Collected Works of Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes

“The supply of subjects was a continual trouble to him as well as to his master. In that large and busy class, the raw material of the anatomists kept perpetually running out; and the business thus rendered necessary was not only unpleasant in itself, but threatened dangerous consequences to all who were concerned. It was the policy of Mr. K — to ask no questions in his dealings with the trade. ‘They bring the body, and we pay the price,’ he used to say, dwelling on the alliteration— ‘quid pro quo.’ And, again, and somewhat profanely, ‘Ask no questions,’ he would tell his assistants, ‘for conscience’ sake.’ There was no understanding that the subjects were provided by the crime of murder.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Collected Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

“Freedom, to be desirable, involves kindness, wisdom, and all the virtues of the free; but the free man as we have seen him in action has been, as of yore, only the master of many helots; and the slaves are still ill-fed, ill-clad, ill-taught, ill-housed, insolently treated, and driven to their mines and workshops by the lash of famine.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Collected Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

“I will begin the story of my adventures with a certain morning early in the month of June, the year of grace 1751, when I took the key for the last time out of the door of my father’s house.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Delphi Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

“I swear by the mass I believe Hugh Ferryman took you for a maid.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Delphi Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

“Nay, y’are not tall enough. What age are ye, for a wager? — twelve?” “Nay, I am sixteen,” said Matcham.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Delphi Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

“Can ye so?” cried Dick, with open eyes. It was the one manly accomplishment of which he was himself incapable.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Delphi Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

“A cat may look at a king.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Delphi Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

“There is no doubt that the poorer classes in our country are much more charitably disposed than their superiors in wealth. And I fancy it must arise a great deal from the comparative indistinction of the easy and the not so easy in these ranks. A workman or a pedlar cannot shutter himself off from his less comfortable neighbours. If he treats himself to a luxury he must do it in the face of a dozen who cannot. And what should more directly lead to charitable thoughts?... Thus the poor man, camping out in life, sees it as it is, and knows that every mouthful he puts in his belly has been wrenched out of the fingers of the hungry. But at a certain stage of prosperity, as in a balloon ascent, the fortunate person passes through a zone of clouds, and sublunary matters are thenceforward hidden from his view. He sees nothing but the heavenly bodies, all in admirable order, and positively as good as new. He finds himself surrounded in the most touching manner by the attentions of Providence, and compares himself involuntarily with the lilies and the skylarks. He does not precisely sing, of course; but then he looks so unassuming in his open landau! If all the world dined at one table, this philosophy would meet with some rude knocks.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, The Collected Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: PergamonMedia

“The words died in Richard’s throat. He saw, through tears, the poor old man, bemused with liquor and sorrow, go shambling away, with bowed head, across the snow, and the unnoticed dog whimpering at his heels, and for the first time began to understand the desperate game that we play in life; and how a thing once done is not to be changed or remedied, by any penitence.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, The Complete Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Travels, Non-Fiction, Plays and Poems

“Dick!” she cried, “alas the day that ever ye should have seen me! For like a most unhappy and unthankful maid, it is I have led you hither.” “What cheer!” returned Dick. “It was all written, and that which is written, willy nilly, cometh still to pass. But tell me a little what manner of a maid ye are, and how ye came into Sir Daniel’s hands; that will do better than to bemoan yourself, whether for your sake or mine.” “I am an orphan, like yourself, of father and mother,” said Joanna; “and for my great misfortune, Dick, and hitherto for yours, I am a rich marriage. My Lord Foxham had me to ward; yet it appears Sir Daniel bought the marriage of me from the king, and a right dear price he paid for it. So here was I, poor babe, with two great and rich men fighting which should marry me, and I still at nurse! Well, then the world changed, and there was a new chancellor, and Sir Daniel bought the warding of me over the Lord Foxham’s head. And then the world changed again, and Lord Foxham”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, The Complete Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Travels, Non-Fiction, Plays and Poems

“Then,” said Dick, “ye shall die unshriven. Here am I, and here shall stay. There shall no priest come near you, rest assured. For of what avail is penitence, an ye have no mind to right those wrongs ye had a hand in? and without penitence, confession is but mockery.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, The Complete Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Travels, Non-Fiction, Plays and Poems

“Well, but, good Master Richard,” resumed Matcham, “an ye like maids so little, y’ are no true natural man; for God made them twain by intention, and brought true love into the world, to be man’s hope and woman’s comfort.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, The Complete Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Travels, Non-Fiction, Plays and Poems

“This fifth trip was quite different from any of the others. In the first place, the little gallipot of a boat that we were in was gravely overloaded. Five grown men, and three of them —Trelawney, Redruth, and the captain —over six feet high, was already more than she was meant to carry. Add to that the powder, pork, and the bread-bags. The gunwale was lipping astern. Several times we shipped a little water, and my breeches and the tails of my coat were all soaking wet before we had gone a hundred yards.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Collected Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

“If the conduct of the men had been alarming in the boat, it became truly threatening when they had come aboard. They lay about the deck, growling together in talk. The slightest order was received with a black look, and grudgingly and carelessly obeyed. Even the honest hands must have caught the infection, for there was not one man aboard to mend another. Mutiny, it was plain, hung over us like a thundercloud.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Collected Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

