Robert Louis Stevenson

“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.”

“There is no duty we so underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Compromise is the best and cheapest lawyer.”

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

“Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.”

“There is no progress whatever. Everything is just the same as it was thousands, and tens of thousands, of years ago. The outward form changes. The essence does not change.”

“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.”

“Marriage: A friendship recognized by the police.”

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

“There is only one difference between a long life and a good dinner: that, in the dinner, the sweets come last.”

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

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

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

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

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

“All human beings are commingled out of good and evil.”

“There is an idea abroad among moral people that they should make their neighbors good. One person I have to make good: Myself. But my duty to my neighbor is much more nearly expressed by saying that I have to make him happy if I may.”

“Well, well, Henry James is pretty good, though he is of the nineteenth century, and that glaringly.”

“I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.”

“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.”