Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Balfour Stevensonwas a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer. His most famous works are Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and A Child's Garden of Verses...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth13 November 1850
travel heaven wealth
Wealth I ask not, hope nor love, Nor a friend to know me; All I seek, the heaven above And the road below me.
fire suffering remains
To have suffered ... sets a keen edge on what remains of the agreeable. This is a great truth and has to be learned in the fire.
ambition gay welcome
There can be no fairer ambition than to excel in talk; to be affable, gay, ready, clear, and welcome.
men age youth
If a man lives to any considerable age, it can not be denied that he laments his imprudences, but I notice he often laments his youth a deal more bitterly and with a more genuine intonation.
life order wind
Everyday life is a stimulating mixture of order and haphazardry. The sun rises and sets on schedule but the wind bloweth where it listeth.
faults want persons
If you want a person's faults, go to those who love him. They will not tell you, but they know.
mouths pity appeals
To the old our mouths are always partly closed; we must swallow our obvious retorts and listen. They sit above our heads, on life's raised dais, and appeal at once to our respect and pity.
civilization mind example
It is the habitual carriage of the umbrella that is the stamp of Respectability. Robinson Crusoe was rather a moralist than a pietist, and his leaf-umbrella is as fine an example of the civilised mind striving to express itself under adverse circumstances as we have ever met with.
book writing ends
If you are going to make a book end badly, it must end badly from the beginning.
writing sleep men
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.
night long pieces
You mightn't happen to have a piece of cheese about you, now? No? Well, many's the long night I've dreamed of cheese-toasted, mostly-and woke up again, and here I were.
people half littles
...those little people, my brownies, who do one half of my work for me while I am fast asleep, and in all human likelihood do the rest for me as well, when I am wide awake and fondly suppose I do for myself.
littles levity
Nothing like a little judicious levity.
rain passion autumn
It blows a snowing gale in the winter of the year; The boats are on the sea and the crews are on the pier. The needle of the vane, it is veering to and fro, A flash of sun is on the veering of the vane. Autumn leaves and rain, The passion of the gale.