Quotes from Robert Louis Stevenson

If a man loves the labour of his trade apart from any question of success or fame the gods have called him.

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive and the true success is to labour.

Compromise is the best and cheapest lawyer.

I have resolved that from this day on, I will do all the business I can honestly, have all the fun I can reasonably, do all the good I can willingly, and save my digestion by thinking pleasantly.

For will anyone dare to tell me that business is more entertaining than fooling among boats? He must have never seen a boat, or never seen an office, who says so.

The cruelest lies are often told in silence

A faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity.

Everyday courage has few witnesses. But yours is no less noble because no drum beats for you and no crowds shout your name.

Courage is the footstool of the Virtues upon which they stand.

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.

He is not dead, this friend; not dead, Gone some few, trifling steps ahead, And nearer to the end; So that you, too, once past the bend, Shall meet again, as face to face, this friend You fancy dead.

A friend is a gift you give yourself.

No man is useless while he has a friend.

If we take matrimony at it's lowest, we regard it as a sort of friendship recognised by the police.

Marriage: A friendship recognized by the police.

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

Of what shall a man be proud, if he is not proud of his friends?

The truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy.

Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind, spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies.

The world was made before English language, and seemingly upon a different design.

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.

For the forest takes away from you all excuse to die. There is nothing here to cabin or thwart your free desires. Here all impudences of the brawling world reach you no more.

It is perhaps a more fortunate destiny to have a taste for collecting shells than to be born a millionaire.

Really don't choose every day from the harvest you experience but from the seeds you plant