Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, yet we make the same impression on Buddhists and vegetarians, for we feed on babies, though not our own.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but primarily by catchwords.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.
Robert Louis Stevenson
A friend is a gift you give yourself.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.
Robert Louis Stevenson
It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose, and the eyes will take care of themselves.
Robert Louis Stevenson
The cruelest lies are often told in silence.
Robert Louis Stevenson
There is only one difference between a long life and a good dinner: that, in the dinner, the sweets come last.
Robert Louis Stevenson
I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.
Robert Louis Stevenson
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
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
It is the mark of a good action that it appears inevitable in retrospect.
Robert Louis Stevenson
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.
Robert Louis Stevenson
We must accept life for what it actually is – a challenge to our quality without which we should never know of what stuff we are made, or grow to our full stature.
Robert Louis Stevenson
If a man loves the labour of his trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him.
Robert Louis Stevenson
All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.
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