"I am not afraid of the truth, if any one could tell it me, but I am afraid of parts of it impertinently uttered."
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Quote collection
Robert Louis Stevenson quotes (page 16 of 23)
442 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I wish these flies would piss off."
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"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?"
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"For the forest takes away from you all excuse to die. There is nothing here to cabin or thwart your free desires. Here all impudences of the brawling world reach you no more."
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"My tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky; It's time to take the window to see Leerie going by; For every night at tea-time and before you take your seat, With lantern and with ladder he comes posting up the street."
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"And the true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing. For to miss the joy is to miss all."
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"It is just this rage for consideration that has betrayed the dog into his satellite position as the friend of man. The cat, an animal of franker appetites, preserves his independence. But the dog, with one eye ever on the audience, has been wheedled into slavery, and praised and patted into the renunciation of his nature. Once he ceased hunting and became man's plate-licker, the Rubicon was crossed. Thenceforth he was a gentleman of leisure; and except the few whom we keep working, the whole race grew more and more self-conscious, mannered and affected."
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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."
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"The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how many loves have perished because, from pride, or spite, or diffidence, or that unmanly shame which withholds a man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at the critical point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his tongue?"
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"It is the property of things seen for the first time, or for the first time after long, like the flowers in spring, to reawaken in us the sharp edge of sense and that impression of mystic strangeness which otherwise passes out of life with the coming of years; but the sight of a loved face is what renews a man's character from the fountain upwards."
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"There can be no fairer ambition than to excel in talk; to be affable, gay, ready, clear, and welcome."
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"I have never seen the sea quiet round Treasure Island. The sun might blaze overhead, the air be without a breath, the surface smooth and blue, but still these great rollers would be running along all the external coast, thundering and thundering by day and night; and I scarce believe there is one spot in the island where a man would be out of earshot of their noise."
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"If it comes to a swinging, swing all, say I."
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"In the law of God, there is no statute of limitations."
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"Ice and iron cannot be welded."
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"If you want a person's faults, go to those who love him. They will not tell you, but they know."
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"A knowledge that another has felt as we have felt, and seen things not much otherwise than we have seen them, will continue to the end to be one of life's choicest blessings."
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"An aim in life is the only fortune worth the finding; and it is not to be found in foreign lands, but in the heart itself."
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"To believe in immortality is one thing, but it is first needful to believe in life."
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"Do not forget that even as "to work is to worship" so to be cheery is to worship also, and to be happy is the first step to being pious."
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