Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes
- Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity. And since mediocre people constitute the bulk of humanity, this is no doubt very properly so. - View Quote Details on Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use…
- Bright is the ring of words
When the right man rings them. - View Quote Details on Bright is the ring of words
When the right man rings… - I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed. - View Quote Details on I have a little shadow that goes in and out… - Let first the onion flourish there,
Rose among roots, the maiden-fair,
Wine-scented and poetic soul
Of the capacious salad bowl. - View Quote Details on Let first the onion flourish there,
Rose among roots, the maiden-fair,
Wine-scented… - We should wipe two words from our vocabulary: gratitude and charity. In real life, help is given out of friendship, or it is not valued; it is received from the hand of friendship, or it is resented. - View Quote Details on We should wipe two words from our vocabulary: gratitude and…
- Times are changed with him who marries; there are no more by-path meadows, where you may innocently linger, but the road lies long and straight and dusty to the grave. Idleness, which is often becoming and even wise in the bachelor, begins to wear a different aspect when you have a wife to support. - View Quote Details on Times are changed with him who marries; there are no…
- Old and young, we are all on our last cruise. - View Quote Details on Old and young, we are all on our last cruise.
- Am I no a bonny fighter? - View Quote Details on Am I no a bonny fighter?
- Gentleness and cheerfulness, these come before all morality; they are the perfect duties. - View Quote Details on Gentleness and cheerfulness, these come before all morality; they are…
- If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say “give them up,” for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people. - View Quote Details on If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they…
- To be honest, to be kind — to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends, but these without capitulation — above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself — here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy. He has an ambitious soul who would ask more; he has a hopeful spirit who should look in such an enterprise to be successful. There is indeed one element in human destiny that not blindness itself can controvert: whatever else we are intended to do, we are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted. - View Quote Details on To be honest, to be kind — to earn a…
- It seems as if marriage were the royal road through life, and realised, on the instant, what we have all dreamed on summer Sundays when the bells ring, or at night when we cannot sleep for the desire of living. They think it will sober and change them. Like those who join a brotherhood, they fancy it needs but an act to be out of the coil and clamour for ever. But this is a wile of the devil’s. To the end, spring winds will sow disquietude, passing faces leave a regret behind them, and the whole world keep calling and calling in their ears. For marriage is like life in this — that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses. - View Quote Details on It seems as if marriage were the royal road through…
- Hope is the boy, a blind, headlong, pleasant fellow, good to chase swallows with the salt; Faith is the grave, experienced, yet smiling man. Hope lives on ignorance; open-eyed Faith is built upon a knowledge of our life, of the tyranny of circumstance and the frailty of human resolution. Hope looks for unqualified success; but Faith counts certainly on failure, and takes honourable defeat to be a form of victory. Hope is a kind old pagan; but Faith grew up in Christian days, and early learnt humility. In the one temper, a man is indignant that he cannot spring up in a clap to heights of elegance and virtue; in the other, out of a sense of his infirmities, he is filled with confidence because a year has come and gone, and he has still preserved some rags of honour. In the first, he expects an angel for a wife; in the last, he knows that she is like himself - erring, thoughtless, and untrue; but like himself also, filled with a struggling radiancy of better things, and adorned with ineffective qualities. You may safely go to school with hope; but ere you marry, should have learned the mingled lesson of the world: that dolls are stuffed with sawdust, and yet are excellent play-things; that hope and love address themselves to a perfection never realised, and yet, firmly held, become the salt and staff of life; that you yourself are compacted of infirmities, perfect, you might say, in imperfection, and yet you have a something in you lovable and worth preserving; and that, while the mass of mankind lies under this scurvy condemnation, you will scarce find one but, by some generous reading, will become to you a lesson, a model, and a noble spouse through life. - View Quote Details on Hope is the boy, a blind, headlong, pleasant fellow, good…
- In anything fit to be called by the name of reading, the process itself should be absorbing and voluptuous; we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of ourselves, and rise from the perusal, our mind filled with the busiest, kaleidoscopic dance of images, incapable of sleep or of continuous thought. The words, if the book be eloquent, should run thenceforward in our ears like the noise of breakers, and the story, if it be a story, repeat itself in a thousand coloured pictures to the eye. - View Quote Details on In anything fit to be called by the name of…
- Here lies one who meant well, tried a little, failed much: — surely that may be his epitaph of which he need not be ashamed. - View Quote Details on Here lies one who meant well, tried a little, failed…
- To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life. - View Quote Details on To be what we are, and to become what we…
- Them that die will be the lucky ones! - View Quote Details on Them that die will be the lucky ones!
