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Quotes by Robert Louis Stevenson

Even I, who had the tide going out and in before me in the bay, and even watched for the ebbs, the better to get my shellfish -- even I (I say) if I had sat down to think, instead of raging at my fate, must have soon guessed the secret, and got free. It was no wonder the fishers had not understood me. The wonder was rather that they had ever guessed my pitiful illusion, and taken the trouble to come back. I had starved with cold and hunger on that island for close upon one hundred hours. But for the fishers, I might have left my bones there, in pure folly. And even as it was, I had paid for it pretty dear, not only in past sufferings, but in my present case; being clothed like a beggar-man, scarce able to walk, and in great pain of my sore throat.
I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both; and I believe they both get paid in the end; but the fools first.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
A friend is a gift you give yourself.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
If your morals make you dreary, depend on it , they are wrong.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.
– 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
Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
The cruelest lies are often told in silence.
– 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
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.
– 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
You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
You can forgive people who do not follow you through a philosophical disquisition but to find your wife laughing when you had tears in your eyes, or staring when you were in a fit of laughter, would go some way towards a dissolution of the marriage.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
Wine is bottled poetry.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
When I am grown to man's estate I shall be very proud and great. And tell the other girls and boys Not to meddle with my toys.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
Well, well, Henry James is pretty good, though he is of the nineteenth century, and that glaringly.
– 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
To be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise is to have succeeded in life.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
There is only one difference between a long life and a good dinner: that, in the dinner, the sweets come last.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
There 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 Stevenson
There is an idea abroad among moral people that they should make their neighbors good. One person I have to make good: Myself. But my duty to my neighbor is much more nearly expressed by saying that I have to make him happy if I may.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
The web, then, or the pattern, a web at once sensuous and logical, an elegant and pregnant texture: that is style, that is the foundation of the art of literature.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
The truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
The price we have to pay for money is sometimes liberty.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
The mark of a good action is that it appears inevitable in retrospect.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
Talk is by far the most accessible of pleasures. It costs nothing in money, it is all profit, it completes our education, founds and fosters our friendships, and can be enjoyed at any age and in almost any state of health.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
So long as we love, we serve 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
Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
Marriage: A friendship recognized by the police.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
Marriage is like life - it is a field of battle, not a bed of roses.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but primarily by catchwords.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
Keep your eyes open to your mercies. The man who forgets to be thankful has fallen asleep in life.
– 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
It is not likely that posterity will fall in love with us, but not impossible that it may respect or sympathize so a man would rather leave behind him the portrait of his spirit than a portrait of his face.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
It is better to lose health like a spendthrift than to waste it like a miser.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose, and the eyes will take care of themselves.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
In marriage, a man becomes slack and selfish, and undergoes a fatty degeneration of his moral being.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
If a man loves the labour of his trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him.
– 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
I never weary of great churches. It is my favorite kind of mountain scenery. Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
I am in the habit of looking not so much to the nature of a gift as to the spirit in which it is offered.
– 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.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
Every 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 Stevenson
Compromise is the best and cheapest lawyer.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a poor substitute for life.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
All human beings are commingled out of good and evil.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
Absences are a good influence in love and keep it bright and delicate.
– Robert Louis Stevenson