Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

Robert Louis Stevenson Novelist

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: United Kingdom
  • Born: Nov 13, 1850
  • Died: Dec 3, 1894

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer. His most famous works are Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

A literary celebrity during his lifetime, Stevenson now ranks among the 26 most translated authors in the world. His works have been admired by many other writers, including Jorge Luis Borges, Bertolt Brecht, Marcel Proust, Arthur Conan Doyle, Henry James, Cesare Pavese, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Vladimir Nabokov, J. M. Barrie, and G. K. Chesterton, who said of him that he "seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen, like a man playing spillikins."

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

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.

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

I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.

The price we have to pay for money is sometimes liberty.

Marriage: A friendship recognized by the police.

It is better to lose health like a spendthrift than to waste it like a miser.

An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.

You cannot run away from weakness you must some time fight it out or perish and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?

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.

Compromise is the best and cheapest lawyer.

Absences are a good influence in love and keep it bright and delicate.

Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but primarily by catchwords.

I am in the habit of looking not so much to the nature of a gift as to the spirit in which it is offered.

Every heart that has beat strongly and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind.

The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us.

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

Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.

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

Wine is bottled poetry.

Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a poor substitute for life.

Well, well, Henry James is pretty good, though he is of the nineteenth century, and that glaringly.

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

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.

It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose, and the eyes will take care of themselves.

Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.

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

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

To be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise is to have succeeded in life.

Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes.

All human beings are commingled out of good and evil.

Keep your eyes open to your mercies. The man who forgets to be thankful has fallen asleep in life.

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

Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.

Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.

Marriage is like life - it is a field of battle, not a bed of roses.

You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving.