“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.”
Source: Robert Louis Stevenson: His Best Pacific Writings
“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.”
“You can forgive people who do not follow you through a philosophical disquisition; but to find your wife laughing when you had tears in your eyes, or staring when you were in a fit of laughter, would go some way towards a dissolution of the marriage.”
Source: Memories, Portraits, Essays and Records (Annotated Edition)
“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.”
Source: RLS: Stevenson's Letters to Charles Baxter
“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.”
“It is not likely that posterity will fall in love with us, but not impossible that it may respect or sympathize; so a man would rather leave behind him the portrait of his spirit than a portrait of his face.”
Source: Virginibus Puerisque
“There is an idea abroad among moral people that they should make their neighbors good. One person I have to make good: Myself. But my duty to my neighbor is much more nearly expressed by saying that I have to make him happy if I may.”
Source: The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Letters and Essays (Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer, containing Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped, Catriona and A Child's Garden of Verses
“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.”
“Many's the long night I've dreamed of cheese--toasted mostly.”
“This grove, that was now so peaceful, must then have rung with cries, I thought; and even with the thought I could believe I heard it ringing still.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated)
“But of works of art little can be said.”
Source: Memories, Portraits, Essays and Records (Annotated Edition)
“And the true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing. For to miss the joy is to miss all.”
Source: Collected Memoirs, Travel Sketches and Island Literature of Robert Louis Stevenson: Autobiographical Writings and Essays by the prolific Scottish novelist, poet and travel writer, author of Treasure Island, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Kidnapped & Catriona
“Alan," cried I, "what makes ye so good to me? What makes ye care for such a thankless fellow?" Deed, and I don't, know" said Alan. "For just precisely what I thought I liked about ye, was that ye never quarrelled:—and now I like ye better!”
Source: KIDNAPPED (StoneHenge Classics)
“I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.”
Source: The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Letters and Essays (Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer, containing Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped, Catriona and A Child's Garden of Verses
“The best things are nearest: breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of God 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 of life.”
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated)
“The rain is falling all around, It falls on field and tree, It rains on the umbrellas here, And on the ships at sea. - Rain”
Source: A Child's Garden of Verses (Sparklesoup Classics)
“I will make you brooches and toys for your delight Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night. I will make a palace fit for you and me Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.”
“A birdie with a yellow bill Hoped upon the window sill, Cocked his shining eye and said: 'Ain't you 'shamed, you sleepy-'ead?”
“My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring”
Source: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, second edition
“The saints are the sinners who keep on trying.”
“It is perhaps a more fortunate destiny to have a taste for collecting shells than to be born a millionaire.”
Source: The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Letters and Essays (Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer, containing Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped, Catriona and A Child's Garden of Verses
“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.”
Source: Robert Louis Stevenson: His Best Pacific Writings
“Sightseeing is the art of disappointment.”
Source: The Silverado Squatters: Easyread Large Edition
“It is the history of our kindnesses that alone make this world tolerable. If it were not for that, for the effect of kind words, kind looks, kind letters . . . I should be inclined to think our life a practical jest in the worst possible spirit.”
“I incline to Cain's heresy," he used to say quaintly: "I let my brother go to the devil in his own way.”
Source: Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde
“It is one of the worst things of sentiment that the voice grows to be more important than the words, and the speaker than that what is spoken.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated)
“Everyday courage has few witnesses. But yours is no less noble because no drum beats for you and no crowds shout your name.”
“The less I understood of this farrago, the less I was in a position to judge of its importance.”
Source: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Stonehenge Classics)
“I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin.”
Source: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: A Kaplan SAT Score-Raising Classic
“Extreme busyness is a symptom of deficient vitality, and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity.”
“I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both; and I believe they both get paid in the end; but the fools first.”
Source: Kidnapped: Stevenson's Vol. 23
“You're either my ship's cook-and then you were treated handsome-or Cap'n Silver, a common mutineer and pirate, and then you can go hang!”
Source: Treasure Island
“If it comes to a swinging, swing all, say I.”
Source: Treasure Island
“We got together in a few days a company of the toughest old salts imaginable--not pretty to look at, but fellows, by their faces, of the most indomitable spirit.”
Source: Treasure Island
“Sir, with no intention to take offence, I deny your right to put words into my mouth.”
Source: Treasure Island
“There are two things that men should never weary of, goodness and humility; we get none too much of them in this rough world among cold, proud people.”
Source: Kidnapped: Stevenson's Vol. 23
“He is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something downright detestable. I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn’t specify the point. He’s an extraordinary-looking man, and yet I really can name nothing out of the way. No sir; I can make no hand of it; I can’t describe him. And it’s not want of memory; for I declare I can see him this moment.”
Source: Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
“If he be Mr. Hyde" he had thought, "I shall be Mr. Seek.”
Source: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Classic Unabridged Edition): Psychological thriller by the prolific Scottish novelist, poet and travel writer, author of Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Catriona, The Black Arrow and A Child's Garden of Verses
“It was for one minute that I saw him, but the hair stood upon my head like quills. Sir, if that was my master, why had he a mask upon his face?”
Source: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, second edition
“With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to the truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.”
Source: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: The Merry Men and Other Stories
“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.”
Source: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: The Merry Men and Other Stories
“Although I may express myself with some degree of pleasantry the purport of my words is entirely serious.”
“You must suffer me to go my own dark way.”
Source: Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde
“Fear is the strong passion; it is with fear that you must trifle, if you wish to taste the intensest joys of living.”
Source: The Complete Short Stories of Robert Louis Stevenson: Short Story Collections by the prolific Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer, author of Treasure Island, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Kidnapped and Catriona
“His past was fairly blameless; few men could read the rolls of their life with less apprehension; yet he was humbled to the dust by the many ill things he had done, and raised up again into sober and fearful gratitude by the many he had come so near to doing, yet avoided.”
Source: Markheim, Jekyll And The Merry Men
“It was Silver's voice, and before I had heard a dozen words, I would not have shown myself for all the world. I lay there, trembling and listening, in the extreme of fear and curiostiy, for, in those dozen words, I understood that the lives of all the honest men aboard depended on me alone.”
Source: Annotated Treasure Island with English Grammar Exercises: by Robert Louie Stevenson (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)
“There's never a man looked me between the eyes and seen a good day a'terward.”
“Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
“Suicide carried off many. Drink and the devil took care of the rest”
