond
... 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 it ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... all read the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, and we have all pitied the man, alone on a desert island, alone without a friend, without a single companion, never hearing any voice but his own, being able to exchange thoughts with no one, ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... 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 ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... Like Robinson Crusoe cast on a desert isle, the desperate people fought their fate. Traps were set for the foxes, snares for the birds, and scouts kept tramping from end to end of the island for sight of a sail. Racked with despair and ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... should mutiny, the prisoners submitted, and marched in double file from the hut back towards Ramsay's—Horse-Shoe, with Captain Peter's bridle dangling over his arm, and his gallant young auxiliary Andrew, laden with double the burden of Robinson Crusoe (having all the fire-arms packed upon his shoulders), bringing up the rear. In this order victors and vanquished returned ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... may be inflated for a little space; but all the while the public is slowly making up its mind; and the judgment of the main body is as trustworthy as it is enduring. 'Robinson Crusoe' and 'Pilgrim's Progress' hold their own generation after generation, altho the cultivated class did not discover their merits until long after the plain people had taken them to heart. Cervantes and Shakspere were widely popular from the start; and appreciative criticism limped lamely after ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... contributed to the Spectator are like enough to outlive the system of government by party, and perhaps even the whole system of representative government. Sir Roger de Coverley will not be forgotten until men forget Parson Adams and Robinson Crusoe and Gil Blas, and for that matter, Sir John ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... We may picture him as a humid duck-legged little man, most terribly homesick, most tremendously lonely, most distressingly alien. We may go further and picture him as a sort of combination of Job with his afflictions, Robinson Crusoe with no man Friday to cheer him in his solitude, and Peter the Hermit with no dream of a crusade to uplift him. In these four years his hair had turned almost white, yet he was ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... art of navigation became known, there have been castaways in romance and reality without number. De Foe's celebrated Robinson Crusoe stands first, but not alone among the shipwrecked mariners of truth and fiction. How many countless thousands have suffered shipwreck and disaster at sea, whose wild narratives have never been recorded, will ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... the competition with, other writers; he lacks the stimulus and comfort of sympathetic companionship; he lacks an audience to spur him on, and a market to work for; lacks labor-saving conventions, training, and an environment that heartens him instead of merely tolerating him. Like Robinson Crusoe, he must make his tools before he can use them. A meagre result may therefore be ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... Looking-Glass. Andersen's Fairy Tales. Arabian Nights. Black Beauty. Child's History of England. Grimm's Fairy Tales. Gulliver's Travels. Helen's Babies. Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare. Mother Goose, Complete. Palmer Cox's Fairy Book. Peck's Uncle Ike and the Red-Headed Boy. Pilgrim's Progress. Robinson Crusoe. Swiss Family Robinson. Tales from Scott for Young People. Tom Brown's ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of the manufactories of steel, of arms, of powder, of cloth, of machines, and of instruments of every kind which our army had to prepare for the occasion. If, during our infancy, the expedients which Robinson Crusoe practised in order to escape from the romantic dangers which he had incessantly to encounter, excite our interest in a lively degree, how, in mature age, could we regard with indifference a handful of Frenchmen thrown upon the inhospitable shores ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... sport, thanks to you, sir," Jim said, turning to the Hermit, who stood looking on at the preparations, a benevolent person, "something between Father Christmas and Robinson Crusoe," as Norah whispered to Harry. "We certainly wouldn't have got on half as well if we'd stayed ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... or more of the simple, every-day classics that the school-boy and-girl are supposed to have read. They had never heard of "David Copperfield" or of Dickens. Nor had they ever heard of "Gulliver's Travels," nor of "The Vicar of Wakefield." They had heard the name "Robinson Crusoe," but they did not know it was the name of an entrancing romance. "Little Women," "John Halifax, Gentleman," "The Cloister and the Hearth," "Les Miserables," were also unknown, unheard-of literary treasures. ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... lightly, "and I'm not going to pretend that I'm not proud of it. I am, and having done that, I don't think Robinson Crusoe was so very wonderful after all! I think that I could have managed as well as he did on his desert island. But here's a fanfare on my own trumpet! And I've work yet to do, and I must do it before my doll's house ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... and filled it with water. After the cat had had his milk, I could think of nothing else to do, and I sat down to get warm. The quiet was delightful, and the ticking clock was the most pleasant of companions. I got 'Robinson Crusoe' and tried to read, but his life on the island seemed dull compared with ours. Presently, as I looked with satisfaction about our comfortable sitting-room, it flashed upon me that if Mr. Shimerda's soul were lingering about in this world at all, it would be here, in our house, which ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... dog, so called because he had come into the family on a Monday when Walter had been reading Robinson Crusoe. He really belonged to Jem but was much attached to Walter also. He was lying beside Walter now with nose snuggled against his arm, thumping his tail rapturously whenever Walter gave him an absent pat. Monday was not a collie or a setter or a hound ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... degree