Robert Louis Stevenson cytaty

strona 2

„Lepiej podróżować z nadzieją niż przybyć do celu.”

„Zbyt często związujemy się z kobietami parą jedwabnych pończoch.”

„Małżeństwo w tym jest podobne do życia, że to pole walki, a nie grządka róż.”

„Talary! Talary! Talary!”

„Jeżeli pozwolicie, żeby jakiś człowiek mówił dostatecznie długo, to znajdzie wyznawców.”

„Tak długo jak jesteśmy kochani, jesteśmy niezastąpieni; i żaden człowiek nie jest bezużyteczny, jeśli ma przyjaciela.”

„Nie możesz uciec przed słabościami, musisz je zwalczyć lub zginąć. I jeśli tak ma być, czemu nie teraz, tam gdzie stoisz?”

„Piętnastu chłopów na Umrzyka Skrzyni –
Jo-ho-ho! i butelka rumu!”

„Przyjaciel – to prezent, jaki robisz sobie samemu.”

“I will make you brooches and toys for your delight
Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night.”

“To make our idea of morality centre on forbidden acts is to defile the imagination and to introduce into our judgments of our fellow-men a secret element of gusto.”

“In the highlands, in the country places,
Where the old plain men have rosy faces,
And the young fair maidens
Quiet eyes.”

“Gentleness and cheerfulness, these come before all morality; they are the perfect duties.”

“Let first the onion flourish there,
Rose among roots, the maiden-fair,
Wine-scented and poetic soul
Of the capacious salad bowl.”

“By all means begin your folio; even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a week.”

“There is a sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people about, who are scarcely conscious of living except in the exercise of some conventional occupation. … They have no curiosity; they cannot give themselves over to random provocations; they do not take pleasure in the exercise of their faculties for its own sake; and unless necessity lays about them with a stick, they will even stand still. It is no good speaking to such folk: they cannot be idle, their nature is not generous enough; and they pass those hours in a sort of coma, which are not dedicated to furious moiling in the gold-mill.”

“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. He has an ambitious soul who would ask more; he has a hopeful spirit who should look in such an enterprise to be successful. There is indeed one element in human destiny that not blindness itself can controvert: whatever else we are intended to do, we are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted.”

“Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.”

“You could read Kant by yourself, if you wanted; but you must share a joke with someone else.”

“If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say "give them up," for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people.”

“To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”

“God, if this were enough,
That I see things bare to the buff.”

“The untented Kosmos my abode,
I pass, a wilful stranger:
My mistress still the open road
And the bright eyes of danger.”

“Bright is the ring of words
When the right man rings them.”

“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.
Late in the night when the fires are out,
Why does he gallop and gallop about?”

“To be overwise is to ossify; and the scruple-monger ends by standing stockstill.”

“Wealth I ask not, hope nor love,
Nor a friend to know me;
All I ask, the heaven above
And the road below me.”

“Ice and iron cannot be welded.”

“There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.”

“It is a sore thing to have laboured along and scaled the arduous hilltops, and when all is done, find humanity indifferent to your achievement. Hence physicists condemn the unphysical; financiers have only a superficial toleration for those who know little of stocks; literary persons despise the unlettered; and people of all pursuits combine to disparage those who have none.
But though this is one difficulty of the subject, it is not the greatest. You could not be put in prison for speaking against industry, but you can be sent to Coventry for speaking like a fool. The greatest difficulty with most subjects is to do them well; therefore, please to remember this is an apology. It is certain that much may be judiciously argued in favour of diligence; only there is something to be said against it, and that is what, on the present occasion, I have to say.”

“Who comes tonight? We ope the doors in vain”

“There is certainly some chill and arid knowledge to be found upon the summits of formal and laborious science; but it is all round about you, and for the trouble of looking, that you will acquire the warm and palpitating facts of life.”

“The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.”

“There's just ae thing I cannae bear,
An' that's my conscience.”

“The world is so full of a number of things,
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.”

“In every part and corner of our life, to lose oneself is to be a gainer; to forget oneself is to be happy.”

“The friendly cow all red and white,
I love with all my heart:
She gives me cream with all her might,
To eat with apple-tart.”

“Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral.”