Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes
A child should always say what's true, And speak when he is spoken to, And behave mannerly at table: At least as far as he is able.
If a man lives to any considerable age, it can not be denied that he laments his imprudences, but I notice he often laments his youth a deal more bitterly and with a more genuine intonation.
To the old our mouths are always partly closed; we must swallow our obvious retorts and listen. They sit above our heads, on life's raised dais, and appeal at once to our respect and pity.
So soon as prudence has begun to grow up in the brain, like a dismal fungus, it finds its first expression in a paralysis of generous acts.
A horrible sense of blackness and the treachery of fate seized hold upon the soul of the unhappy student.
Doubtless the world is quite right in a million ways; but you have to be kicked about a little to convince you of the fact.
Hope looks for unqualified success; but Faith counts certainly on failure, and takes honorable defeat to be a form of victory.
The problem of education is twofold: first to know, and then to utter. Everyone who lives any semblance of an inner life thinks more nobly and profoundly than he speaks.
They say cowardice is infectious; but then argument is, on the other hand, a great emboldener.
When we look in to the long avenue of the future, and see the good there is for each one of us to do, we realize, after all, what a beautiful thing it is to work, and to live, and to be happy.
One more touch of the bow, smell of the virginal Green - one more, and my bosom Feels new life with an ecstasy.
A hanging in a good quarrel is an easy death they say, though I could never hear of any that came back to say so.
Everything is true; only the opposite is true too; you must believe both equally or be damned.
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.
In every part and corner of our life, to lose oneself is to be a gainer; to forget oneself is to be happy.
It is a great thing if you can persuade people that they are somehow or other partakers in a mystery. It makes them feel bigger.
I smoke a pipe abroad, because To all cigars I much prefer it, And as I scorn you social laws, My choice has nothing to deter it.
The ideal story is that of two people who go into love step for step, with a fluttered consciousness, like a pair of children venturing together into a dark room.
I love this quote uttered by the character Widget in The Night Circus. He credits it to Herr Thiessen but knows it is a literary quote by the another author. "Wine is bottled poetry
Marriage is a step so grave and decisive that it attracts light-headed, variable men by its very awfulness.
If a man knows he will sooner or later be robbed upon a journey, he will have a bottle of the best in every inn, and look upon all his extravagances as so much gained upon the thieves.
The correction of silence is what kills; when you know you have transgressed, and your friend says nothing, and avoids your eye.
It is a mere illusion that, above a certain income, the personal desires will be satisfied and leave a wider margin for the generous impulse.
If you are going to make a book end badly, it must end badly from the beginning.
The child that is not clean and neat, With lots of toys and things to eat, He is a naughty child, I'm sure-- Or else his dear Papa is poor.
How do you like to go up in a swing, Up in the air so blue? Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing Ever a child can do!
Away down the river, A hundred miles or more, Other little children Shall bring my boats ashore.
Cruel children, crying babies, All grow up as geese and gabies, Hated, as their age increases, By their nephews and their nieces.
Faster than fairies, faster than witches, Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches; And charging along like troops in a battle, All through the meadows the horses and cattle
He who has learned to love an art or science has wisely laid up riches against the day of riches.
There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.
For marriage is like life in this—that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses.
... Man is not truly one, but truly two... even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both...
Alas! in the clothes of the greatest potentate, what is there but a man?