of belief, which we cannot extend to those of an opposite character. The evidence from this source is, however, exceedingly imperfect, since many narratives, almost entirely fictitious, appear so natural, as to impose upon the reader with all the strength of unvarnished truth. Robinson Crusoe has deceived thousands, and Damberger's Travels in Africa were not suspected to be otherwise than true, for a considerable time after their publication; but they were at length proved to be a complete fabrication. Accordingly, in judging ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... something of Robinson Crusoe in my nature, for I loved the isolation of this spot immensely. It wasn't an island, but it was all but an island. Towards the land, two jutting promontories of rock denied access to anything not a goat; the sea in front; an impenetrable pine wood to the rear: ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... me pityingly, and I felt exactly like Robinson Crusoe before he knew there was going to be a Friday; but, like him, I kept a stiff upper lip. I am happy to say I even laughed. "Well, that's very funny," said I, as if being pigeon-holed by Sir Lionel and marooned by the ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... found, as so many dismal castaways have found, that there is a mystic companionship in that weed which has come out of the vegetable world, as the dog from among the animals, to make fellowship with man. Rudd and his pipe were Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday on the desert island of loneliness. They stared out ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... as Robinson Crusoe felt when he met Friday. Here was a fellow human being in this desert place. He could almost have embraced Psmith. The very sound of the name Lower Benford was heartening. His dislike for his new school was not diminished, but now he felt that life there might at least ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... "The Berber, or 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 ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... a trader, a soldier, a merchant, a secretary, a factory manager, a commissioner's accountant, an envoy, and an author of several indifferent books, before he wrote his masterpiece, "Robinson Crusoe." ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Patty, "but what can we do? We're just like Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday, except that we haven't ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... them he had not. One or two were old friends; but not so "Dare Devil Dick," and "The Pirates of Pigeon Cove" (which he found hidden in an obscure corner behind a loose board). Side by side stood "The Lady of the Lake," "Treasure Island," and "David Copperfield"; and coverless and dogeared lay "Robinson Crusoe," "The Arabian Nights," and "Grimm's Fairy Tales." There were more, many more, and David devoured them all with eager eyes. The good in them he absorbed as he absorbed the sunshine; the evil he cast aside unconsciously—it rolled off, indeed, like the proverbial water ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... matters comparatively well known 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 of naval scenes ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... little sympathy that day in his reading. Indeed, he could not but notice that something unusual had happened to the "gov'nor," and that being so, not even the adventures of Christian or the unexplored marvels of Robinson Crusoe could satisfy him. He polished up the furniture half a dozen times, and watched Reginald's eye like a dog, ready to catch the first sign of a want or a question. Presently he could stand it no longer, and said,—"Say, ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... were sheets of drawing-board, and glasses containing pulverized colors. There was also a bookcase; on the shelves were volumes of Vertuch's "Orbis pictus," the "Portefeuille des enfants," the "History of Robinson Crusoe," and several numbers of a fashion magazine, the "Album des salons," the illustrations of which lay scattered about ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... a coil of wire, and a dozen lamps. Lermontoff now changed his working methods. He began each night as soon as he had finished dinner, and worked till nearly morning, sleeping all day except when interrupted by the gaoler. Jack, following the example of Robinson Crusoe, attempted to tie knots on the tail of time by cutting notches with his knife on the leg of the table, but most days he forgot to perform this operation, and so his wooden almanac fell hopelessly out of gear. He estimated that he had been a little more ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... chaste; refined; originally and chiefly used of the best Greek and Roman writers, but also applied to the best modern authors, or their works." "Classic, n. A work of acknowledged excellence and authority." In this sense of the word, "Robinson Crusoe" is a classic; the "Pilgrim's Progress" is a classic; every piece of literature which is customarily recommended as a safe pattern for young writers to form their style upon ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... its attractive smile. "Say, aren't we going to be the immaculate little lads? I can't think of a single bad habit we can acquire in this place. No smokes, no drinks, few if any eats—and not a chorister in sight. Let's organize the Robinson Crusoe ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... down flat on its side whenever I touched it with my foot. It remained a distinguishing ornament of my hut, useful as a guide to any one who wanted to know where I lived, but no good for any other purpose. In this way I gradually became possessed of a kind of Robinson Crusoe outfit ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... injustice in being known as the author of but one book. Robinson Crusoe was not Defoe's only masterpiece, nor did Bunyan confine his best powers to Pilgrim's Progress. Not one person in ten of those who read Lorna Doone is aware that several of Blackmore's other novels are almost equally charming. Such, too, has been the fate of Johanna Spyri, the Swiss authoress, ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... read Mother 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 the Garden of Eden was a beautiful myth. I didn't know that R. L. S. stood for Robert ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... A sort of 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 Price • Francis Lynde
