Quotes by Robert Louis Stevenson

REQUIEMUnder the wide and starry skyDig the grave and let me lie:Glad did I live and gladly die,And I laid me down with a will.This be the verse you grave for me:Here he lies where he longd to be;Home is the sailor, home from the sea,

The VagabondGive to me the life I love,Let the lave go by me,Give the jolly heaven aboveAnd the byway nigh me.Bed in the bush with stars to see,Bread I dip in the river -Theres the life for a man like me,Theres the life for ever.Let the blow fall soon or late,Let what will be oer me;Give the face of earth aroundAnd the road before me.Wealth I seek not, hope nor love,Nor a friend to know me;All I seek, the heaven aboveAnd the road below me.Or let autumn fall on meWhere afield I linger,Silencing the bird on tree,Biting the blue finger.White as meal the frosty field -Warm the fireside haven -Not to autumn will I yield,Not to winter even!Let the blow fall soon or late,Let what will be oer me;Give the face of earth around,And the road before me.Wealth I ask not, hope nor love,Nor a friend to know me;All I ask, the heaven aboveAnd the road below me.

A true writer is someone the gods have called to the task.

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.

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

Make the most of the best and the least of the worst.

Fifteen men on the Dead Mans Chest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.

To be feared of a thing and yet to do it, is what makes the prettiest kind of a man.

Fear is the strong passion; it is with fear that you must trifle, if you wish to taste the intensest joys of living.

Alan, cried I, what makes ye so good to me? What makes ye care for such a thankless fellow?Deed, and I dont, know said Alan. For just precisely what I thought I liked about ye, was that ye never quarrelled:—and now I like ye better!

For marriage is like life in this—that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses.

From the bonny bells of heather,They brewed a drink long syne,Was sweeter far than honey,Was stronger far than wine.They brewed it and they drank it,And lay in blessed swound,For days and days together,In their dwellings underground.There rose a King in Scotland,A fell man to his foes,He smote the Picts in battle,He hunted them like roes.Over miles of the red mountainHe hunted as they fled,And strewed the dwarfish bodiesOf the dying and the dead.Summer came in the country,Red was the heather bell,But the manner of the brewing,Was none alive to tell.In graves that were like children’sOn many a mountain’s head,The Brewsters of the HeatherLay numbered with the dead.The king in the red moorlandRode on a summer’s day;And the bees hummed and the curlewsCried beside the way.The King rode and was angry,Black was his brow and pale,To rule in a land of heather,And lack the Heather Ale.It fortuned that his vassals,Riding free upon the heath,Came on a stone that was fallenAnd vermin hid beneath.Roughly plucked from their hiding,Never a word they spoke:A son and his aged father –Last of the dwarfish folk.The king sat high on his charger,He looked down on the little men;And the dwarfish and swarthy coupleLooked at the king again.Down by the shore he had them:And there on the giddy brink –“I will give thee life ye vermin,For the secret of the drink.”There stood the son and fatherAnd they looked high and low;The heather was red around them,The sea rumbled below.And up spoke the father,Shrill was his voice to hear:“I have a word in private,A word for the royal ear.“Life is dear to the aged,And honour a little thing;I would gladly sell the secret”,Quoth the Pict to the King.His voice was small as a sparrow’s,And shrill and wonderful clear:“I would gladly sell my secret,Only my son I fear.“For life is a little matter,And death is nought to the young;And I dare not sell my honour,Under the eye of my son.Take him, O king, and bind him,And cast him far in the deep;And it’s I will tell the secretThat I have sworn to keep.”They took the son and bound him,Neck and heels in a thong,And a lad took him and swung him,And flung him far and strongAnd the sea swallowed his body,Like that of a child of ten;And there on the cliff stood the father,Last of the dwarfish men.“True was the word I told you:Only my son I feared;For I doubt the sapling courage,That goes without the beard.But now in vain is the torture,Fire shall not avail:Here dies in my bosomThe secret of the Heather Ale.

And then, all of a sudden, he stopped, and his jaw dropped as though he had remembered something.The score! he burst out. Three goes o rum! Why, shiver my timbers, if I hadnt forgotten my score!And, falling on a bench, he laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks. I could not help joining; and we laughed together, peal after peal, until the tavern rang again.

Three, reckoned the captain, ourselves make seven, counting Hawkins, here. Now, about honest hands?Most likely Trelawneys own men, said the doctor; those he had picked up for himself, before he lit on Silver.Nay, replied the squire. Hands was one of mine.I did think I could have trusted Hands, added the captain.

Well! marriage is like death, it comes to all.

We all know what Parliament is, and we are all ashamed of it.

... Man is not truly one, but truly two... even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both...

Alas! in the clothes of the greatest potentate, what is there but a man?

We may now briefly enumerate the elements of style.  We have, peculiar to the prose writer, the task of keeping his phrases large, rhythmical, and pleasing to the ear, without ever allowing them to fall into the strictly metrical: peculiar to the versifier, the task of combining and contrasting his double, treble, and quadruple pattern, feet and groups, logic and metre—harmonious in diversity: common to both, the task of artfully combining the prime elements of language into phrases that shall be musical in the mouth; the task of weaving their argument into a texture of committed phrases and of rounded periods—but this particularly binding in the case of prose: and, again common to both, the task of choosing apt, explicit, and communicative words.  We begin to see now what an intricate affair is any perfect passage; how many faculties, whether of taste or pure reason, must be held upon the stretch to make it; and why, when it is made, it should afford us so complete a pleasure.  From the arrangement of according letters, which is altogether arabesque and sensual, up to the architecture of the elegant and pregnant sentence, which is a vigorous act of the pure intellect, there is scarce a faculty in man but has been exercised.  We need not wonder, then, if perfect sentences are rare, and perfect pages rarer.-ON SOME TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE IN LITERATURE