Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes on Man (21 Quotes)

Under the strain of this continually impending doom and by the sleeplessness to which I now condemned myself, ay, even beyond what I had thought possible to man, I became, in my own person, a creature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly weak both in body and mind, and solely occupied by one thought: the horror of my other self.

With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to the truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.

Gentleness and cheerfulness, these come before all morality they are the perfect duties. If your morals make you dreary, depend on 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 men.

No man is useless while he has a friend.

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.

In marriage, a man becomes slack and selfish, and undergoes a fatty degeneration of his moral being.

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

Vanity dies hard; in some obstinate cases it outlives the man.

And when life draws to its even
And the day of man is past,
They shall all go home to heaven,
Home at last.

To be honest, to be kind To earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends, but these without capitulation above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy.

A Morning Prayer The day returns and brings us the petty round of irritating concerns and duties. Help us to play the man help us to perform them with laughter and kind faces, let cheerfulness abound with industry. Give us to go blithely on our business all this day. Bring us to our resting beds weary and content and undishonored and grant us in the end the gift of sleep.

That a man is successful who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much, who has gained the respect of the intelligent men and the love of children who has filled his niche and accomplished his task who leaves the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul who never lacked appreciation of earth's beauty or failed to express it who looked for the best in others and gave the best he had.

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.

The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his mouth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator.

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.

Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.

That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much.

These are my politics to change what we can to better what we can but still to bear in mind that man is but a devil weakly fettered by some generous beliefs and impositions and for no word however sounding, and no cause however just and pious, to relax the stricture on these bonds.

Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but primarily by catchwords.

Keep your eyes open to your mercies. The man who forgets to be thankful has fallen asleep in life.

If a man loves the labour of his trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him.