... than to live in his former position as a gran senor without anything to eat, and subjected to the persecution of his creditors. "It is time that you come home! What are you doing there? Are you going to spend the rest of your life like a Robinson Crusoe, in that pirate's tower?" He could live modestly; living is cheap in Majorca. Besides, he could solicit an office from the Government. With his name and pedigree it would not be difficult to accomplish ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... didn't get very much for the place, from sale or rent, you'd have something that was sure. A strong, capable man like you could find something to turn your hand to. Then you could board in some respectable family, and not have to live like Robinson Crusoe. I've thought it over since we talked last, and if I was you I'd sell ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... did not like Dissenters, praises the "invention, imagination, and conduct of the story," and knew no other book he wished longer except "Robinson Crusoe" and "Don Quixote." Well, Dr. Johnson would not have given a farthing for me, as I am quite contented with the present length of these masterpieces. What books do you wish longer? I wish Homer had written a continuation of the Odyssey, and told us what Odysseus did among the far-off ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... in check. Charles V., Philip II., Louis XIV. attacked them with only temporary success: they continued to terrorise the trade of the Mediterranean, to seize trading-ships, to pillage the shores of Spain and Italy, and to carry off thousands of Christians into a cruel slavery; Robinson Crusoe, it may be recalled, was one of their victims. The powers at Vienna endeavoured to concert action against them in 1815. They were attacked by a British fleet in 1816, and by a combined British and French fleet in 1819. But all such temporary measures were ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... needless hundred-weight on his back: he chose to walk in baskets instead of in shoes. And if, in consequence of his own perversity, he did his work badly, I should have refused to recognize it as anything but bad work. It was quite different with Robinson Crusoe, who made his dwelling and his furniture for himself, because there was no one else to make them for him. I dare say his cave was anything but exactly square; and his chairs and table were cumbrous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... the presidency of the United States! The books which he saw were few, but a little later he laid hands upon them all and read and re-read them till he must have absorbed all their strong juice into his own nature. Nicolay and Hay give the list: The Bible; "Aesop's Fables;" "Robinson Crusoe;" "The Pilgrim's Progress;" a history of the United States; Weems's "Washington." He was doubtless much older when he devoured the Revised Statutes of Indiana in the office of the town constable. Dr. Holland adds Lives of Henry Clay and of Franklin (probably the ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... binding, the cut or uncut leaves, the presence or the absence of the gilding—yet the department in literature holds more or less connection with this outward sign. He who has a passion for old editions of the classics in vellum bindings—Stephenses or Aldines—will not be put off with a copy of Robinson Crusoe or the Ready Reckoner, bound to match and range with the contents of his shelves. Those who so vehemently affect some external peculiarity are the eccentric exceptions; yet even they have some consideration for the contents of a book as well as for ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... know law. He didn't want to be a doctor, because you have to know medicine. He didn't want to be a business-man, because you have to know business; and he didn't want to be a school-teacher, because he had seen too many of them. As far as he had any choice, it lay between being Robinson Crusoe and being the Prince of Wales. His father refused him both and put him ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... Fronting and outside the village stands a wall-less roof of flat matting, the palaver-house. The settlement is surrounded by a palisade of fronds stripped from the bamboo-palm and strengthened by posts; the latter put forth green shoots as soon as stuck in the ground, and recall memories of Robinson Crusoe. The general entrance has a threshold two to two and a half feet high. The tenements are simple as birds' nests, primitive as the Highlander's mud-cabin and shieling of wattle and heather. The outer walls are of bamboo-palm fronds, the partitions are ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... Daniel Boone was left entirely alone. Here he was a sort of Robinson Crusoe in the wilderness—with this difference, that Robinson was shipwrecked, and had no choice; while Boone chose the wilderness as his home. He was now completely the "man of the woods"—far away, hundreds of miles from any white settlement. ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... definition. "That which lifts the spirit above the earth, which draws the soul out of itself with indescribable longings, is," he says, "poetry in kind, and generally fit to become so in name, by 'being married to immortal verse.'"[80] If it is true that Pilgrim's Progress and Robinson Crusoe possess the "essence and the power of poetry" and require only the addition of verse to become absolutely so,[81] then the musical expression is only a factitious ornament, to be added or removed at the caprice of the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... 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 ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... integrity. For the deception in the case of the correspondent who invents "news" is of the same quality as the lack of sincerity in a poem or in a prose fiction; there is a moral and probably a mental defect in both. The story of Robinson Crusoe is a very good illustration of veracity in fiction. It is effective because it has the simple air of truth; it is an illusion that satisfies; it is possible; it is good art: but it has no moral deception in it. In fact, looked at as literature, we can ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... sick men were left with a small garrison under an Egyptian officer. The column resumed their journey. On the 29th they reached Aigaila, and here, with feelings of astonishment scarcely less than Robinson Crusoe experienced at seeing the footprint in the sand, they came upon the Khalifa's abandoned camp. A wide space had been cleared of bush, and the trees, stripped of their smaller branches, presented an uncanny appearance. ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... An fowk 'at's detarmined to do soa, Aw'd mak 'em goa live bi thersen, Aght o'th' world,—like a Robinson Crusoe. ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... not only made a part of all Crusoe's experience, but they react on it imaginatively; they suggest changes; they hold their breath or try to assist him when he is in danger. Defoe's genius in making the reader a partner in Robinson Crusoe's adventures has not yet received sufficient appreciation. The author could never have secured such a triumph if he had not compelled readers to take an ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... leading past the unornamental bases of what 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
