Robert Louis Stevenson Quote

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.

The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, with Bibliographical Notes by Edmund Grosse (ed. 1906)