Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes (177 Quotes)

You can kill the body but not the spirit.

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

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.

Wine is bottled poetry.

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

Every man has a sane spot somewhere.

Marriage is like life - it is a field of battle, not a bed of roses.

Who talks to me of reason now?

Many's the long night I've dreamed of cheese - toasted, mostly.

You too, my mother, read my rhymes
For love of unforgotten times,
And you may chance to hear once more
The little feet along the floor.

Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.

My love was warm; for that I crossed
The mountains and the sea,
Nor counted that endeavour lost
That gave my love to me.

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.

O pleasant party round the fire!

I've a grand memory for forgetting.

Each has his own tree of ancestors, but at the top of all sits Probably Arboreal.

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?

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.

And what were childhood, wanting you?

So when night is come, and you have gone to bed,
All the songs you love to sing shall echo in your head.

You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving.

To forget oneself is to be happy.

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.

Life left by all life's benefits forsaken,
O keep the promise, Lord, and take the life.

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.

If your morals make you dreary, depend on it, they are wrong.

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world.

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 that life really means.

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.

It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it.

If we take matrimony at it's lowest, we regard it as a sort of friendship recognised by the police.

The Saints are the Sinners who keep on trying.

Well, well, Henry James is pretty good, though he is of the nineteenth century, and that glaringly.

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.

And my heart springs up anew, Bright and confident and true, And my old love comes to meet me in the dawning and the dew.

The world is full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.

The mark of a good action is that it appears inevitable in retrospect.

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.

Every heart that has beat strongly and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind.

Am I no a bonny fighter.

We all know what Parliament is, and we are all ashamed of it.

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.

Keep your fears to yourself, but share your inspiration with others.

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.

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.

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.

You shall speak her soft and fair:
See - you shall say - the love they send
To greet their unforgotten friend!

Nothing made by brute force lasts.

There is no duty we so much underrated as the duty of being happy.