Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes

A knowledge that another has felt as we have felt, and seen things not much otherwise than we have seen them, will continue to the end to be one of life's choicest blessings. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

The Flowers
All the names I know from nurse:
Gardener's garters, Shepherd's purse,
Bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock,
And the Lady Hollyhock.
Fairy places, fairy things,
Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,
Tiny trees for tiny dames
These must all be fairy names!
Tiny woods below whose boughs
Shady fairies weave a house;
Tiny tree-tops, rose or thyme,
Where the braver fairies climb!
Fair are grown-up people's trees,
But the fairest woods are these;
Where, if I were not so tall,
I should live for good and all ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,
With eyes of gold and bramble-dew,
Steel-true and blade-straight,
The great artificer made my mate. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

It was high time, for I now began to be tortured with thirst. The glow of the sun from above, its thousandfold reflection from the waves, the sea-water that fell and dried upon me, caking my very lips with salt, combined to make my throat burn and my brain ache. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Nobody more welcome than yourself, ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

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

Black mail I suppose; an honest man paying through the nose for some of the capers of his youth. Black Mail House is what I call the place with the door, in consequence. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Really don't choose every day from the harvest you experience but from the seeds you plant ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Hope looks for unqualified success; but Faith counts certainly on failure, and takes honorable defeat to be a form of victory. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

subjective disturbance ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Be what you are, and become what you are capable of becoming. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

We should wipe two words from our vocabulary: gratitude and charity. In real life, help is given out of friendship, or it is not valued; it is received from the hand of friendship, or it is resented. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

The outer world, from which we cower into our houses, seemed after all a gentle habitable place; and night after night a man's bed, it seemed, was laid and waiting for him in the fields, where God keeps an open house. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Compromise is the best and cheapest lawyer ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Idleness does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognized in the dogmatic formualries of the ruling class. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

The dismal quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy ways, and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful re-invasion of darkness, seemed, in the lawyer's eyes, like a district of some city in a nightmare (The Carew Murder Case) ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

A birdie with a yellow bill Hoped upon the window sill, Cocked his shining eye and said: 'Ain't you 'shamed, you sleepy-'ead? ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

The veil of self-indulgence was rent from head to foot. I saw my life as a whole. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

The San Francisco Stock Exchange was the place that continuously pumped up the savings of the lower classes into the pockets of the millionaires. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

In the law of God, there is no statute of limitations. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

It is a good thing to make a bridge of gold to a flying enemy ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Marriage is like life - it is a field of battle, not a bed of roses. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

We fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of fear and pain. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

We got together in a few days a company of the toughest old salts imaginable
not pretty to look at, but fellows, by their faces, of the most indomitable spirit. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Money alone is only a mean; it presupposes a man to use it. The rich man can go where he pleases, but perhaps please himself nowhere. He can buy a library or visit the whole world, but perhaps has neither patience to read nor intelligence to see ... The purse may be full and the heart empty. He may have gained the world and lost himself; and with all his wealth around him ... he may live as blank a life as any tattered ditcher. ~ 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

After the moon went down, the heaven was a thing to wonder at for stars. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

It is the property of things seen for the first time, or for the first time after long, like the flowers in spring, to reawaken in us the sharp edge of sense and that impression of mystic strangeness which otherwise passes out of life with the coming of years; but the sight of a loved face is what renews a man's character from the fountain upwards. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

I was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on that hard law of life, which lies at the root of religion and is one of the most plentiful springs of distress. Though so profound a double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the futherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

And altogether I paid pretty dear for my monthly fourpenny piece, in the shape of these abominable fancies. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Flower god, god of the spring, beautiful, bountiful,
Cold-dyed shield in the sky, lover of versicles,
Here I wander in April
Cold, grey-headed; and still to my
Heart, Spring comes with a bound, Spring the deliverer,
Spring, song-leader in woods, chorally resonant;
Spring, flower-planter in meadows,
Child-conductor in willowy
Fields deep dotted with bloom, daisies and crocuses:
Here that child from his heart drinks of eternity:
O child, happy are children! ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

