I wished a companion to lie near me in the starlight, silent and not moving, but ever within touch. For there is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly understood, is solitude made perfect. - Robert Louis Stevenson
He who indulges habitually in the intoxicating pleasures of imagination, for the very reason that he reaps a greater pleasure than others, must resign himself to a keener pain, a more intolerable and utter prostration. - Robert Louis Stevenson
To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life. - Robert Louis Stevenson
A true writer is someone the gods have called to the task. - Robert Louis Stevenson
At that time my virtue slumbered; my evil, kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion. - Robert Louis Stevenson
Everyone who got where he is has had to begin where he was. - Robert Louis Stevenson
It is perhaps a more fortunate destiny to have a taste for collecting shells than to be born a millionaire. - Robert Louis Stevenson
Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well. - Robert Louis Stevenson
Fear is the strong passion; it is with fear that you must trifle, if you wish to taste the intensest joys of living. - Robert Louis Stevenson
Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things. - Robert Louis Stevenson
In each of us, two natures are at war – the good and the evil. All our lives the fight goes on between them, and one of them must conquer. But in our own hands lies the power to choose – what we want most to be we are. - Robert Louis Stevenson
You think those dogs will not be in heaven! I tell you they will be there long before any of us. - Robert Louis Stevenson
Keep your fears to yourself, but share your inspiration with others. - Robert Louis Stevenson
Every one lives by selling something, whatever be his right to it. - Robert Louis Stevenson
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
The cruelest lies are often told in silence. - Robert Louis Stevenson
Suicide carried off many. Drink and the devil took care of the rest - Robert Louis Stevenson
Wine is bottled poetry - Robert Louis Stevenson
I never drew a picture of anything that was before me but always from fancy, a sure sign of the absence of artistic eyesight; and I illustrated my lack of real feeling for art by a very early speech: 'Mama,' said I, 'I have drawed a man. Shall I draw his soul now? - Robert Louis Stevenson
Death, like a host, comes smiling to the door;Smiling, he greets us, on that tranquil shoreWhere neither piping bird nor peeping dawnDisturbs the eternal sleep,But in the stillness far withdrawnOur dreamless rest for evermore we keep. - Robert Louis Stevenson
Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary. - Robert Louis Stevenson
If your morals make you dreary, depend on it , they are wrong. - Robert Louis Stevenson
There is no duty we so much underrate as the as the duty of being happy. - Robert Louis Stevenson
You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving. - Robert Louis Stevenson
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive. - Robert Louis Stevenson
It is not much for its beauty that makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanates from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit. - Robert Louis Stevenson
The truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy. - Robert Louis Stevenson
Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life. - Robert Louis Stevenson
A friend is a gift you give yourself. - Robert Louis Stevenson
Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others. - 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
To be idle requires a strong sense of personal identity. - Robert Louis Stevenson
Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. - Robert Louis Stevenson
The moon has a face like the clock in the hall;She shines on thieves on the garden wall,On streets and fields and harbour quays,And birdies asleep in the forks of the trees. - Robert Louis Stevenson
The most beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek. - Robert Louis Stevenson
The mark of a good action is that it appears inevitable in retrospect. - Robert Louis Stevenson
To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming is the only end of life. - Robert Louis Stevenson
You can't touch pitch and not be mucked. - Robert Louis Stevenson
...for no man lives in the external truth among salts and acids, but in the warm, phantasmagoric chamber of his brain, with the painted windows and the storied wall. - Robert Louis Stevenson
To travel hopefully is better than to have arrived. - Robert Louis Stevenson
There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. - Robert Louis Stevenson
When it comes to my own turn to lay my weapons down, I shall do so with thankfulness and fatigue, and whatever be my destiny after ward, I shall be glad to lie down with my fathers in honour. It is human at least, if not divine. - Robert Louis Stevenson
We all know what Parliament is, and we are all ashamed of it. - Robert Louis Stevenson
To hold the same views at forty as we did 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
For marriage is like life in this—that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses. - Robert Louis Stevenson
Extreme busyness is a symptom of deficient vitality, and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity. - Robert Louis Stevenson
Marriage: a long conversation chequered by disputes. - Robert Louis Stevenson
The friendly cow all red and white, I love with all my heart: She gives me cream with all her might; to eat with apple tart. - Robert Louis Stevenson
To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive. - Robert Louis Stevenson
A friend is a present you give yourself. - Robert Louis Stevenson
That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much. - Robert Louis Stevenson
All human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil. - Robert Louis Stevenson
Make the most of the best and the least of the worst. - Robert Louis Stevenson
An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding. - Robert Louis Stevenson
Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits. - Robert Louis Stevenson
No man is useless while he has a friend. - Robert Louis Stevenson
The world is so full of a number of things I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings. - Robert Louis Stevenson
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