... Robinson Crusoe could not have been more startled at the footprint in the sand than we were at this unwelcome discovery. My first impulse was to make as rapid a retreat as possible, and bend our steps in some other direction; but our curiosity ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... Barty—as simple as Lemuel Gulliver and the good Robinson Crusoe—and cultivate a fondness for words of one syllable, and if that doesn't do we'll ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... a more than Indian adroitness in Nat Turner to have escaped capture any longer. The cave, the arms, the provisions were found; and lying among them the notched stick of this miserable Robinson Crusoe, marked with five weary weeks and six days. But the man was gone. For ten days more he concealed himself among the wheat-stacks on Mr. Francis's plantation, and during this time was reduced almost to despair. Once he decided to surrender himself, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... whose simple adventures the romance of Robinson Crusoe was soon afterwards founded, will be more particularly mentioned in a subsequent ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... somewhere in the neighbourhood. While I was still deliberating in which direction to go, my eye suddenly fell on a low shanty near a field sown with peas. I went up to the shanty, glanced under the thatched roof, and saw an old man so infirm that he reminded me at once of the dying goat Robinson Crusoe found in some cave on his island. The old man was squatting on his heels, his little dim eyes half-closed, while hurriedly, but carefully, like a hare (the poor fellow had not a single tooth), he munched a dry, hard pea, incessantly rolling it from side to side. ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... "History," referring mostly to the events of the times. Towards the end of his career, he happily turned his talent for disguises and fictions into a quieter and more profitable direction. How many thousands remember him as the author of "Robinson Crusoe" who never heard a word about his jousts and conflicts, his animosities ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... the actual discomforts themselves that are hard to bear. Who would mind roughing it a bit if that were all it meant? What cared Robinson Crusoe for a patch on his trousers? Did he wear trousers? I forget; or did he go about as he does in the pantomimes? What did it matter to him if his toes did stick out of his boots? and what if his umbrella was a cotton one, so long as it kept the rain off? His shabbiness did not trouble him; there ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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 • Captain Marryat
... Division of labor has taken place between them, they are interdependent, correlated with one another, subject therefore to the laws of the whole community or organism. There are many respects in which it is impossible to compare Robinson Crusoe with a workman in a huge watch factory; ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... like that old stone fire-box, anyhow?" Ham questioned. "I haven't heard a fellow say a word about it yet. That big black pot hanging on that crane makes me happy all over. Why, we have Robinson Crusoe and that last polar expedition beaten a city block. I never do see a pot hanging over the fire like that but I think of some of the delicious stews that Jim Parker made for us the Christmas vacation we spent with him out on his ranch ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... Robinson Crusoe's footprint in the sand did not startle him more than that strange lonely cry startled me. Indeed, as between the two of us, I had rather the worse of it: for Crusoe, at least, knew that he was dealing with a reality, while ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... 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 honest Izaak Walton. I recollect studying his Complete Angler several years since in company ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... clearing to one side of the hut, a man, who might very well have passed for a modern edition of Robinson Crusoe, so far as his attire was concerned, was busily skinning an antelope which hung from a pole suspended from two trees. His back was turned towards them, and so swift and silent had been their approach that he did not hear the soft whirring of the propellers until they were within ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... the term is still used throughout Moslem lands; but in Barbary where it is pronounced "Moolee" Europeans have converted it to "Muley" as if it had some connection with the mule. Even in Robinson Crusoe we find "muly" or "Moly Ismael" (chaps. ii.); and we hear the high-sounding name Maul-i-Idrs, the patron saint of the Sunset Land, debased ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... ever put such books into her hands: you certainly overrate her merit.'—'Indeed, papa,' replied Olivia, 'she does not; I have read a great deal of controversy. I have read the disputes between Thwackum and Square; the controversy between Robinson Crusoe and Friday, the savage; and I am now employed in reading the controversy in Religious Courtship.'