Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes - Famous Quotes by Robert Louis Stevenson
Born: 1850-11-13
Died: 1894-12-03
Robert Louis Stevenson Biography
...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
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A friend is a gift you give yourself.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Friendship ] ***
Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall. Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down. And this is all life really means.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Life ] ***
Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a poor substitute for life.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Life ] [ Book ] ***
Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap ... but by the seeds you plant!
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Life ] ***
Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Consequences ] ***
Everyone lives by selling something.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Life ] ***
For God's sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself!
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Fool ] ***
For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Travel ] ***
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
More quotations on: [ Persistence ] ***
He who knoweth the precepts by heart, but faileth to practice them, is like unto one who lighteth a lamp and then shutteth his eyes.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Knowledge ] ***
I have done my fiddling so long under Vesuvius that I have almost forgotten to play, and can only wait for the eruption and think it long of coming. Literally no man has more wholly outlived life than I. And still it's good fun.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Life ] ***
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
More quotations on: [ Work ] ***
If we take matrimony at it's lowest, we regard it as a sort of friendship recognised by the police.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Marriage ] ***
If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say "give them up," for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Morality ] ***
It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose, and the eyes will take care of themselves.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
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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
More quotations on: [ Nature ] ***
It is the mark of a good action that it appears inevitable in retrospect.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
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Keep your fears to yourself; share your courage with others.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Courage ] [ Fear ] ***
Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but primarily by catchwords.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Language ] ***
Marriage: a long conversation chequered by disputes.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
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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
More quotations on: [ Wisdom ] ***
No man is useless while he has a friend.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
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Of what shall a man be proud, if he is not proud of his friends?
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Friendship ] ***
Once you are married, there is nothing for you, not even suicide, but to be good.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Marriage ] ***
Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Success ] [ Failure ] ***
Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Business ] ***
Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Political ] ***
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
More quotations on: [ Peace ] ***
So 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 Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Love ] [ Friendship ] ***
That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
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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
More quotations on: [ Love ] ***
The cruelest lies are often told in silence.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Lying ] ***
The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Writing ] ***
The friendly cow all red and white,
I love with all my heart:
She gives me cream with all her might;
to eat with apple tart.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
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The mark of a good action is that it appears inevitable in retrospect.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
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The obscurest epoch is to-day.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Time ] ***
The price we have to pay for money is sometimes liberty.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Money ] [ Freedom ] ***
The truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Truth ] ***
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
More quotations on: [ Writing ] ***
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
More quotations on: [ Progress ] ***
There is only one difference between a long life and a good dinner: that, in the dinner, the sweets come last.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Life ] ***
To be idle requires a strong sense of personal identity.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
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To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Life ] ***
To hold the same views at forty as we held at twenty is to have been stupefied for a score of years, and take rank, not as a prophet, but as an unteachable brat, well birched and none the wiser.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Wisdom ] [ Old Age ] ***
To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying "Amen" to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to keep your soul alive.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Life ] ***
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Travel ] ***
Vanity dies hard; in some obstinate cases it outlives the man.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Pride ] ***
We are all travellers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Travel ] ***
We live in an ascending scale when we live happily, one thing leading to another in an endless series.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Happiness ] ***
We must accept life for what it actually is - a challenge to our quality without which we should never know of what stuff we are made, or grow to our full stature.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Growth ] [ Life ] ***
When 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 Stevenson
More quotations on: [ War ] ***
Wine is bottled poetry.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
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You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Love ] ***
You cannot run away from weakness; you must some time fight it out or perish; and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?
- Robert Louis Stevenson
More quotations on: [ Weakness ] ***
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