By the time a man gets well into his seventies his continued existence is a mere miracle.
Robert Louis StevensonThe problem of education is twofold: first to know, and then to utter. Everyone who lives any semblance of an inner life thinks more nobly and profoundly than he speaks.
Robert Louis Stevensonand he began to understand what a wild game we play in life; he began to understand that a thing once done cannot be undone nor changed by saying "I am sorry!
Robert Louis StevensonDogs live with man as courtiers 'round a monarch, steeped in the flattery of his notice ... to push their favor in this world of pickings and caresses is, perhaps, the business of their lives.
Robert Louis StevensonThe mark of a Scot of all classes [is that] he ... remembers and cherishes the memory of his forebears, good or bad; and there burns alive in him a sense of identity with the dead even to the twentieth generation.
Robert Louis StevensonWhen it comes to my own turn to lay my weapons down, I shall do so with thankfulness and fatigue, and whatever be my destiny afterward, I shall be glad to lie down with my fathers in honor. It is human at least, if not divine.
Robert Louis StevensonBright is the ring of words When the right man rings them, Fair the fall of songs When the singer sings them. Still they are carolled and said - On wings they are carried - After the singer is dead And the maker buried.
Robert Louis StevensonWealth I ask not, hope nor love, Nor a friend to know me; All I seek, the heaven above And the road below me.
Robert Louis StevensonEvery heart that has beat strongly and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind.
Robert Louis StevensonA man finds he has been wrong at every stage of his career, only to deduce the astonishing conclusion that he is at last entirely right.
Robert Louis StevensonThe cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator.
Robert Louis StevensonLove- what is love? A great and aching heart; Wrung hands; and silence; and a long despair
Robert Louis StevensonHis past was fairly blameless; few men could read the rolls of their life with less apprehension; yet he was humbled to the dust by the many ill things he had done, and raised up again into sober and fearful gratitude by the many he had come so near to doing, yet avoided.
Robert Louis StevensonThe world has no room for cowards. We must all be ready somehow to toil, to suffer, to die.
Robert Louis StevensonOne more touch of the bow, smell of the virginal Green - one more, and my bosom Feels new life with an ecstasy.
Robert Louis Stevenson-I am not sure whether he's sane. -If there's any doubt about the matter, he is.
Robert Louis StevensonExtreme busyness is a symptom of deficient vitality, and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity.
Robert Louis StevensonSo long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.
Robert Louis StevensonAll error, not merely verbal, is a strong way of stating that the current truth is incomplete.
Robert Louis StevensonIt is perhaps a more fortunate destiny to have a taste for collecting shells than to be born a millionaire.
Robert Louis StevensonAnd if a man reads very hard, as the old anecdote reminds us, he will have little time for thought.
Robert Louis StevensonThere 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 StevensonThere is no progress whatever. Everything is just the same as it was thousands, and tens of thousands, of years ago. The outward form changes. The essence does not change.
Robert Louis StevensonThere is but one art, to omit! Oh, if I knew how to omit I would ask no other knowledge. A man who knows how to omit would make an Iliad of a daily paper.
Robert Louis StevensonWith 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 StevensonNow, to be properly enjoyed, a walking tour should be gone upon alone.... Freedom is of the essence, because you should be able to stop and go on and follow this way or that as the freak takes you.... There should be no cackle of voices at your elbow to jar on the meditative silence of the morning.
Robert Louis Stevenson