—'Very well,' cried I, 'that's a good girl; I find you are perfectly qualified for making converts, and so go help your mother to make the ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... he disparaged Socrates; and, when prest, persisted in making Mirabeau a hero. Gibbon he called the splendid bridge from the old world to the new. His own reading had been multifarious. "Tristram Shandy" was one of his first books after "Robinson Crusoe," and Robertson's "America" an early favorite. Rousseau's "Confessions" had discovered to him that he was not a dunce; and it was now ten years since he had learned German, by the advice of a man who told him he would find in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... some sword swallower," grinned Fred. "But we're all in the same boat, and everything goes. I don't suppose Robinson Crusoe and Friday were very particular about their table manners. And this is certainly a Robinson Crusoe stunt ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... has borrowed admirably well, and the breaking of the sword rounds off the best of all his books with a manly martial note. But perhaps nothing can more strongly illustrate the necessity for marking incident than to compare the living fame of "Robinson Crusoe" with the discredit of "Clarissa Harlowe." "Clarissa" is a book of a far more startling import, worked out, on a great canvas, with inimitable courage and unflagging art. It contains wit, character, passion, plot, conversations ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... out from my mother. I believe I should have been almost stupified but for the small collection of books which had belonged to my own father, and to which I had access. From that blessed little room, came forth "Roderick Random," "Peregrine Pickle," "Tom Jones," "The Vicar of Wakefield," "Robinson Crusoe," "Gil Blas," and "Don Quixote,"—a glorious company to sustain me. They kept alive my fancy, and my hope of something beyond that place and time—they, and the "Arabian Nights" and "Tales of the Genii,"—and ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... proceeds to declare that there are at least four other fictitious narratives by the same writer—'Roxana,' 'Singleton,' 'Moll Flanders,' and 'Colonel Jack'—which possess an interest not inferior to 'Robinson Crusoe'—'except what results from a less felicitous choice of situation.' Granting most unreservedly that the same hand is perceptible in the minor novels as in 'Robinson Crusoe,' and that they bear at every page the most unequivocal symptoms of De ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... battles o'er again and told of bargains won. In the meantime had it not been for Susan, I should have lived in the solitude of an anchorite. We spent much time in the garden which we (she less conscious of irony than I) called our desert island. I was Robinson Crusoe and she was Man Friday, and on the whole we were quite happy; perhaps I should have been happier in a temperature of 80 deg. in the shade if I had not been forced to wear the Polar bear rug from the drawing-room in representation of Crusoe's goatskins. I did ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... STURGEON ISLAND; or, Marooned Among the Game Fish Poachers. Thad Brewster and his comrades find themselves in the predicament that confronted old Robinson Crusoe; only it is on the Great Lakes that they are wrecked instead of ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... I have come across for years. If you know a boy who has not a 'Robinson Crusoe,' just glance at any one of these hundred illustrations, and you will go no further afield in search ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... caused, 'Sordello' has had no great influence on Browningites; its name has passed into almost contempt. Chesterton has done much to give the true meaning of this strange work. With his next poem Browning spoke with a voice that, as our critic says, proved that he had found that he was not Robinson Crusoe, which is to say that he had found that the world contained a great number of people. Despite the 1,500 millions amongst whom we 'live and move and have our being' we are apt to think that we alone are important, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... have gone home and played tennis or followed the 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
... meek sufferers and their spiritual exercises. 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, throw stones, knock off hats, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... reading]. I have been obliged to enter into this resolution in consequence of a vitiated taste acquired by reading romances." He is human enough to add, however, that "after long and fatiguing researches in 'Blackstone' or 'Coke,' 'Tom Jones' or 'Robinson Crusoe' afford a pleasing and necessary relaxation. Of 'Robinson Crusoe' I shall observe that it is allowed to be the best novel for youth in the ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... do 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 read Lamb's letter to Wilson, dated December, 1822, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... a perfect spot for Red Indians, Smugglers, Robin Hood, Robinson Crusoe or any such game, ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... could not possibly have been realized by a series of independent explosions of personal righteousness on the part of the separate units of the population. Jerusalem could not have done what even a village community cannot do, and what Robinson Crusoe himself could not have done if his conscience, and the stern compulsion of Nature, had not imposed a common rule on the half dozen Robinson Crusoes who struggled within him for not wholly compatible satisfactions. And what cannot be done in Jerusalem or Juan Fernandez ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... of Masafuero. Juan Fernandez is well known to all the reading community as having once been the temporary residence of Alexander Selkirk, the original, or, as grammarians would call it, the root, of De Foe's bewitching romance of Robinson Crusoe. ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... may, without fear of denial, be claimed for a facsimile of the first edition of "The Compleat Angler" after "Robinson Crusoe" perhaps the most popular of English classics. Thomas Westwood, whose gentle poetry, it is to be feared, has won but few listeners, has drawn this fancy picture of the commotion in St. Dunstan's Churchyard on a May morning of the year 1653, when Richard ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... 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
