“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.”
Source: The complete short stories
“Strange indeed is the attraction of the forest for the minds of men.”
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
“If you wish the pick of men and women, take a good bachelor and a good wife”
Source: Memories, Portraits, Essays and Records (Annotated Edition)
“Lastly no woman should marry a teetotaller, or a man who does not smoke. It is not for nothing that this "ignoble tobagie" as Michelet calls it, spreads all over the world.”
“A man should stop his ears against paralyzing terror and run the race that is set before him with a single mind.”
Source: Virginibus Puerisque
“The very flexibility and ease which make men's friendships so agreeable while they endure, make them the easier to destroy and forget.”
Source: Memories, Portraits, Essays and Records (Annotated Edition)
“We do not go to cowards for tender dealing; there is nothing so cruel as panic; the man who has least fear for his own carcase, has most time to consider others.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated)
“If a man knows he will sooner or later be robbed upon a journey, he will have a bottle of the best in every inn, and look upon all his extravagances as so much gained upon the thieves.”
“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.”
“Marriage is a step so grave and decisive that it attracts light-headed, variable men by its very awfulness.”
“Give to me the life I love, Let the lave go by me, Give the jolly heaven above And the byway nigh me. Bed in the bush with the stars to see, Bread I dip in the river There's the life for a man like me, There's the life for ever.”
“The saddest object in civilization, and to my mind the greatest confession of its failure, is the man who can work, who wants work, and who is not allowed to work.”
“This is still the strangest thing in all man's travelling, that he should carry about with him incongruous memories.”
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
“There were nights when he took a deal more rum and water than his head could carry; and then he would sometimes sit and sing his wicked old wild sea-songs, minding nobody... Often I have heard the house shaking with Yo-ho-ho and a bottle and rum, all the neighbours joining in for dear life with the fear of death upon them and each singing louder than the other to avoid remark. Fiften men on the dead man's chest, Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil have done for the rest. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!”
“Lastly (and this is, perhaps, the golden rule), no woman should marry a man who does not smoke.”
“By the time a man gets well into his seventies his continued existence is a mere miracle.”
“Let any man speak long enough, he will get believers.”
Source: The Pocket R.L.S., Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson
“Bright is the ring of words When the right man rings them.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated)
“The greatest engineering is the engineering of men.”
“It is not enough to be ready to go where duty calls. A man should stand around where he can hear the call!”
“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.”
Source: Memories, Portraits, Essays and Records (Annotated Edition)
“Whenever the moon and stars are set,
Whenever the wind is high,
All night long in the dark and wet,
A man goes riding by.”
“It is just this rage for consideration that has betrayed the dog into his satellite position as the friend of man. The cat, an animal of franker appetites, preserves his independence. But the dog, with one eye ever on the audience, has been wheedled into slavery, and praised and patted into the renunciation of his nature. Once he ceased hunting and became man's plate-licker, the Rubicon was crossed. Thenceforth he was a gentleman of leisure; and except the few whom we keep working, the whole race grew more and more self-conscious, mannered and affected.”
Source: Memories and Portraits: Stevenson's Vol. 21
“The outer world, from which we cower into our houses, seemed after all a gentle habitable place; and night after night a man's bed, it seemed, was laid and waiting for him in the fields, where God keeps an open house.”
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
“Must we to bed indeed? Well then,
Let us arise and go like men,
And face with an undaunted tread
The long black passage up to bed.”
“Bright is the ring of words When the right man rings them, Fair the fall of songs When the singer sings them. Still they are carolled and said - On wings they are carried - After the singer is dead And the maker buried.”
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 but one art, to omit! Oh, if I knew how to omit I would ask no other knowledge. A man who knows how to omit would make an Iliad of a daily paper.”
“Fiction is to grown men what play is to the child.”
Source: The Complete Stories of Robert Louis Stevenson: Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Nineteen Other Tales
“I never drew a picture of anything that was before me but always from fancy, a sure sign of the absence of artistic eyesight; and I illustrated my lack of real feeling for art by a very early speech: 'Mama,' said I, 'I have drawed a man. Shall I draw his soul now?”
Source: The Novels and Tales of Robert Louis Stevenson
“[T]he kingdom of heaven is of the childlike, of those who are easy to please, who love and who give pleasure. Mighty men of their hands, the smiters and the builders and the judges, have lived long and done sternly and yet preserved this lovely character; and among our carpet interests and twopenny concerns, the shame were indelible if we should lose it. Gentleness and cheerfulness, these come before all morality; they are the perfect duties.”
“And if a man reads very hard, as the old anecdote reminds us, he will have little time for thought.”
Source: The Lantern-Bearers and Other Essays
“As if a man's soul were not too small to begin with, they have dwarfed an narrowed theirs by a life of all work and no play; until here they are at forty, with a listless attention, a mind vacant of all material of amusement, and not one thought to rub against another, while they wait for the train.”
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
“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.”
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
“But that is the object of long living, that man should cease to care about life.”
Source: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: The Merry Men and Other Stories
“It is better to be a fool than to be dead. It is better to emit a scream in the shape of a theory than to be entirely insensible to the jars and incongruities of life and take everything as it comes in a forlorn stupidity. Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind. For God's sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself!”
“I have never seen the sea quiet round Treasure Island. The sun might blaze overhead, the air be without a breath, the surface smooth and blue, but still these great rollers would be running along all the external coast, thundering and thundering by day and night; and I scarce believe there is one spot in the island where a man would be out of earshot of their noise.”
Source: Collected Adventure Tales: Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Catriona, The Wrecker, The Ebbe-Tide, St Ives, Island Nights' Entertainments, The Adventure of the Hansom Cab and more (Illustrated Edition): The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, The Adventure of Prince Florizel and a Detective, The Misadventures of John Nicholson, Adventures of David Balfour (Novels and short stories )
“You seem to me to be a pretty lucky young man; keep your eyes open to your mercies. That part of piety is eternal; and the man who forgets to be grateful has fallen asleep in life.”
“That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much.”
“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.”
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
“If a man loves the labour of his trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him.”
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
“In marriage, a man becomes slack and selfish, and undergoes a fatty degeneration of his moral being.”
“No man is useless while he has a friend.”
Source: Memories, Portraits, Essays and Records (Annotated Edition)
“Of what shall a man be proud, if he is not proud of his friends?”
Source: Travels With a Donkey
“Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.”
Source: The Lantern-Bearers and Other Essays
“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.”
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
“Every man has a sane spot somewhere.”
Source: Collected Adventure Tales: Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Catriona, The Wrecker, The Ebbe-Tide, St Ives, Island Nights' Entertainments, The Adventure of the Hansom Cab and more (Illustrated Edition): The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, The Adventure of Prince Florizel and a Detective, The Misadventures of John Nicholson, Adventures of David Balfour (Novels and short stories )
“Vanity dies hard; in some obstinate cases it outlives the man.”
Source: The Wrecker: Stevenson's Vol. 19
“So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.”
“Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but primarily by catchwords.”
“When I am grown to man's estate I shall be very proud and great. And tell the other girls and boys Not to meddle with my toys.”
