Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes
A Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer, and a leading representative of Neo-romanticism in English literature.
(1850 - 1894)
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A faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity.
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A friend is a gift you give yourself.
[Friendship]
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A generous prayer is never presented in vain; the petition may be refused, but the petitioner is always, I believe, rewarded by some gracious visitation.
[Prayer]
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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.
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Absences are a good influence in love and keep it bright and delicate.
[Absence]
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Ah sorts of allowances are made for the illusions of youth; and none, or almost none, for the disenchantments of age.
[Youth]
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All error, not merely verbal, is a strong way of stating that the current truth is incomplete. The follies of youth have a basis in sound reason, just as much as the embarrassing questions put by babes and sucklings. Their most antisocial acts indicate the defects of our society. When the torrent sweeps the man against a boulder, you must expect him to scream, and you need not be surprised if the scream is sometimes a theory.
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All human beings are commingled out of good and evil.
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All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.
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All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it.
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An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding.
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An aspiration is a joy forever, a possession as solid as a landed estate, a fortune which we can never exhaust and which gives us year by year a revenue of pleasurable activity.
[Goals]
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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.
[One Day]
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Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life.
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But it is better to be a fool than to be dead. It is better to emit a scream in the shape of a theory than to be entirely insensible to the jars and incongruities of life and take everything as it comes in a forlorn stupidity. Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind. For God's sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself!
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By all means begin your folio; 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.
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By the time a man gets well into his seventies his continued existence is a mere miracle.
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Compromise is the best and cheapest lawyer.
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Courage is the footstool of the Virtues, upon which they stand.
[Courage]
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