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Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes - Page 13

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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.

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.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Easy, Quarrels
Robert Louis Stevenson (2015). “The Complete Novels of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated Edition): Treasure Island, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Kidnapped, Catriona, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, The Master of Ballantrae, St Ives: Adventures of a French Prisoner in England…”, p.869, e-artnow

...those little people, my brownies, who do one half of my work for me while I am fast asleep, and in all human likelihood do the rest for me as well, when I am wide awake and fondly suppose I do for myself.

Robert Louis Stevenson
People, Half, Littles
Robert Louis Stevenson, Lloyd Osbourne, Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson, William Ernest Henley (1925). “The works of Robert Louis Stevenson”

If this is death, it is easier than life.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Death, Life Death, Easier

The sticks break, the stones crumble, The eternal altars tilt and tumble, Sanctions and tales dislimn like mist About the amazed evangelist. He stands unshook from age to youth Upon one pin-point of the truth.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Age, Tilt, Stones
Robert Louis Stevenson (2008). “South Sea Tales”, p.257, OUP Oxford

Marriage is a step so grave and decisive that it attracts light-headed, variable men by its very awfulness.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Men, Light, Variables
'Virginibus Puerisque' (1881) 'Virginibus Puerisque, pt. 1'

If your morals make you dreary, depend upon 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 and simpler people.

Robert Louis Stevenson
People, Giving, Vices
Robert Louis Stevenson (2015). “Across The Plains”, p.139, Sheba Blake Publishing

The very flexibility and ease which make men's friendships so agreeable while they endure, make them the easier to destroy and forget. And a man who has a few friends, or one who has a dozen (if there be any one so wealthy on this earth), cannot forget on how precarious a base his happiness reposes; and how by a stroke or two of fate --a death, a few light words, a piece of stamped paper, a woman's bright eyes --he may be left, in a month, destitute of all.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Friends, Eye, Fate
Robert Louis Stevenson (2014). “Memories, Portraits, Essays and Records (Annotated Edition)”, p.566, Jazzybee Verlag

To make our morality center on forbidden acts is to defile the imagination and to introduce into our judgments of our fellow men a secret element of gusto.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Men, Imagination, Secret
Robert Louis Stevenson (1900). “A Christmas Sermon”, p.6, Library of Alexandria

Death is given in a kiss; the dearest kindnesses are fatal; and into this life, where one thing preys upon another, the child too often makes its entrance from the mother's corpse.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Death, Mother, Kindness
Robert Louis Stevenson (2015). “The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Letters and Essays (Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer, containing Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped, Catriona and A Child's Garden of Verses”, p.4628, e-artnow

The first experience can never be repeated. The first love, the first sun-rise, the first South Sea Island, are memories apart, and touched a virginity of sense.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Memories, First Love, Sea
Robert Louis Stevenson, Roslyn Jolly (2008). “South Sea Tales”, p.10, Oxford Paperbacks

Youth now flees on feathered foot.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Feet, Youth
Robert Louis Stevenson (2015). “The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Letters and Essays (Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer, containing Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped, Catriona and A Child's Garden of Verses”, p.2656, e-artnow

It is the property of things seen for the first time, or for the first time after long, like the flowers in spring, to reawaken in us the sharp edge of sense and that impression of mystic strangeness which otherwise passes out of life with the coming of years; but the sight of a loved face is what renews a man's character from the fountain upwards.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Spring, Flower, Character
Robert Louis Stevenson (1993). “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: The Merry Men and Other Stories”, p.105, Wordsworth Editions

All sorts of allowances are made for the illusions of youth, and none, or almost none for the disenchantment of age.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Age, Youth, Illusion

Had be been Shakespeare, he would then have written Troilus and Cressidato brand the offending sex; but being only a little dog, he began to bite them.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Funny, Dog, Sex
Robert Louis Stevenson (2016). “Memories and Portraits: Stevenson's Vol. 21”, p.67, VM eBooks

The seeming significance of nature's appearances, their unchanging strangeness to the senses, and the thrilling response which they awaken in the mind of man . . . If we could only write near enough to the facts, and yet with no pedestrian calm, but ardently, we might transfer the glamour of reality direct upon our pages.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Nature, Writing, Reality

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.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Morning, Business, Laughter
Robert Louis Stevenson, Lloyd Osbourne, Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson, William Ernest Henley (1925). “The works of Robert Louis Stevenson”

Death, like a host, comes smiling to the door; Smiling, he greets us, on that tranquil shore Where neither piping bird nor peeping dawn Disturbs the eternal sleep, But in the stillness far withdrawn Our dreamless rest for evermore we keep.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Sleep, Doors, Bird
Robert Louis Stevenson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated)”, p.3712, Delphi Classics

Every man is his own doctor of divinity, in the last resort.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Men, Doctors, Divinity
Robert Louis Stevenson (2015). “The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Letters and Essays (Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer, containing Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped, Catriona and A Child's Garden of Verses”, p.3795, e-artnow

If you are going to make a book end badly, it must end badly from the beginning.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Book, Writing, Ends
Robert Louis Stevenson (2015). “The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Letters and Essays (Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer, containing Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped, Catriona and A Child's Garden of Verses”, p.2210, e-artnow

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

Robert Louis Stevenson
Life, Spring, Heart
Robert Louis Stevenson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated)”, p.3716, Delphi Classics

Going for character: why not now, and where you stand?

Robert Louis Stevenson
Character, Weakness, Why Not

A happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a five-pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of goodwill; and their entrance into a room is as though another candle had been lighted.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Happiness, Men, Focus
Robert Louis Stevenson (2015). “The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Letters and Essays (Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer, containing Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped, Catriona and A Child's Garden of Verses”, p.4583, e-artnow

When we have discovered a continent, or crossed a chain of mountains, it is only to find another ocean or another plain upon the further side. . . . O toiling hands of mortals! O wearied feet, travelling ye know not whither! Soon, soon, it seems to you, you must come forth on some conspicuous hilltop, and but a little way further, against the setting sun, descry the spires of El Dorado. Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Travel, Ocean, Feet
'Virginibus Puerisque' (1881) 'El Dorado'

There is no music like a little river's . . . It takes the mind out-of-doors . . . and . . . it quiets a man down like saying his prayers.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Prayer, Men, Doors
Robert Louis Stevenson (2015). “Prince Otto”, p.19, Robert Louis Stevenson

In winter I get up at night And dress by yellow candle-light. In summer quite the other way I have to go to bed by day.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Summer, Winter, Night
A Child's Garden of Verses "Bed in Summer" l. 1 (1885)

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