An Inland Voyage Quotes

“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, An Inland Voyage

“An imperturbable demeanour comes from perfect patience. 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, An Inland Voyage

“Come back?  There is no coming back, young ladies, on the impetuous stream of life.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

“He was breaking his fast on white wine and raw onions, in order to keep up the character of martyr, I conclude. ”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

“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, An Inland Voyage

“But now that was all gone by, and had left her neither happier nor wiser; and the best she could do with her mornings was to come up here into the cold church and juggle for a slice of heaven. ”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

“and I am sure that food is much more generally entertaining than scenery.  Do you give in, as Walt Whitman would say, that you are any the less immortal for that?  The true materialism is to be ashamed of what we are.  To detect the flavour of an olive is no less a piece of human perfection than to find beauty in the colours of the sunset.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

“We now lay in towns, where nobody troubled us with questions; we had floated into civilised life, where people pass without salutation. ”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

“It is nothing to get wet; but the misery of these individual pricks of cold all over my body at the same instant of time made me flail the water with my paddle like a madman. ”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

“The Cigarette had a mackintosh which put him more or less above these contrarieties.  But I had to bear the brunt uncovered.  I began to remember that nature was a woman.  My companion, in a rosier temper, listened with great satisfaction to my Jeremiads, and ironically concurred. ”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

“Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral: a thing as single and specious as a statue to the first glance, and yet, on examination, as lively and interesting as a forest in detail. ”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

“What a number of things a river does, by simply following Gravity in the innocence of its heart!”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

“Not Diana herself, although this was more of a Venus after all, could have done a graceful thing more gracefully. ”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

“The humiliation of their arms and the loss of Alsace and Lorraine made a sore pull on the endurance of this sensitive people; and their hearts are still hot, not so much against Germany as against the Empire. ”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

“The drum, at any rate, from its martial voice and notable physiological effect, nay, even from its cumbrous and comical shape, stands alone among the instruments of noise. ”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

“I do not know, to my shame, any spot in my native land where I should have been so warmly received by the same number of people.  We were English boating-men, and the Belgian boating-men fell upon our necks.  I wonder if French Huguenots were as cordially greeted by English Protestants when they came across the Channel out of great tribulation.  But after all, what religion knits people so closely as a common sport?”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

“To see about one in the world,’ said the husband, ‘il n’y a que ça—there is nothing else worth while. A man, look you, who sticks in his own village like a bear,’ he went on, ‘—very well, he sees nothing. And then death is the end of all. And he has seen nothing.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

“There should be some myth (but if there is, I know it not) founded on the shivering of the reeds.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

“For I think we may look upon our little private war with death somewhat in this light. If a man knows he will sooner or later be robbed upon a journey, he will have a bottle of the best in every inn, and look upon all his extravagances as so much gained upon the thieves. And above all, where instead of simply spending, he makes a profitable investment for some of his money, when it will be out of risk of loss. So every bit of brisk living, and above all when it is healthful, is just so much gained upon the wholesale filcher, death. We shall have the less in our pockets, the more in our stomach, when he cries stand and deliver. A swift stream is a favourite artifice of his, and one that brings him in a comfortable thing per annum; but when he and I come to settle our accounts, I shall whistle in his face for these hours upon the upper Oise.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

“Come back again!’ she cried; and all the others echoed her; and the hills about Origny repeated the words, ‘Come back.’ But the river had us round an angle in a twinkling, and we were alone with the green trees and running water.

Come back? There is no coming back, young ladies, on the impetuous stream of life.

‘The merchant bows unto the seaman’s star,
The ploughman from the sun his season takes.’

And we must all set our pocket-watches by the clock of fate. There is a headlong, forthright tide, that bears away man with his fancies like a straw, and runs fast in time and space. It is full of curves like this, your winding river of the Oise; and lingers and returns in pleasant pastorals; and yet, rightly thought upon, never returns at all. For though it should revisit the same acre of meadow in the same hour, it will have made an ample sweep between-whiles; many little streams will have fallen in; many exhalations risen towards the sun; and even although it were the same acre, it will no more be the same river of Oise. And thus, O graces of Origny, although the wandering fortune of my life should carry me back again to where you await death’s whistle by the river, that will not be the old I who walks the street; and those wives and mothers, say, will those be you?”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

“Little did the Bazins know how much they served us. We were charged for candles, for food and drink, and for the beds we slept in. But there was nothing in the bill for the husband’s pleasant talk; nor for the pretty spectacle of their married life. And there was yet another item unchanged. For these people’s politeness really set us up again in our own esteem. We had a thirst for consideration; the sense of insult was still hot in our spirits; and civil usage seemed to restore us to our position in the world.

How little we pay our way in life! Although we have our purses continually in our hand, the better part of service goes still unrewarded. But I like to fancy that a grateful spirit gives as good as it gets. Perhaps the Bazins knew how much I liked them? perhaps they also were healed of some slights by the thanks that I gave them in my manner?”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

“No one should have any correspondence on a journey; it is bad enough to have to write; but the receipt of letters is the death of all holiday feeling.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

“We made Précy about sundown. The plain is rich with tufts of poplar. In a wide, luminous curve, the Oise lay under the hillside. A faint mist began to rise and confound the different distances together. There was not a sound audible but that of the sheep-bells in some meadows by the river, and the creaking of a cart down the long road that descends the hill. The villas in their gardens, the shops along the street, all seemed to have been deserted the day before; and I felt inclined to walk discreetly as one feels in a silent forest.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage