Robert Louis Stevenson People Quotations

Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity.

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.

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.

Since hate poisons the soul, don't cherish enmities or grudges: avoid people who make you unhappy.

If they only married when they fell in love, most people would die unwed.

It is a great thing if you can persuade people that they are somehow or other partakers in a mystery. It makes them feel bigger.

Friends: People who know you well, but like you anyway. The cruelest lies are often told in silence.

It is better to be a fool than to be dead. It is better to emit a scream in the shape of a theory than to be entirely insensible to the jars and incongruities of life and take everything as it comes in a forlorn stupidity. Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind. For God's sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself!

I am told there are people who do not care for maps, and I find it hard to believe.

...those little people, my brownies, who do one half of my work for me while I am fast asleep, and in all human likelihood do the rest for me as well, when I am wide awake and fondly suppose I do for myself.

If you wish the pick of men and women, take a good bachelor and a good wife

Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind.