"We are not content to pass away entirely from the scenes of our delight; we would leave, if but in gratitude, a pillar and a legend."
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Quote collection
Robert Louis Stevenson quotes (page 19 of 23)
442 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"These are my politics: to change what we can; to better what we can; but still to bear in mind that man is but a devil weakly fettered by some generous beliefs and impositions; and for no word however sounding, and no cause however just and pious, to relax the stricture on these bonds."
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"A horrible sense of blackness and the treachery of fate seized hold upon the soul of the unhappy student."
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"If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also."
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"The greatest engineering is the engineering of men."
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"Everything is true; only the opposite is true too; you must believe both equally or be damned."
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"Bright is the ring of words When the right man rings them."
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"The spirit, Sir, is one of mockery."
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"When we have discovered a continent, or crossed a chain of mountains, it is only to find another ocean or another plain upon the further side. . . . O toiling hands of mortals! O wearied feet, travelling ye know not whither! Soon, soon, it seems to you, you must come forth on some conspicuous hilltop, and but a little way further, against the setting sun, descry the spires of El Dorado. Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour."
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"When the grass was closely mown, Walking on the lawn alone, In the turf a hole I found, And hid a soldier underground. Spring and daisies came apace; Grasses hide my hiding place; Grasses run like a green sea O'er the lawn up to my knee."
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"An intelligent person, looking out of his eyes and hearkening in his ears, with a smile on his face all the time, will get more true education than many another in a life of heroic vigils"."
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"We look for some reward of our endeavors and are disappointed that not success, not happiness, not even peace of conscience, crowns our ineffectual efforts to do well. Our frailties are invincible, our virtues barren; the battle goes sore against us to the going down of the sun."
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"All error, not merely verbal, is a strong way of stating that the current truth is incomplete."
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"To cast in it with Hyde was to die a thousand interests and aspirations."
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"To be honest, to be kind-to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends but these without capitulation-above all, on the same grim condition to keep friends with himself-here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy."
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"I would rather do a good hours work weeding than write two pages of my best; nothing is so interesting as weeding. I went crazy over the outdoor work, and at last had to confine myself to the house, or literature must have gone by the board."
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"Death is given in a kiss; the dearest kindnesses are fatal; and into this life, where one thing preys upon another, the child too often makes its entrance from the mother's corpse."
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"So soon as prudence has begun to grow up in the brain, like a dismal fungus, it finds its first expression in a paralysis of generous acts."
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"The seeming significance of nature's appearances, their unchanging strangeness to the senses, and the thrilling response which they awaken in the mind of man . . . If we could only write near enough to the facts, and yet with no pedestrian calm, but ardently, we might transfer the glamour of reality direct upon our pages."
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"Courage, the footstool of the Virtues, upon which they stand."
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