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.
Author
Robert Louis Stevenson
66 quotations
About Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for the novels Treasure Island (1883), Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), and Kidnapped (1886) and for the poetry collection A Child's Garden of Verses (1885).
Read on Wikipedia → Find books by Robert Louis StevensonThe truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy.
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.
For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.
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?
Keep your eyes open to your mercies. The man who forgets to be thankful has fallen asleep in life.
If a man loves the labour of his trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him.
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That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much.
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.
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 hi…
Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.
Wine is bottled poetry.
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.
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 rene…
To be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise is to have succeeded in life.
The price we have to pay for money is sometimes liberty.
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 almo…
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 rene…
In marriage, a man becomes slack and selfish, and undergoes a fatty degeneration of his moral being.
Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes.
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 …
Marriage: A friendship recognized by the police.
Marriage is like life - it is a field of battle, not a bed of roses.
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 hi…