... I've dreamed about being cast on a desolate island hundreds of times, and I've read about Robinson Crusoe, and all the other Crusoes, and I've longed to be cast on one, and now I am cast on one, so I don't want to escape. It'll be the greatest fun in the world. I only hope I won't wake up, as usual, to find that ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... visits of two-footed and four-footed brutes during the long nights of his Robinson Crusoe solitude, old Davenport always shut up his log castle early, and retired to rest as soon as daylight departed; for it did so very early in the evening there, as the solemn pines, with their gray trunks and far-spreading moss-grown arms and dismal evergreen ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... his own mind, the natural world, the abstract sciences, and the great principles of morality and religion. The author is not entitled to the merit of invention, since he has blended the English story of Robinson Crusoe with the Arabian romance of Hai Ebn Yokhdan, which he might have read in the Latin version of Pocock. In the Automathes I cannot praise either the depth of thought or elegance of style; but the book is not devoid of entertainment ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... doubtless, to my grandfather's farm—which was located by evil directions intentionally to throw a seeker off. Munchausen, you will recall, in the placing of his magic countries, was not above this agreeable villainy. Robinson Crusoe was loose and vague in the placing of his island. It is said that Izaak Walton waved a hand obscurely toward the stream where he had made a catch, but could not be cornered to a nice direction, lest his pool be overrun. In early youth, I ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... had to feast on in the long winter evenings were "Robinson Crusoe," "Sanford and Merton," "The Pilgrim's Progress," and the few volumes in my grandfather's library that were within the comprehension of a child of eight or ten years old. I wept over "Paul and Virginia," and laughed over "John Gilpin," the scene of whose memorable ride I have since visited at the ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... But most of the shopkeepers of note, and David Ramsay amongst others, had their booth connected with a small apartment which opened backward from it, and bore the same resemblance to the front shop that Robinson Crusoe's cavern did to the tent which he erected ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... sound good, but I guess it is good," said Dolly. "I just peeped in, and 'Evenings at Home' looks pretty. Here is 'Robinson Crusoe,' and 'Northern Regions;' I want to read that very much. I ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... of mine, to pass from my own character to his, was in all respects a remarkable boy. Haughty he was, aspiring, immeasurably active; fertile in resources as Robinson Crusoe; but also full of quarrel as it is possible to imagine; and, in default of any other opponent, he would have fastened a quarrel upon his own shadow for presuming to run before him when going westward in the morning, whereas, in all reason, a shadow, like a dutiful child, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... very well," laughed Elsie; "but I don't wish to make a female Robinson Crusoe of myself, I do assure you. Bessie, old Mrs. Thompson will wear that wonderful new head-dress, and her son will ask me to sing and be so scarlet and fluttered when I look at him. Yes, yes, there is some fun to be ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... 1659. 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 of ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... But I always detested the idea of being called by the name of either of my masters. And as for my father, I would rather have adopted the name of "Friday," and been known as the servant of some Robinson Crusoe, than to have taken his name. So I was not only hunting for my liberty, but also hunting for a name; though I regarded the latter as of little consequence, if I could but gain the former. Travelling along the road, I would sometimes speak to myself, sounding my name over, by way of getting used ...
— The Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave • William Wells Brown
... SOCIAL COMPACT. He never gave to man individual, isolated, natural rights, unalienably in his keeping. He never made him a Caspar Hauser, in the forest, without name or home,—a Melchisedek, in the wilderness, without father, without mother, without descent,—a Robinson Crusoe, on his island, in skins and barefooted, waiting, among goats and parrots, the coming of the canoes and the savages, to enable him to "consent" if he would, to ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... water. After the cat had had his milk, I could think of nothing else to do, and I sat down to get warm. The quiet was delightful, and the ticking clock was the most pleasant of companions. I got "Robinson Crusoe" and tried to read, but his life on the island seemed dull compared with ours. Presently, as I looked with satisfaction about our comfortable sitting-room, it flashed upon me that if Mr. Shimerda's soul were lingering about in this world at all, it would be here, in our house, which ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... Gil Blas. Pilgrim's Progress. Tale of a Tub. Gulliver. Vicar of Wakefield. Robinson Crusoe. Arabian Nights. Decameron. Wilhelm Meister. Vathek. Corinne. Minister's Wooing. Undine. Sintram. Thisdolf. Peter Schlemihl. Sense and Sensibility. Pride and Prejudice. Anastasius. Amber Witch. Mary Powell. ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... a characteristic method of German self-expression, while if any form of literary endeavor can be designated as characteristically English, the novel may claim this distinction; that is, more particularly the novel as distinguished from the romance. "Robinson Crusoe" (1719) united the elements of the extraordinary and the everyday, being the practical, unromantic account of a remarkable situation; and its extensive vogue in Germany, the myriad confessed imitations, may be said to form a kind of transition of ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... 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
