Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes (177 Quotes)

The less I understood of this farrago, the less I was in a position to judge of its importance.

The workpeople, to be sure, were most annoyingly slow, but time cured that.

There comes an end to all things; the most capacious measure is filled at last; and this brief condescension to evil finally destroyed the balance of my soul.

Then it was that there came into my head the first of the mad notions that contributed so much to saving our lives.

To cast in it with Hyde was to die a thousand interests and aspirations.

This grove, that was now so peaceful, must then have rung with cries, I thought; and even with the thought I could believe I heard it ringing still.

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.

This is a handy cove, and a pleasant sittyated grog-shop. Much company, mate?

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.

We got together in a few days a company of the toughest old salts imaginable--not pretty to look at, but fellows, by their faces, of the most indomitable spirit.

You must suffer me to go my own dark way.

You're either my ship's cook-and then you were treated handsome-or Cap'n Silver, a common mutineer and pirate, and then you can go hang!

But what is the black spot, captain?

Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

If it comes to a swinging, swing all, say I.

If you keep on drinking rum, the world will soon be quit of a very dirty scoundrel!

Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.

It was high time, for I now began to be tortured with thirst. The glow of the sun from above, its thousandfold reflection from the waves, the sea-water that fell and dried upon me, caking my very lips with salt, combined to make my throat burn and my brain ache.

I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin.

It was Silver's voice, and before I had heard a dozen words, I would not have shown myself for all the world. I lay there, trembling and listening, in the extreme of fear and curiostiy, for, in those dozen words, I understood that the lives of all the honest men aboard depended on me alone.

I swear to God I will never set eyes on him again. I bind my honour to you that I am done with him in this world. It is all at an end. And indeed he does not want my help; you do not know him as I do; he is safe, he is quite safe; mark my words, he will never more be heard of. ~Jekyll

Seaward ho! Hang the treasure! It's the glory of the sea that has turned my head.

If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also.

Sir, with no intention to take offence, I deny your right to put words into my mouth.

It was for one minute that I saw him, but the hair stood upon my head like quills. Sir, if that was my master, why had he a mask upon his face?

Sometimes the isle was thick with savages, with whom we fought, sometimes full of dangerous animals that hunted us, but in all my fancies nothing occurred to me so strange as our actual adventures.

O my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan's signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend.

The captain has said too much or he has said too little, and I'm bound to say that I require an explanation of his words.

Some day, Utterson, after I am dead, you may perhaps come to learn the right and wrong of this. I cannot tell you. ~Landon

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.

Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences.

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.

Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.

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.

All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.

I regard you with an indifference closely bordering on aversion.

The squalling cat and the squeaking mouse,
The howling dog by the door of the house,
The bat that lies in bed at noon,
All love to be out by the light of the moon.

Let first the onion flourish there, Rose among the roots, the maiden-fair Wine scented and poetic soul of the capacious salad bowl.

To yon fair land ye come from, to yon sphere
Of strength and love where now ye shape your flight,
O even wings of music, bear my soul!

And by the folded lawns all day -
No idle gods for such a land -
All active Love should take its way
With active Labour hand in hand.

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.

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.

The Devil, can sometimes do a very gentlemanly thing.

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?

All human beings are commingled out of good and evil.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.

There is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly understood, is solitude made perfect.

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.