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Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes

Total quotes (30)

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson

Birthname

AKA Robert Stevenson

Birthday November 13, 1850

Death December 3, 1894

Educated At University Of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Academy

Nationality United Kingdom Of Great Britain And Ireland

Occupations Essayist, Poet Lawyer, Short Story Writer, Traveller, Children's Writer

Spouse Fanny Stevenson

Total quotes (30)

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.

— Robert Louis Stevenson, Essays of Travel

Forest Trees Nature beauty Renewal Spiritual

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All human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone, in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil.

— Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Dover Thrift Editions)

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There comes an end to all things; the most capacious measure is filled at last; and this brief condescension to evil finally destroyed the balance of my soul.

— Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

End Life Capacity Evil Soul Balance

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It is extraordinary, it is extraordinary how hourly and how violently change the feelings of an inexperienced young man.

— Robert Louis Stevenson and Lord Beaconsfield, Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson

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Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things. And it is not by any means certain that a man's business is the most important thing he has to do.

— Robert Louis Stevenson, Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson

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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.

— Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped

Goodness Humility World

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Look at one of your industrious fellows for a moment, I beseech you. He sows hurry and reaps indigestion; he puts a vast deal of activity out to interest and receives a large measure of nervous derangement in return.

— Robert Louis Stevenson, Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson

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

— Robert Louis Stevenson, A Child's Garden of Verses

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We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.

— Robert Louis Stevenson, via www.goodreads.com

travel Travelers Wilderness Friend Companion Honesty

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An intelligent person, looking out of his eyes and hearkening in his ears, with a smile on his face all the time, will get more true education than many another in a life of heroic vigils

— Robert Louis Stevenson, An Apology for Idlers

Intelligence Education

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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.

— Robert Louis Stevenson, Lay Morals

Service Love Friendship

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I have been made to learn that the doom and burden of our life is bound forever on man’s shoulders; and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure.

— Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Dover Thrift Editions)

Life burdens struggles

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

— Robert Louis Stevenson, Familiar Studies Of Men And Books

Being Becoming Life Living

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

— Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes

travel Experiences

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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.

— Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Quiet Mind Fear Fortune

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To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.

— Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

Thought Independence Individualism Preference

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Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he long'd to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

— Robert Louis Stevenson, Selected Poems

Death Poetry Requiem Sea

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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.

— Robert Louis Stevenson, Selected Poems

Death Poetry Sleep Eternal sleep Rest

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I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.

— Robert Louis Stevenson, Essays By Robert Louis Stevenson

Books Reading Writing On Writing Writing Tips

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There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.

— Robert Louis Stevenson, An Apology for Idlers

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The cruelest lies are often told in silence.

— Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers

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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.

— Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Intelligence Moral Truth Man

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I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both.

— Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

primitive Duality Consciousness Radical

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To be suddenly snuffed out in the middle of ambitious schemes, is tragical enough at best, but when a man has been grudging himself his own life in the meanwhile, and saving up everything for the festival that was never to be, it becomes that hysterically moving sort of tragedy which lies on the confines of farce.

— Robert Louis Stevenson, Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson

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You must suffer me to go my own dark way.

— Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Suffering Burden punishment Seclusion

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