Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes

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

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

The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness. There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but innocent freedom of the soul. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine.

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

"I incline to Cain's heresy," he used to say quaintly: "I let my brother go to the devil in his own way."

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 is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.

The secret to a happiness is a small ego. And a big wallet. Good wine helps, too. But that's not really a secret, is it?

It is perhaps a more fortunate destiny to have a taste for collecting shells than to be born a millionaire.

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. Bless us, if it may be, in all our innocent endeavours. If it may not, give us the strength to encounter that which is to come, that we may be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temparate in wrath, and in all changes of fortune, and down to the gates of death, loyal and loving to one another.

Dead men don't bite

We must go on, because we can't turn back.

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But in the stillness far withdrawn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.

Books are good enough in their own way but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life.

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