Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes

• Children, you are very little, And your bones are very brittle; If you would grow great and stately, You must try to walk sedately.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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• When I was sick and lay a-bed, I had two pillows at my head, And all my toys beside me lay To keep me happy all the day.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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• Whenever Auntie moves around, Her dresses make a curious sound; They trail behind her up the floor, And trundle after through the door.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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• Whenever the moon and stars are set, Whenever the wind is high, All night long in the dark and wet, A man goes riding by. Late in the night when the fires are out, Why does he gallop and gallop about?

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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• A child should always say what’s true, And speak when he is spoken to, And behave mannerly at table: At least as far as he is able.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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• In winter I get up at night And dress by yellow candle-light. In summer, quite the other way, I have to go to bed by day. I have to go to bed and see The birds still hopping on the tree, Or hear the grown-up people’s feet Still going past me in the street.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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• Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be, Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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• You mightn’t happen to have a piece of cheese about you, now? No? Well, many’s the long night I’ve dreamed of cheese – toasted, mostly – and woke up again, and here I were.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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• Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest – Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest – Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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• It seems he had no design except to appear respectable, and here he keeps a private book to prove that he was not.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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• We are in such haste to be doing, to be writing, to be gathering gear, to make our voice audible a moment in the derisive silence of eternity, that we forget that one thing, of which these are but the parts – namely, to live.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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• Though we are mighty fine fellows nowadays, we cannot write like Hazlitt.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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• We live the time that a match flickers; we pop the cork of a ginger-beer bottle, and the earthquake swallows us on the instant. Is it not odd, is it not incongruous, is it not, in the highest sense of human speech, incredible, that we should think so highly of the ginger-beer, and regard so little the devouring earthquake?

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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• Extreme busyness, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a symptom of a deficient vitality; and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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• It is better to be a fool than to be dead.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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• The cruellest lies are often told in silence.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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• Times are changed with him who marries; there are no more by-path meadows, where you may innocently linger, but the road lies long and straight and dusty to the grave. Idleness, which is often becoming and even wise in the bachelor, begins to wear a different aspect when you have a wife to support.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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• Marriage is like life in this – that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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• Marriage is a step so grave and decisive that it attracts light-headed, variable men by its very awfulness.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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• Lastly (and this is, perhaps, the golden rule) no woman should marry a teetotaller, or a man who does not smoke.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

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Robert Louis Stevenson (164)

Birth:	13th November, 1850
Death:	3rd December, 1894
Nationality:	Scottish
Profession:	Essayist, Novelist, Poet

About

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.

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