The less I understood of this farrago, the less I was in a position to judge of its importance. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

The obscurest epoch is today. ~ 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

But a word once spoken who can recapture it? ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Well, well, Henry James is pretty good, though he is of the nineteenth century, and that glaringly. ~ 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

One more step, Mr. Hands," said I, "and I'll blow your brains out! Dead men don't bite, you know," I added with a chuckle. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Marriage is a step so grave and decisive that it attracts light-headed, variable men by its very awfulness. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

I am painfully situated, Utterson; my position is a very strange--a very strange one. It is one of those affairs that cannot be mended by talking. ~Jekyll ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

O God!' I screamed, and 'O God!' again and again; for there before my eyes
pale and shaken, and half fainting, and groping before him with his hands, like a man restored from death
there stood Henry Jekyll! ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Here it is about gentlemen of fortune. They lives rough, and they risk swinging, but they eat and drink like fighting-cocks, and when a cruise is done, why, it's hundreds of pounds instead of hundreds of farthings in their pockets. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

There were several books on a shelf; one lay beside the tea things open, and Utterson was amazed to find it a copy of a pious work, for which Jekyll had several times expressed a great esteem, annotated, in his own hand with startling blasphemies. Next, ~ 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

For will anyone dare to tell me that business is more entertaining than fooling among boats? He must have never seen a boat, or never seen an office, who says so. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Wealth 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 Stevenson

The most beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

A 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 Stevenson

Everything is true; only the opposite is true too; you must believe both equally or be damned. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Times are changed with him who marries; there are no more by-path meadows where you may innocently linger, but the road lies long and straight and dusty to the grave ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

One generation after another falls like honeybees upon this memorable forest, rifle its sweets, pack themselves with vital memories, and when the theft is consummated depart again into life richer, but poorer also. The forest, indeed, they have possessed, from that day forward it is theirs dissolubly, and they will never return to walk in it at night in the fondest of their dreams, and use it forever in their books and pictures. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

If each, I told myself, could be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable; the unjust might go his way, delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good things in which he found his pleasure, and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil. It was the curse of mankind that these incongruous faggots were thus bound together - that in the agonised womb of consciousness, these polar twins should be continuously struggling. How, then were they dissociated? ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

When loud by landside streamlets gush,
And clear in the greenwood quires the thrush,
With sun on the meadows
And songs in the shadows
Comes again to me
The gift of the tongues of the lea,
The gift of the tongues of meadows.
So when the earth is alive with gods,
And the lusty ploughman breaks the sod,
And the grass sings in the meadows,
And the flowers smile in the shadows,
Sits my heart at ease,
Hearing the song of the leas,
Singing the songs of the meadows. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

And I have come so far; and the sights and thoughts of my youth pursue me; and I see like a vision the youth of my father, and of his father, and the whole stream of lives flowing down there, far in the north, with the sound of laughter and tears, to cast me out in the end, as by a sudden freshet, on those ultimate islands. And I admire and bow my head before the romance of destiny. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

The thoughts of his mind, besides, were of the gloomiest dye; and when he glanced at the companion of his drive, he was conscious of some touch of that terror of the law and the law's officers, which may at times assail the most honest. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Sank or plundered. The sums are the scoundrel's share, ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

When a torrent sweeps a man against a boulder, you must expect him to scream, and you need not be surprised if the scream is sometimes a theory. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

He was in that humour when a man will cut off his nose to spite his face ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Lord, behold our family here assembled. We thank You for this place in which we dwell, for the love accorded us this day, for the hope with which we expect the morrow; for the health, the work, the food and the bright skies that make our lives delightful; for our friends in all parts of the earth. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind. Spare us to our friends, soften us to our enemies. Bless us, if it may be, in all our innocent endeavors; if it may not, give us strength to endure that which is to come that we may be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath and in all changes of fortune and down to the gates of death, loyal and loving to one another. We beseech of you this help and mercy for Christ's sake. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

God bless me, the man seems hardly human! Something troglodytic, shall we say? ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

I engaged him on the spot to be ship's cook. Long John Silver, he is called, and has lost a leg; but that I regarded as a recommendation, ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

