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Home
Authors
Robert Louis Stevenson
Scottish
Writer
About the author
The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the domination of outward conditions.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Being
#Habit
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,
Scottish
Writer
#Love
#Man
#Friend
Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Consequences
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,
Scottish
Writer
#Talk
#Nothing
#State
#Money
#Age
#Education
#Health
#Profit
That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Success
#Man
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,
Scottish
Writer
#Love
#Body
The correction of silence is what kills; when you know you have transgressed, and your friend says nothing, and avoids your eye.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Eye
#Nothing
#Friend
#Silence
#Correction
The cruelest lies are often told in silence.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Lies
#Silence
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,
Scottish
Writer
#Difficulty
#Literature
Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Thought
#Preparation
#Politics
#Profession
The mark of a good action is that it appears inevitable in retrospect.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Action
The obscurest epoch is today.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Today
The price we have to pay for money is sometimes liberty.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Liberty
#Money
You think dogs will not be in heaven? I tell you, they will be there long before any of us.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Will
#Dogs
#Heaven
The Devil, can sometimes do a very gentlemanly thing.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Devil
Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, yet we make the same impression on Buddhists and vegetarians, for we feed on babies, though not our own.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Nothing
#Impression
#Babies
#Disgust
#Cannibalism
Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but primarily by catchwords.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Man
Marriage is like life - it is a field of battle, not a bed of roses.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Life
#Marriage
#Battle
#Bed
#Roses
Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Marriage
#Conversation
Marriage: A friendship recognized by the police.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Police
#Friendship
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,
Scottish
Writer
#People
#Wisdom
#Mediocrity
No man is useless while he has a friend.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Man
#Friend
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,
Scottish
Writer
#Man
#Friend
Nothing made by brute force lasts.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Nothing
#Force
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,
Scottish
Writer
#Quiet
#Misfortune
#Fortune
Of what shall a man be proud, if he is not proud of his friends?
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Man
#Friends
Old and young, we are all on our last cruise.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Old
Once you are married, there is nothing left for you, not even suicide.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Nothing
#Suicide
Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Life
#Succeed
#Business
#Spirits
Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Man
#Business
#Neglect
#Devotion
The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#World
#Kings
Nothing like a little judicious levity.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Nothing
Wine is bottled poetry.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Poetry
#Wine
The truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Enemy
#Friends
#Truth
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,
Scottish
Writer
#Life
#Challenge
#Quality
Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Life
#Poor
#Cards
Well, well, Henry James is pretty good, though he is of the nineteenth century, and that glaringly.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Pretty
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,
Scottish
Writer
#Man
#Theory
You could read Kant by yourself, if you wanted; but you must share a joke with some one else.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
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,
Scottish
Writer
#Honor
#Weapons
#Destiny
#Lie
#Fathers
#Fatigue
#Thankfulness
We all know what Parliament is, and we are all ashamed of it.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Parliament
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,
Scottish
Writer
#People
#Wife
#Eyes
#Marriage
#Laughter
#Tears
You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Love
#Giving
You can kill the body but not the spirit.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Spirit
#Body
You can read Kant by yourself, if you wanted to; but you must share a joke with someone else.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
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,
Scottish
Writer
#Years
#Change
#Progress
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,
Scottish
Writer
#Time
#Now
#Fight
#Weakness
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,
Scottish
Writer
#Man
#Boys
#Girls
To be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise is to have succeeded in life.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Life
#Exercise
The world is full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#World
#Kings
There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
There is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly understood, is solitude made perfect.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Quiet
#Solitude
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,
Scottish
Writer
#People
#Saying
#May
#Idea
#Duty
#Neighbors
There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#World
#Being
#Duty
#Benefits
There is only one difference between a long life and a good dinner: that, in the dinner, the sweets come last.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Life
#Difference
We live in an ascending scale when we live happily, one thing leading to another in an endless series.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Leading
To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Life
#End
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,
Scottish
Writer
#World
#Wilderness
#Friend
To become what we are capable of becoming is the only end in life.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Life
#End
To forget oneself is to be happy.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Forget
To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Saying
#World
#Soul
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Travel
Vanity dies hard; in some obstinate cases it outlives the man.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Man
#Vanity
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,
Scottish
Writer
#Style
#Art
#Literature
To be idle requires a strong sense of personal identity.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Sense
#Identity
Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Day
#Harvest
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,
Scottish
Writer
#Strength
#Grace
#Friends
#Enemies
#Mind
#Quiet
#Courage
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,
Scottish
Writer
#Travel
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.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Life
#Play
#Man
#Fiction
Everyone lives by selling something, whatever be his right to it.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Right
#Selling
Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Consequences
Every one lives by selling something.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Selling
Every man has a sane spot somewhere.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Man
He who sows hurry reaps indigestion.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Indigestion
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.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
Each has his own tree of ancestors, but at the top of all sits Probably Arboreal.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a poor substitute for life.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Life
#Poor
#Books
An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Life
#Worth
#Fortune
All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Language
#Speech
All human beings are commingled out of good and evil.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Evil
Absences are a good influence in love and keep it bright and delicate.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Love
#Influence
A friend is a gift you give yourself.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Friend
The world has no room for cowards.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#World
#Cowards
Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Courage
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,
Scottish
Writer
#Heart
#World
#Tradition
#Mankind
It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Curiosity
Keep your eyes open to your mercies. The man who forgets to be thankful has fallen asleep in life.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Life
#Man
#Open
#Eyes
Judge each day not by the harvest you reap but by the seeds you plant.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Day
#Harvest
Compromise is the best and cheapest lawyer.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Compromise
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,
Scottish
Writer
#Spirit
#Habit
#Nature
It is the mark of a good action that it appears inevitable in retrospect.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Action
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,
Scottish
Writer
#Old
#Men
#Spirit
#Beauty
#Quality
#Trees
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,
Scottish
Writer
#Love
#Will
#May
#Respect
#Man
#Spirit
#Posterity
It is better to lose health like a spendthrift than to waste it like a miser.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Health
#Waste
#Miser
It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose, and the eyes will take care of themselves.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Will
#Eyes
#Care
#Garden
#Maxim
I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Travel
It's a pleasant thing to be young, and have ten toes.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
If your morals make you dreary, depend on it, they are wrong.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Wrong
#Morals
I find it useful to remember, everyone lives by selling something.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Selling
If we take matrimony at it's lowest, we regard it as a sort of friendship recognised by the police.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Police
#Friendship
#Matrimony
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,
Scottish
Writer
#Success
#Man
#Question
#Trade
#Fame
#Gods
I've a grand memory for forgetting.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Memory
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,
Scottish
Writer
#Favorite
#Mankind
#Churches
In marriage, a man becomes slack and selfish, and undergoes a fatty degeneration of his moral being.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Being
#Man
#Marriage
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Shadow
I regard you with an indifference closely bordering on aversion.
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Scottish
Writer
#Indifference