Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, musician and travel writer. His most famous works are Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and A Child's Garden of Verses. Stevenson was a literary celebrity during his lifetime, and now ranks as the 26th most translated author in the world. His works have been admired by many other writers, including Jorge Luis Borges, Bertolt Brecht, Marcel Proust, Arthur Conan Doyle, Henry James, Cesare Pavese, Emilio Salgari, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Vladimir Nabokov, J. M. Barrie, and G. K. Chesterton, who said that Stevenson "seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen, like a man playing spillikins".
“The world is so full of a number of things,
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.”
Happy Thought.
A Child's Garden of Verses (1885)
The Cow, st. 1.
A Child's Garden of Verses (1885)
“A faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity.”
An Apology for Idlers.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
Crabbed Age and Youth.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
No. XXVI, My Wife.
Songs of Travel and Other Verses (1896)
Whole Duty of Children.
A Child's Garden of Verses (1885)
The New Arabian Nights. The Suicide Club (1882)
“Not every man is so great a coward as he thinks he is — nor yet so good a Christian.”
The Master of Ballantrae. Mr. Mackellar's Journey (1889).
“Old and young, we are all on our last cruise.”
Crabbed Age and Youth.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
Bk. I, To Andrew Lang.
Underwoods (1887)
An Apology for Idlers.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
“To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.”
El Dorado.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
“Vanity dies hard; in some obstinate cases it outlives the man.”
Prince Otto, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Bed in Summer, st. 1.
A Child's Garden of Verses (1885)
Virginibus Puerisque, Ch. 2.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
Crabbed Age and Youth.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
Virginibus Puerisque, Ch. 1.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
“Let any man speak long enough, he will get believers.”
The Master of Ballantrae, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“Many's a long night I've dreamed of cheese — toasted mostly.”
Source: Treasure Island (1883), Ch. 15, The Man of the Island.
“Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life.”
An Apology for Idlers.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
My Shadow, st. 1.
A Child's Garden of Verses (1885)
An Inland Voyage (1878), Ch. III, "The Royal Sport Nautique".
Memories and Portraits, ch. IV. A College Magazine (1887).
Pt. I, My Body Which My Dungeon Is.
Underwoods (1887)
An Apology for Idlers.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
“Youth now flees on feathered foot.”
To Will H. Low, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Prayer, inscribed on the bronze memorial to Stevenson in St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, Scotland
Crabbed Age and Youth.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
“The pleasant Land of Counterpane.”
The Land of Counterpane, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
and I lived on rum, I tell you.
Source: Treasure Island (1883), Ch. 3, The Black Spot.
Crabbed Age and Youth.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
Source: Across the Plains (1892), Ch. XII, A Christmas Sermon.
“Children, you are very little,
And your bones are very brittle.”
Good and Bad Children, st. 1.
A Child's Garden of Verses (1885)
“Be it granted me to behold you again in dying,
Hills of home!”
No. XLV, S.R. Crockett.
Songs of Travel and Other Verses (1896)
“There is but one art, to omit.”
As cited in The Harper Book of Quotations, Revised Edition (1993), Ed. R. Fitzhenry, HarperCollins, p. 498 : ISBN 0062732137, 9780062732132
“Pieces of eight, pieces of eight, pieces of eight!”
Source: Treasure Island (1883), Ch. 10, The Voyage.
“A good conscience is eight parts of courage.”
Catriona, ch. XI (1893).
