Quotes from Robert Louis Stevenson

A happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a five-pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of goodwill; and their entrance into a room is as though another candle had been lighted.

Every man has a sane spot somewhere.

When I am grown to man's estate I shall be very proud and great. And tell the other girls and boys Not to meddle with my toys.

Vanity dies hard; in some obstinate cases it outlives the man.

There are two things that men should never weary of, goodness and humility; we get none too much of them in this rough world among cold, proud people.

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 a man love the labor of any trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him... If you recognize in yourself some such decisive taste, there is no room for hesitation: follow your bent.... soon your every thought will be engrossed in that beloved occupation.

Nothing made by brute force lasts.

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

It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it.

"You think dogs will not be in heaven? I tell you, they will be there long before any of us."

By the time a man gets well into his seventies his continued existence is a mere miracle.