Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes

When we have discovered a continent, or crossed a chain of mountains, it is only to find another ocean or another plain upon the further side. . . . O toiling hands of mortals! O wearied feet, travelling ye know not whither! Soon, soon, it seems to you, you must come forth on some conspicuous hilltop, and but a little way further, against the setting sun, descry the spires of El Dorado. Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.

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Tags : Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes , Travel Quotes , Ocean Quotes

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.

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Be what you are, and become what you are capable of becoming.

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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.

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So soon as prudence has begun to grow up in the brain, like a dismal fungus, it finds its first expression in a paralysis of generous acts.

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It is almost as if the millennium were arrived, when we shall throw our clocks and watches over the housetop, and remember time and seasons no more. Not to keep hours for a lifetime is... to live forever.

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Tags : Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes , Forever Quotes , Watches Quotes

It is in virtue of his own desires and curiosities that any man continues to exist with even patience, that he is charmed by the look of things and people, and that he wakens every morning with a renewed appetite for work and pleasure. Desire and curiosity are the two eyes through which he sees the world in the most enchanted colours...and the man may squander his estate and come to beggary, but if he keeps these two amulets he is still rich in the possibilities of pleasure.

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The greatest engineering is the engineering of men.

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

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It is a mere illusion that, above a certain income, the personal desires will be satisfied and leave a wider margin for the generous impulse.

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It is not enough to be ready to go where duty calls. A man should stand around where he can hear the call!

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Bright is the ring of words When the right man rings them.

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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.

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Anyone can carry their burden, however hard, until nightfall. Anyone can do their work, however hard, for one day.

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To be honest...here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude...

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A birdie with a yellow bill Hoped upon the window sill, Cocked his shining eye and said: 'Ain't you 'shamed, you sleepy-'ead?

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Tags : Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes , Eye Quotes , Yellow Quotes

But even if we take matrimony at its lowest, even if we regard it as no more than a sort of friendship recognised by the police, there must be degrees in the freedom and sympathy realised, and some principle to guide simple folk in their selection.

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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.

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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.

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To avoid an occasion for our virtues is a worse degree of failure than to push forward pluckily and make a fall.

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Tags : Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes , Inspirational Quotes , Fall Quotes