Quotes By Robert Louis Stevenson

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.

It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose, and the eyes will take care of themselves.

You could read Kant by yourself, if you wanted; but you must share a joke with some one else.

If a man loves the labour of his trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him.

Of what shall a man be proud, if he is not proud of his friends?

Marriage is like life - it is a field of battle, not a bed of roses.

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.

Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but primarily by catchwords.

Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.

The world has no room for cowards.

An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding.

So long as we love, we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I should say that we are almost indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.

Compromise is the best and cheapest lawyer.

Every man has a sane spot somewhere.

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.

Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences.

The truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy.

The web, then, or the pattern, a web at once sensuous and logical, an elegant and pregnant texture: that is style, that is the foundation of the art of literature.

I regard you with an indifference closely bordering on aversion.

Vanity dies hard; in some obstinate cases it outlives the man.

Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, yet we make the same impression on Buddhists and vegetarians, for we feed on babies, though not our own.

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 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.

Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes.

Nothing made by brute force lasts.

There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.

It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it.

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world.

When it comes to my own turn to lay my weapons down, I shall do so with thankfulness and fatigue, and whatever be my destiny afterward, I shall be glad to lie down with my fathers in honor. It is human at least, if not divine.

It is better to lose health like a spendthrift than to waste it like a miser.