My breakthrough as a reader was when I discovered the European adventure story writers - Alexander Dumas, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott, to name a few. ~ Terry Brooks

If he be Mr. Hyde" he had thought, "I shall be Mr. Seek. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

A good conscience is eight parts of courage. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Ah, said Silver, it were fortunate for me that I had Hawkins here. You would have let old john be cut to bits, and never given it a thought, doctor.
'Not a thought,' replied Dr. Livesey cheerily. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Death is given in a kiss; the dearest kindnesses are fatal; and into this life, where one thing preys upon another, the child too often makes its entrance from the mother's corpse. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Everyone lives by selling something. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Come, come, Cap'n, be just," returned the other. "There's no call to be angry with me in earnest. I'm on'y a chara'ter in a sea story. I don't really exist. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

The truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

I am told there are people who do not care for maps, and I find it hard to believe. ~ 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

We all know what Parliament is, and we are all ashamed of it. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

He was wild when he was young; a long while ago to be sure; but in the law of God, there is no statute of limitations. Ay, it must be that; the ghost of some old sin, the cancer of some concealed disgrace: punishment coming, PEDE CLAUDO, years after memory has forgotten and self-love condoned the fault. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

To be idle requires a strong sense of personal identity. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

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

It was by this time about nine in the morning, and the first fog of the season. A great chocolate-colored pall lowered over heaven, but the wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapors; so that as the cab crawled from street to street, Mr. Utterson beheld a marvelous number of degrees and hues of twilight; for here it would be dark like the black end of evening; and there would be a glow of a rich, lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration; and here for a moment, the fog would be quite broken up and a haggard shaft of daylight would glance in between the swirling wreaths. The dismal quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy ways, and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful reinvasion of darkness, seemed, in the lawyer's eyes, like a district of some city in a nightmare. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

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. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Once you are married, there is nothing left for you, not even suicide. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

In the harsh face of life faith can read a bracing gospel. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

When your toil has been a pleasure, you have not earned money merely, but money, health, delight, and moral profit, all in one. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Lastly no woman should marry a teetotaller, or a man who does not smoke. It is not for nothing that this "ignoble tobagie" as Michelet calls it, spreads all over the world. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

For no man lives in the external truth among salts and acids, but in the warm, phantasmagoric chamber of his brain, with the painted windows and the storied wall.
~ Robert Louis Stevenson

If you wish the pick of men and women, take a good bachelor and a good wife ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight! ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

I cannot tell if I was more tired or more grateful. Both at least, I was: tired as I never was before that night; and grateful to Gd as I trust I have been often, though never with more cause. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Courage, the footstool of the Virtues, upon which they stand. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Extreme busyness, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

I don't think I have one particular favourite writer. I have many whose works I will always buy or reread - Muriel Spark, Anthony Powell, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ruth Rendell, James Ellroy, William McIlvanney, Kate Atkinson, John Burnside, Louise Welsh, Iain Banks. ~ Ian Rankin

And then, all of a sudden, he stopped, and his jaw dropped as though he had remembered something.
"The score!" he burst out. "Three goes o' rum! Why, shiver my timbers, if I hadn't forgotten my score!"
And, falling on a bench, he laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks. I could not help joining; and we laughed together, peal after peal, until the tavern rang again. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Do not forget that even as "to work is to worship" so to be cheery is to worship also, and to be happy is the first step to being pious. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

If I have faltered more or less In my great task of happiness; If I have moved among my race And shown no glorious morning face; If beams from happy human eyes Have moved me not; if morning skies, Books, and my food, and summer rain Knocked on my sullen heart in vain: Lord, Thy most pointed pleasure take And stab my spirit broad awake! ... Amen. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

A man should stop his ears against paralyzing terror and run the race that is set before him with a single mind. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

There is a kind of gaping admiration that would fain roll Shakespeare and Bacon into one, to have a bigger thing to gape at; and a class of men who cannot edit one author without disparaging all others. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Love- what is love?
A great and aching heart;
Wrung hands;
and silence;
and a long despair ~ 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