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Robert Louis Stevenson

50 quotes

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, and poet best known for *Treasure Island*, *Kidnapped*, and *Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde*. A masterful storyteller with a gift for vivid prose, Stevenson's adventure tales and psychological fiction have entertained readers for well over a century.

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

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Good

All Quotes by Robert Louis Stevenson

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

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Good

“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

Age

“Marriage: A friendship recognized by the police.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Friendship

“An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Life

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

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Inspirational

“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.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Nature

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

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Business

“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.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Courage

“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.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Marriage

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

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Good

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

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Good

“So long as we love, we serve so long as we are loved by others, I should say that we are almost indispensable and no man is useless while he has a friend.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Love

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

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Alone

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

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Gardening

“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 renews a weary spirit.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Beauty

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

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Best

“Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Marriage

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

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Love

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

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Politics

“The web, then, or the pattern, a web at once sensuous and logical, an elegant and pregnant texture: that is style, that is the foundation of the art of literature.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Art