Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes

The person who has stopped being thankful has fallen asleep in life.

Each has his own tree of ancestors, but at the top of all sits Probably Arboreal.

Loving God, help us remember the birth of Jesus, that we may share in the song of the angels, the gladness of the shepherds, and the worship of the wise men.

I have never seen the sea quiet round Treasure Island. The sun might blaze overhead, the air be without a breath, the surface smooth and blue, but still these great rollers would be running along all the external coast, thundering and thundering by day and night; and I scarce believe there is one spot in the island where a man would be out of earshot of their noise.

Every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular-letter to the friends of him who writes it.

I lived on rum, I tell you. It's been meat and drink, and man and wife, to me.

Nothing made by brute force lasts.

The ideal story is that of two people who go into love step for step, with a fluttered consciousness, like a pair of children venturing together into a dark room.

...those little people, my brownies, who do one half of my work for me while I am fast asleep, and in all human likelihood do the rest for me as well, when I am wide awake and fondly suppose I do for myself.

Even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a week.

We live in an ascending scale when we live happily, one thing leading to another in an endless series.

Restfulness is a quality for cattle; the virtues are all active, life is alert.

Things looked at patiently from one side after another generally end by showing a side that is beautiful.

I've a grand memory for forgetting.

Sit loosely in the saddle.

The true wisdom is to be always seasonable, and to change with a good grace in changing circumstances.

I am not afraid of the truth, if any one could tell it me, but I am afraid of parts of it impertinently uttered.

Our affections and beliefs are wiser than we; the best that is in us is better than we can understand; for it is grounded beyond experience, and guides us, blindfold but safe, from one age on to another.

Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life.

I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.

Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.

But even if we take matrimony at its lowest, even if we regard it as no more than a sort of friendship recognised by the police, there must be degrees in the freedom and sympathy realised, and some principle to guide simple folk in their selection.

O wind, a-blowing all day long, O wind, that sings so loud a song!

Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof; but in the open world it passes lightly, with its stars and dews and perfumes, and the hours are marked by changes in the face of Nature. What seems a kind of temporal death to people choked between walls and curtains, is only a light and living slumber to the man who sleeps afield.

To have suffered ... sets a keen edge on what remains of the agreeable. This is a great truth and has to be learned in the fire.

When I was a boy, I was a bit puzzled, and hardly knew weather it was myself or the world that was curious and worth looking into. Now I know that it is myself, and stick to that.

Wine is bottled poetry.

Nothing like a little judicious levity.

It is the habitual carriage of the umbrella that is the stamp of Respectability. Robinson Crusoe was rather a moralist than a pietist, and his leaf-umbrella is as fine an example of the civilised mind striving to express itself under adverse circumstances as we have ever met with.

We all know what Parliament is, and we are all ashamed of it.

Sing a song of seasons; something bright in all, flowers in the summer, fires in the fall.

Really don't choose every day from the harvest you experience but from the seeds you plant

To cast in it with Hyde was to die a thousand interests and aspirations.

A Morning Prayer The day returns and brings us the petty round of irritating concerns and duties. Help us to play the man; help us to perform them with laughter and kind faces, let cheerfulness abound with industry. Give us to go blithely on our business all this day. Bring us to our resting beds weary and content and undishonored and grant us in the end the gift of sleep.

It is a great thing if you can persuade people that they are somehow or other partakers in a mystery. It makes them feel bigger.

You can kill the body, but not the spirit.

Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.

Am I no a bonny fighter?

Doubtless the world is quite right in a million ways; but you have to be kicked about a little to convince you of the fact.

For the forest takes away from you all excuse to die. There is nothing here to cabin or thwart your free desires. Here all impudences of the brawling world reach you no more.

A friend is a gift you give yourself.

There is but one art, to omit.

The full truth of this odd matter is what the world has long been looking for and the public curiosity is sure to welcome.

It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it.

The spirit of delight comes in small ways.

The first experience can never be repeated. The first love, the first sun-rise, the first South Sea Island, are memories apart, and touched a virginity of sense.

We were to found a University magazine. A pair of little, active brothers-Livingstone by name, great skippers on the foot, great rubbers of the hands, who kept a book-shop over against the University building-had been debauched to play the part of publishers. We four were to be conjuct editors and, what was the main point of the concern, to print our own works; while, by every rule of arithmetic-that flatterer of credulity-the adventure must succeed and bring great profit. Well, well: it was a bright vision.

Of what shall a man be proud, if he is not proud of his friends?