Inspirational Quotations by Robert Louis Stevenson (#658)

Today marks the birthday of Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94,) the Scottish adventurer and author of novels, short stories, essays, and travel literature.

Stevenson is best known for his novels Treasure Island (1883,) Kidnapped (1886) and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886.) and his collection of poetry A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885.)

Stevenson suffered from a lung disease from a very early age. When he couldn’t sleep at night, his nurse stayed up with him and told him stories of ghosts, monsters, and pirates. He studied law but never practiced it. Instead, he traveled and wrote books about his experiences.

One rainy summer afternoon, Stevenson painted a map of an imaginary island to amuse his stepson. This and the pirate stories he frequently told his stepson inspired the idea for his first great adventure novel, Treasure Island (1883.) Subsequently, he wrote Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1885) in just three days. Those two novels made Stevenson rich and famous.

For the rest of his life, Stevenson traveled continuously in search of a suitable climate to improve his health. He suffered from ill health all through adulthood and did much of his writing from his sickbed. Stevenson and his wife tried living in Switzerland, Scotland, France, England, and America. They eventually settled in Apia, the capital of Samoa, where the locals christened him “Tusitala” (teller of tales.)

When Stevenson died from cerebral hemorrhage at age 44, he was buried at a spot on Mount Vaea overlooking the Pacific Ocean. His gravestone was inscribed with his poem “Requiem”:

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.

Inspirational Quotations by Robert Louis Stevenson

You cannot run away from a weakness. You must sometimes fight it out or perish; and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

A man finds he has been wrong at every stage of his career, only to deduce the astonishing conclusion that he is at last entirely right.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

We are all travelers in the wilderness of the world, and the best that we can find in our travels is an honest friend.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his mouth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

There is only one difference between a long life and a good dinner: that, in the dinner, the sweets come last.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

Marriage is one long conversation, checkered by disputes.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding; and it is not to be found in foreign lands, but in the heart itself.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

It is the mark of a good action that it appears inevitable, in retrospect.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

The existence of a man is so small a thing to take, so mighty a thing to employ.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

A generous prayer is never presented in vain; the petition may be refused, but the petitioner is always, I believe, rewarded by some gracious visitation.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying “Amen” to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to keep your soul alive.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

A friend is a present you give to yourself.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

All sorts of allowances are made for the illusions of youth; and none, or almost none, for the disenchantments of age.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

Youth is wholly experimental.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

Don’t write merely to be understood. Write so that you cannot possibly be misunderstood.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

In every part and corner of our life, to lose oneself is to be the gainer; to forget oneself is to be happy.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

A happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a five-pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of goodwill; and their entrance into a room is as though another candle had been lighted.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

Wealth I ask not, hope nor love, nor a friend to know me; all I ask, the heavens above, and the road below me.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

Money alone is only a mean; it presupposes a man to use it. The rich man can go where he pleases, but perhaps please himself nowhere. He can buy a library or visit the whole world, but perhaps has neither patience to read nor intelligence to see…. The purse may be full and the heart empty. He may have gained the world and lost himself; and with all his wealth around him … he may live as blank a life as any tattered ditcher.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

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.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose, and the eyes will take care of themselves.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

To hold the same views at forty as we held at twenty is to have been stupefied for a score of years, and take rank, not as a prophet, but as an unteachable brat, well birched and none the wiser.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

To be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise is to have succeeded in life.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

Our affections and beliefs are wiser than we; the best that is in us is better than we can understand; for it is grounded beyond experience, and guides us, blindfold but safe, from one age on to another.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

The price we have to pay for money is sometimes liberty.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall. Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down. And this is all that life really means.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)