Robert Louis Stevenson

The mark of a good action is that it appears inevitable in retrospect.

We live in an ascending scale when we live happily, one thing leading to another in an endless series.

So long as we are loved by others I should say that we are almost indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.

Each has his own tree of ancestors, but at the top of all sits Probably Arboreal.

Once you are married, there is nothing left for you, not even suicide.

Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his 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.

Nothing made by brute force lasts.

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

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.

The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us.

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

The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the domination of outward conditions.

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

Of what shall a man be proud, if he is not proud of his friends?

We must accept life for what it actually is - a challenge to our quality without which we should never know of what stuff we are made, or grow to our full stature.

Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, yet we make the same impression on Buddhists and vegetarians, for we feed on babies, though not our own.

The cruelest lies are often told in silence.

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

It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose, and the eyes will take care of themselves.