Writer · Scottish · 1850 – 1894 · 106 quotes
There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Writer · Scottish · 1850 – 1894
All human beings are commingled out of good and evil.
I never weary of great churches. It is my favorite kind of mountain scenery. Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral.
I find it useful to remember, everyone lives by selling something.
Everyone lives by selling something, whatever be his right to it.
Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.
Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences.
I regard you with an indifference closely bordering on aversion.
We must accept life for what it actually is - a challenge to our quality without which we should never know of what stuff we are made, or grow to our full stature.
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.
Marriage: A friendship recognized by the police.
We all know what Parliament is, and we are all ashamed of it.
It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it.
The Devil, can sometimes do a very gentlemanly thing.
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.
It's a pleasant thing to be young, and have ten toes.
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.
Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity.
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.
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.
Old and young, we are all on our last cruise.
The cruelest lies are often told in silence.
Compromise is the best and cheapest lawyer.
Talk is by far the most accessible of pleasures. It costs nothing in money, it is all profit, it completes our education, founds and fosters our friendships, and can be enjoyed at any age and in almost any state of health.
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.
To forget oneself is to be happy.
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.
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.
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
A friend is a gift you give yourself.
Every man has a sane spot somewhere.
Nothing made by brute force lasts.
The world has no room for cowards.
Nothing like a little judicious levity.
Every one lives by selling something.
Wine is bottled poetry.
He who sows hurry reaps indigestion.
I've a grand memory for forgetting.
The obscurest epoch is today.
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.
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.
For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.