- What is the Black Spot, Captain?” “That’s a summons, mate. - View Quote Details on What is the Black Spot, Captain?” “That’s a summons, mate.
- In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day. - View Quote Details on In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow… - The observer (poor soul, with his documents!) is all abroad. For to look at the man is but to court deception. We shall see the trunk from which he draws his nourishment; but he himself is above and abroad in the green dome of foliage, hummed through by winds and nested in by nightingales. And the true realism were that of the poets, to climb up after him like a squirrel, and catch some glimpse of the heaven for which he lives. And, the true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing. For to miss the joy is to miss all. In the joy of the actors lies the sense of any action. - View Quote Details on The observer (poor soul, with his documents!) is all abroad…
- Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life. - View Quote Details on Books are good enough in their own way, but they…
- Ice and iron cannot be welded. - View Quote Details on Ice and iron cannot be welded.
- Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,
With eyes of gold and bramble-dew,
Steel-true and blade-straight,
The great artificer
Made my mate. - View Quote Details on Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,
With eyes of gold and bramble-dew,
Steel-true and… - Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to continue to fail, in good spirits. - View Quote Details on Our business in this world is not to succeed, but…
- A faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity. - View Quote Details on A faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a…
- Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral. - View Quote Details on Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made…
- Every man is his own doctor of divinity, in the last resort. - View Quote Details on Every man is his own doctor of divinity, in the…
- Nothing like a little judicious levity. - View Quote Details on Nothing like a little judicious levity.
- There’s just ae thing I cannae bear,
An’ that’s my conscience. - View Quote Details on There’s just ae thing I cannae bear,
An’ that’s my conscience. - There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. - View Quote Details on There is no duty we so much underrate as the…
- To be overwise is to ossify; and the scruple-monger ends by standing stockstill. - View Quote Details on To be overwise is to ossify; and the scruple-monger ends…
- The duty of a Christian is not to succeed, but to fail cheerfully. - View Quote Details on The duty of a Christian is not to succeed, but…
- It is as natural and as right for a young man to be imprudent and exaggerated, to live in swoops and circles, and beat about his cage like any other wild thing newly captured, as it is for old men to turn gray, or mothers to love their offspring, or heroes to die for something worthier than their lives. - View Quote Details on It is as natural and as right for a young…
- It is better to lose health like a spendthrift than to waste is like a miser. It is better to live and be done with it, then to die daily in the sick-room. - View Quote Details on It is better to lose health like a spendthrift than…
- The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life. - View Quote Details on The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your…
- We do not go to cowards for tender dealing; there is nothing so cruel as panic; the man who has least fear for his own carcase, has most time to consider others. - View Quote Details on We do not go to cowards for tender dealing; there…
- A child should always say what’s true
And speak when he is spoken to,
And behave mannerly at table;
At least as far as he is able. - View Quote Details on A child should always say what’s true
And speak when he… - Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but principally by catchwords; and the little rift between the sexes is astonishingly widened by simply teaching one set of catchwords to the girls and another to the boys. - View Quote Details on Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone,…
- In the highlands, in the country places,
Where the old plain men have rosy faces,
And the young fair maidens
Quiet eyes. - View Quote Details on In the highlands, in the country places,
Where the old plain… - Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind, spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies. - View Quote Details on Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere…
About Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis (Balfour) Stevenson (1850-11-13 – 1894-12-03 ) was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer, and a leading representative of Neo-romanticism in English literature.
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