“Mr. Hyde was pale and dwarfish, he gave an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation, he had a displeasing smile, he had borne himself to the lawyer with a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and boldness, and he spoke with a husky, whispering and somewhat broken voice; all these were points against him, but not all of these together could explain the hitherto unknown disgust, loathing and fear with which Mr. Utterson regarded him. “There must be something else,” said the perplexed gentleman. “There is something more, if I could find a name for it. God bless me, the man seems hardly human! Something troglodytic, shall we say? or can it be the old story of Dr. Fell? or is it the mere radiance of a foul soul that thus transpires through, and transfigures, its clay continent? The last, I think; for, O my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan’s signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Collected Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

“From that time forward, Mr. Utterson began to haunt the door in the by-street of shops. In the morning before office hours, at noon when business was plenty, and time scarce, at night under the face of the fogged city moon, by all lights and at all hours of solitude or concourse, the lawyer was to be found on his chosen post. “If he be Mr. Hyde,” he had thought, “I shall be Mr. Seek.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Collected Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

“The story is told in fragmentary narratives written by a Doctor and a Lawyer, culminating in Jekyll’s own full statement of the case. As well as creating a sense of mystery as each narrator witnesses a series of inexplicable events that is only finally explained by Jekyll’s own posthumous statement of his experiments, this structure is also symbolic of the fragmentary personality that Hyde’s existence reveals. For Jekyll is careful to note that Hyde is not simply his own ‘evil’ alter ego – rather he is just one facet of Jekyll’s personality, increased to the maximum. If Hyde is completely evil, it does not necessarily follow that Jekyll is entirely good – he always had the capacity for evil within him, but has repressed it in order to live a socially respectable life. It is this capacity for evil, lying beneath the socially acceptable face of society, that Hyde represents. This has made the novel open to all kinds of intriguing readings that suggest that the Jekyll/Hyde split is symbolic of the divergent experiences of ‘respectable’ Victorian society and their less respectable ‘others’ – a commentary on the hypocrisy of a society that condones certain kinds of behaviour so long as the mask of respectability is maintained. This subtext means that the novel fits easily into the Gothic genre, which is typically concerned with the chaotic forces lying beneath the pretence of civilisation.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Collected Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

“Stevenson had originally conceived the novel as a straightforward horror yarn, involving a thief that invents a potion that changes his physical appearance for the purpose of disguise. In a later essay, ‘A Chapter on Dreams’, Stevenson recalled how this version of the story was suggested by a dream. Disliking the initial result, which also failed to meet the approval of his wife, Fanny, Stevenson destroyed the manuscript. It is possible that it was also Stevenson’s wife who suggested that, by having the transformation happen more haphazardly, a more sophisticated story about man’s equal capacity for good and evil might be told. In any event, Stevenson grasped this idea enthusiastically, completing a new draft in three days.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Collected Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

“It would be hard to pick out a career more cheerless than that of Dancer, the miser, as he figures in the “Old Bailey Reports,” a prey to the most sordid persecutions, the butt of his neighbourhood, betrayed by his hired man, his house beleaguered by the impish schoolboy, and he himself grinding and fuming and impotently fleeing to the law against these pin-pricks. You marvel at first that any one should willingly prolong a life so destitute of charm and dignity; and then you call to memory that had he chosen, had he ceased to be a miser, he could have been freed at once from these trials, and might have built himself a castle and gone escorted by a squadron. For the love of more recondite joys, which we cannot estimate, which, it may be, we should envy, the man had willingly forgone both comfort and consideration. “His mind to him a kingdom was”; and sure enough, digging into that mind,”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Letters and Essays

“it is but a stage on the way to somewhere else, and whatever we do, however well we do it, it is only a preparation to do something else that shall be different.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Letters and Essays

“No, sir: I had a delicacy,” was the reply. “I feel very strongly about putting questions; it partakes too much of the style of the day of judgment. You start a question, and it’s like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others; and presently some bland old bird (the last you would have thought of) is knocked on the head in his own back garden and the family have to change their name.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Letters and Essays

“I shall be sorry, but I need not be ashamed.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Letters and Essays

“had caught her like some kind of a noble fever that lived continually in my bosom, by night and by day, and whether I was waking or asleep.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Letters and Essays

“were there for the first time, and yet each had been alive a good while, losing time with other people.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Letters and Essays

“the strangeness of that circumstance, that friends came together in the beginning as if they were there for the first time, and yet each had been alive a good while, losing time with other people.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Letters and Essays

“She came between me and the sun.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Letters and Essays

“I scarce enjoyed my own company without a glint of her in a corner of my mind.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Letters and Essays

“just wit enough to see that if I did not leap at once, I should never leap at all. I bent low on my knees and flung myself forth, with that kind of anger of despair that has sometimes stood me in stead of courage. Sure enough, it was but my hands that reached”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Letters and Essays

“Stevenson’s most famous novel was first published in 1886 and concerns the unfortunate Dr. Jekyll (pronounced ‘Jeekill’), whose attempts to understand the ‘thorough and primitive duality of man’ lead him to ingest a potion that splits him into two people. To the novel’s original readers, this summary would constitute a fatal spoiler – but so legendary has the novel become that there can be few modern readers unaware of its central twist.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Delphi Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

“O!’ she cried, joy catching at her voice, ‘O! it is the dawn!”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Delphi Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson