Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes

321 Sourced Quotes

All I dreamed about Dr. Jekyll was that one man was being pressed into a cabinet, when he swallowed a drug and changed into another being. I awoke and said at once that I had found the missing link for which I had been looking so long, and before I went again to sleep almost every detail of the story, as it stands, was clear to me. Of course, writing it was another thing.

Robert Louis Stevenson
There can be no fairer ambition than to excel in talk; to be affable, gay, ready, clear, and welcome.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Doubtless the world is quite right in a million ways; but you have to be kicked about a little to convince you of the fact.

Robert Louis Stevenson
It is not for nothing, either, that the umbrella has become the very foremost badge of modern civilization--the Urim and Thummim of respectability.... So strongly do we feel on this point, indeed, that we are almost inclined to consider all who possess really well-conditioned umbrellas as worthy of the Franchise.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Extreme busyness, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality.

Robert Louis Stevenson
It is almost as if the millennium were arrived, when we shall throw our clocks and watches over the housetop, and remember time and seasons no more. Not to keep hours for a lifetime is... to live forever.

Robert Louis Stevenson
If you would grow great and stately,
You must try to walk sedately.

Robert Louis Stevenson
The very flexibility and ease which make men's friendships so agreeable while they endure, make them the easier to destroy and forget.

Robert Louis Stevenson
There are, indeed, few merrier spectacles than that of many windmills bickering together in a fresh breeze over a woody country; their halting alacrity of movement, their pleasant business, making bread all day with uncouth gesticulation; their air, gigantically human, as of a creature half alive, put a spirit of romance into the tamest landscape.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Everything is true; only the opposite is true too; you must believe both equally or be damned.

Robert Louis Stevenson
I smoke a pipe abroad, because
To all cigars I much prefer it,
And as I scorn you social laws,
My choice has nothing to deter it.

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

Robert Louis Stevenson
Respectability is a very good thing in its way, but it does not rise superior to all considerations. I would not for a moment venture to hint that it was a matter of taste; but I think I will go as far as this: that if a position is admittedly unkind, uncomfortable, unnecessary, and superfluously useless, although it were as respectableasthe Church of England, the sooner a man is out of it, the better for himself, and all concerned.

Robert Louis Stevenson
My lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

Robert Louis Stevenson
His friends were those of his own blood or those whom he had known the longest; his affections, like ivy, were the growth of time, they implied no aptness in the object.

Robert Louis Stevenson
If you want a person's faults, go to those who love him. They will not tell you, but they know.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying,
Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now,
Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying,
My heart remembers how!

Robert Louis Stevenson
Lastly (and this is, perhaps, the golden rule), no woman should marry a man who does not smoke.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Nature, the great Moloch, which exacts a frightful tax of human blood, sparing neither young nor old; taking the child from the cradle, the mother from her babe, and the father from the family.

Robert Louis Stevenson
But we are so fond of life that we have no leisure to entertain the terror of death. It is a honeymoon with us all through, and none of the longest. Small blame to us if we give our whole hearts to this glowing bride of ours, to the appetities, to honour, to the hungry curiosity of the mind, to the pleasure of the eyes in nature, and the pride of our own nimble bodies.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Now, to be properly enjoyed, a walking tour should be gone upon alone.... Freedom is of the essence, because you should be able to stop and go on and follow this way or that as the freak takes you.... There should be no cackle of voices at your elbow to jar on the meditative silence of the morning.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Benjamin Franklin went through life an altered man because he once paid too dearly for a penny whistle. My concern springs usually from a deeper source, to wit, from having bought a whistle when I did not want one.

Robert Louis Stevenson
The engineer was not only exposed to the hazards of the sea; he must often ford his way by land to remote and scarce accessible places, beyond reach of the mail or the post-chaise, even the tracery of the bridle-path, and guided by natives across bog and heather.

Robert Louis Stevenson
It is the habitual carriage of the umbrella that is the stamp of Respectability. Robinson Crusoe was rather a moralist than a pietist, and his leaf-umbrella is as fine an example of the civilised mind striving to express itself under adverse circumstances as we have ever met with.

Robert Louis Stevenson
You have your little handful of facts, little bits of a puzzle, and you sit and think, and fit 'em together this way and that, and get up and throw 'em down, and say damn, and go out for a walk.

Robert Louis Stevenson
And if a man reads very hard, as the old anecdote reminds us, he will have little time for thought.

Robert Louis Stevenson
A man met a lad weeping. "What do you weep for?" he asked. "I am weeping for my sins," said the lad. "You must have little to do," said the man. The next day, they met again. Once more the lad was weeping. "Why do you weep now?" asked the man. "I am weeping because I have nothing to eat," said the lad. "I thought it would come to that," said the man.

Robert Louis Stevenson
I am told there are people who do not care for maps, and I find it hard to believe.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Jew storekeepers have already learned the advantage to be gained from this [unlimited credit]: they lead on the farmer into irretrievable indebtedness, and keep him ever after as their bondslave hopelessly grinding in the mill.

Robert Louis Stevenson
He who has learned to love an art or science has wisely laid up riches against the day of riches.

Robert Louis Stevenson