Robert Louis Stevenson > Quotes

“Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“So long as we are loved by others I should say that we are almost indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“You think those dogs will not be in heaven! I tell you they will be there long before any of us.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“Everyone should always have two books with him, one to read and one to write in.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“A friend is a gift you give yourself.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“The cruelest lies are often told in silence. ”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm. ”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

“The saints are the sinners who keep on trying.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“The best things are nearest: breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of God 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 of life.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“Alan," cried I, "what makes ye so good to me? What makes ye care for such a thankless fellow?"

Deed, and I don't, know" said Alan. "For just precisely what I thought I liked about ye, was that ye never quarrelled:—and now I like ye better!”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped

“There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“Many's the long night I've dreamed of cheese--toasted mostly.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“If he be Mr. Hyde, I shall be Mr. Seek.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Der seltsame Fall des Dr. Jekyll und Mr. Hyde

“You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“To be what we are capable of becoming, and to achieve what we are capable of achieving, is the only end of life. ”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“You cannot run away from a weakness, you must sometimes fight it out or perish. And if that be so, why not now and where you stand?”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“Death, like a host, comes smiling to the door;
Smiling, he greets us, on that tranquil shore
Where neither piping bird nor peeping dawn
Disturbs the eternal sleep,
But in the stillness far withdrawn
Our dreamless rest for evermore we keep.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“Wine is bottled poetry.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“There are two things that men should never weary of, goodness and humility; we get none too much of them in this rough world among cold, proud people.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped

“I regard you with an indifference closely bordering on aversion.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it. ”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

“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.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“Books are good enough in their own way but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“It is perhaps a more fortunate destiny to have a taste for collecting shells than to be born a millionaire.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“Everyone, at some time or another, sits down to a banquet of consequences. ”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“Sir, with no intention to take offence, I deny your right to put words into my mouth.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

“There comes an end to all things; the most capacious measure is filled at last; and this brief condescension to evil finally destroyed the balance of my soul.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

“Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“The world is so full of a number of things, I ’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“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. Bless us, if it may be, in all our innocent endeavours. If it may not, give us the strength to encounter that which is to come, that we may be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temparate in wrath, and in all changes of fortune, and down to the gates of death, loyal and loving to one another.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

“Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

“The man is a success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who leaves the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who never lacked appreciation of earth's beauty or failed to express it; who looked for the best in others and gave the best he had.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Glad did I live and gladly I die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he long'd to be;
Home is the sailor; home from the see,
And the hunter home from the hill.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer. ”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“No man is useless who has a friend, and if we are loved we are indispensable.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to the truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, L'estrany Cas Del Dr. Jekyll I Mr. Hyde

“But of works of art little can be said.
”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“In each of us, two natures are at war – the good and the evil. All our lives the fight goes on between them, and one of them must conquer. But in our own hands lies the power to choose – what we want most to be we are.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“A birdie with a yellow bill
Hoped upon the window sill,
Cocked his shining eye and said:
'Ain't you 'shamed, you sleepy-'ead?”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson