Q - Robert Louis Stevenson
Posted on 14th March 2021
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson 1850 - 1894 was a Scottish novelist, travel writer and poet.
Two of his most famous works are 'Treasure Island' and 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde'.
‘You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving’
‘Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant’
‘To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming is the only end of life’
‘All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer’
‘I travel not to go anywhere, but to go, I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move’
‘A friend is a gift you give yourself’
‘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’
‘There are no foreign lands. It is the traveller only who is foreign’
‘Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life’
‘It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it’
‘Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits’
‘It is perhaps a more fortunate destiny to have a taste for collecting shells than to be born a millionaire’
‘Everybody at one time or another sits down to a banquet of consequences’
‘Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well’
‘The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish’
‘The cruellest lies are often told in silence’
‘Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others’
‘We are all travellers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend’
‘An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding’
‘Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary’
‘Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity’
‘You cannot run away from a weakness, you must some time fight it out or perish; and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?’
‘The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life’
‘Absences are a good influence in love and keep it bright and delicate’
‘That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much’
‘To forget oneself is to be happy’
‘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’
‘Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a poor substitute for life’
Share this post: