Quotes from Robert Louis Stevenson

The mark of a good action is that it appears inevitable in retrospect.

My body which my dungeon is,And yet my parks and palaces.

The little rift between the sexes is astonishingly widened by simply teaching one set of catchwords to the girls and another to the boys.

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 better to emit a scream in the shape of a theory than to be entirely insensible to the jars and incongruities of life and take everything as it comes in a forlorn stupidity.

A child should always say what's trueAnd speak when he is spoken to,And behave mannerly at table;At least as far as he is able.

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.

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.

There is only one difference between a long life and a good dinner: that, in the dinner, the sweets come last.

Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof; but in the open world it passes lightly, with its stars and dews and perfumes, and the hours are marked by changes in the face of Nature. What seems a kind of temporal death to people choked between walls and curtains, is only a light and living slumber to the man who sleeps afield.

Every man is his own doctor of divinity, in the last resort.

In marriage, a man becomes slack and selfish, and undergoes a fatty degeneration of his moral being.

Pieces of eight, pieces of eight, pieces of eight!

Now, we know that life is only a stage to play the fool upon as long as the part amuses us. There was one more convenience lacking to modern comfort; a decent easy way to quit that stage; the back stairs to liberty; or, as I said this moment, Death's private door. This… is supplied by the Suicide Club.

A great part of life consists in contemplating what we cannot cure.

They were a rough lot indeed, as sailors mostly are; being men rooted out of all the kindly parts of life, and condemned to toss together on the rough seas, with masters no less cruel.

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.

Everyone lives by selling something.

For God's sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself!

Marriage: a long conversation chequered by disputes.

No man is useless while he has a friend.

Quite minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.

That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much.

The friendly cow all red and white, I love with all my heart: She gives me cream with all her might; to eat with apple tart.