... The period was certainly unpropitious for any but a writer of fiction, and Drury seems to have anticipated no higher rank for his Treatise, in point of authenticity, than that occupied by the several members of the Robinson Crusoe school. He, however, positively affirms it to be "a plain honest narrative of the matter of fact;" which is endorsed in the following terms by "Capt. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... when Robinson Crusoe and the classics are once read, and in a hencoop world no saga-man arises in their stead? They say that by then we shall have enlarged our borders and gone in our chariots of petrol to visit the wheeling stars. But I misdoubt these Icarian flights. It seems to ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... 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 story when they ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... Nipe's hideaway. He wondered if it were furnished in the fashion that a Nipe's living quarters would be furnished on whatever planet the multilegged horror called home. Probably it had the same similarity as Robinson Crusoe's island home had to a middle-class ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Arkansas River sluggishly followed the tortuous windings of its treeless banks with a placidness that was awful in its very silence; and whoso traced the wanderings of that stream with no companion but his own thoughts, realized in all its intensity the depth of solitude from which Robinson Crusoe suffered on his lonely island. Illimitable as the ocean, the weary waste stretched away until lost in the purple of the horizon, and the mirage created weird pictures in the landscape, distorted distances and objects which continually annoyed and deceived. Despite its loneliness, ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... and plan will not permit us to give more than a sketch of the proceedings of the captain, in taking possession; though we feel certain that a minute account of the progress of such a settlement would possess a sort of Robinson Crusoe-like interest, that might repay the reader. As usual, the adventurers commenced their operations in the spring. Mrs. Willoughby, and the children, were left with their friends, in Albany; while the captain and his party pioneered their way to the patent, in ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... called me Little Red Riding Hood, and bade me beware of wolves, and that I laughed and said there were no such things now; then he told me how many wolves, and bears, and tygers, and lions he had met with in uninhabited lands, that were like Robinson Crusoe's Island. ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... lived, so that her reign was an unusually tranquil one at home, though there were such 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 Pope's ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... after day and week after week went rapidly by, and had not the mate kept careful note of the time, in Robinson Crusoe fashion, by cutting notches on a stick, the settlers would soon have forgotten how long they had been on the island. The Sabbath was duly observed, as far as they had the means. Although they had no Bible, the mate recollected large portions ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... contains; or to ramble with Mr. White* over his own parish of Selborne, and form a friendship with the fields and coppices, as well as with the birds, mice, and squirrels, who inhabit them; or to sail with Robinson Crusoe to his island, and live there with him and his goats and his man Friday;—how much we dread any new comers, any fresh importation of savage or sailor! we never sympathise for a moment in our hero's want of company, and are quite grieved when he gets away;—or to be shipwrecked ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... contribute his share to the hygienic work of society as a whole, in particular to take an active interest in health legislation and administration. A man can not live to the best advantage in a life isolated from all social obligations, any more than could Robinson Crusoe, who was unable to launch his canoe in the ocean, after he had been at great pains to construct it, because he had no one to help him. Each man should take part in the great social hygienic struggle, if he is to reap the highest ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... "I, Robinson Crusoe," we read, "do affirm that the story, though allegorical, is also historical, and that it is the beautiful representation of a life of unexampled misfortune, and of a variety not to be met with ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... of a retired citizen, that he was in the habit of again and again perusing the incomparable story of Robinson Crusoe without a suspicion of its authenticity. At length a friend assured him of its being a work of fiction. What you say, replied the old man mournfully, may be true; but your information has taken away the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... him to the fishing as you would with a bright-eyed boy, relishing his simple-hearted enthusiasm, and leaning down to listen to his precocious remarks, and to pat his curly head. It is the prevalence of the childlike element which makes Walton's 'Angler' rank with Bunyan's 'Pilgrim,' 'Robinson Crusoe,' and White's 'Natural History of Selborne,' as among the most delightful books in the language. Its descriptions of nature, too, are so fresh, that you smell to them as to a green leaf. Walton would not have been at home ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... But it is exactly here that the realism of the Homeric world strikes the student. It is not vague—on the contrary, the preciseness of its detail is almost as striking, sometimes almost as prosaic, as the detail which makes Robinson Crusoe the most realistic of all works of fiction; and while its splendours are such as we look for in vain in early historic Greece, and are certainly not borrowed from the great civilizations of Mesopotamia or the Nile Valley, they are such as we can perfectly ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... home with parcels of groceries and receipted bills). Now one washing day, they being as glad to get rid of us at home as we were to get out, we went over to the good house and found no one at home except the grown-up daughter, who used to sing for us, and read "Robinson Crusoe" of nights, "out loud", and give us more lollies than any of the rest—and with whom we were passionately in love, notwithstanding the fact that she was engaged to a "grown-up man"—(we reckoned he'd be dead and out of the way by the time we were old enough to marry her). She was washing. She ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... 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 space and time to the Roman law. That ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... English surroundings instead of seeking for the hero thrilling and daring deeds in foreign countries. He also added to the list of character-studies "Roderick Random," a tale of the sea, the mystery of which has never palled since "Robinson Crusoe" ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... little brother and sister were learning still better things at their mother's knee, alternately hearing and reading stories from the Bible, "The Pilgrim's Progress," "AEsop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," and other books, common now, but rare enough in the ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... surrounded by trees just as Robinson Crusoe was by his grove when it had grown tall and thick. Now, the traveller in Southern France who lingers as I am wont to linger in my wanderings, will probably have cause to pine, as I have pined, for trees about his house to shelter him from the fury of the summer sun. There ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... like the veriest commonplaces in comparison. The fact is, I was born. Such a thing had never happened to me before, and I was utterly bewildered. I did not know what to make of it. My first impression was that I was all alone and that I had the solar system all to myself. Like Robinson Crusoe, I fancied myself monarch of all I surveyed. But then, like Robinson Crusoe, I discovered a footprint, and found that the planet on which I had been so mysteriously cast was inhabited.. There were two of ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... dropped out of our story. Mr. Hawes has got himself kicked out of our story. The other prisoners, of whom casual mention has been made, were never in our story, any more than the boy Xury in "Robinson Crusoe." There remains to us in the prison Mr. Eden and Robinson, a saint and ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... ship with wide-expanded canvas glides along and soon"—I forget the remainder of the quotation; but 'tis in the delectable work, "Robinson Crusoe"—soon will you hear him hail. [A knock is heard.] My stars foretell that this is ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... 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 the train of ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 for ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... live on his lonesome all his life. Yes, he could. Still he'd have to get someone to sod him after he died though he could dig his own grave. We all do. Only man buries. No, ants too. First thing strikes anybody. Bury the dead. Say Robinson Crusoe was true to life. Well then Friday buried him. Every Friday buries a Thursday if you ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... and I had fallen into the pleasant custom of lending each other such books as came the way of our remote land, and I called at the Dower House to leave her one, a newly imprinted volume entitled "Robinson Crusoe." I did not seem to wish to make meetings with her, though I was glad of them, so I chose a time, the mid-afternoon, at which she and her mother usually walked out. However, Marget was at home, and she called to me from the parlour, would I not enter and rest a minute? Necessarily I must step ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... can afford to play Robinson Crusoe anywhere—least of all in India, where we are few in the land, and very much dependent on each other's kind offices. Dumoise was wrong in shutting himself from the world for a year, and he discovered ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... indeed. Katy and Clover ran down stairs in great excitement, and after consulting a little, retired to the Loft to talk it over in peace and quiet. Cousin Helen coming! It seemed as strange as if Queen Victoria, gold crown and all, had invited herself to tea. Or as if some character out of a book, Robinson Crusoe, say, or "Amy Herbert," had driven up with a trunk and announced the intention of spending a week. For to the imaginations of the children, Cousin Helen was as interesting and unreal as anybody in the Fairy Tales: Cinderella, or Blue-Beard, or dear Red Riding-Hood ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... espied an empty grass cabin, which the fishermen used in February while catching shad; and, as a southerly wind was now blowing from the sea, and rain was falling, it offered a night's shelter for the traveller. This Robinson Crusoe looking structure was located upon the low land near the sound, while bleak, sharp-pointed, treeless and grassless sandhills, blown into shape by the winds, arose in the background, and cut off a view of the ocean, which, judging from the low, melancholy moaning coming over the dunes, ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... is to put this volume, not at the lesson-book end of the shelf, but with Robinson Crusoe and the like. So the preface suggests, and rightly. It is eminently readable, a success, (p. 96) we should say, in what looks much easier than it is, telling a story in ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... Wednesday night we had a magic-lantern entertainment, given by Mr. Keytel, and nearly every one came to it. It was quite a new thing to them and was a great success. There were many miscellaneous pictures followed by the story of Robinson Crusoe, which was much enjoyed. Mr. Keytel worked the ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... the vision, and besides the usual human and finite failures in life (such as breaking the old pitcher that came over in the Mayflower, and putting into the fire the alpenstock with which her father climbed Mont Blanc)—besides, these, I say (imitating the style of Robinson Crusoe), there were pitchforked in on us a great rowen-heap of humbugs, handed down from some unknown seed-time, in which we were expected, and I chiefly, to fulfil certain public functions before the community, of the character of ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... "Well, let's form a Robinson Crusoe Syndicate," suggested McGuffey. "We've got the island, and there's a quorum ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... "I choose Robinson Crusoe, of course," announced Mr. Evringham. "This is an appropriate place to read that. I dare say by stretching our necks a little we could see ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... longed for evening to come to have fresh light and instruction given. My father now decided that I should not go to school, and he became my teacher as before, the world being my great book. I was delighted with Robinson Crusoe, and this work became my companion, and to which was added the Pilgrim's Progress. After these, my great favourite was Buffon's Natural History. I used to go alone, taking a volume at a time, to read amidst the pleasant country around, but most frequently in the quiet nooks and retreats ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin |
