Well, well, Henry James is pre...

Well, well, Henry James is pretty good, though he is of the nineteenth century, and that glaringly.

Most of our pocket wisdom is c...

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.

Give us grace and strength to ...

Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind, spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies.

You can forgive people who do ...

You can forgive people who do not follow you through a philosophical disquisition; but to find your wife laughing when you had tears in your eyes, or staring when you were in a fit of laughter, would go some way towards a dissolution of the marriage.

When it comes to my own turn t...

When it comes to my own turn to lay my weapons down, I shall do so with thankfulness and fatigue, and whatever be my destiny afterward, I shall be glad to lie down with my fathers in honor. It is human at least, if not divine.

The web, then, or the pattern,...

The web, then, or the pattern, a web at once sensuous and logical, an elegant and pregnant texture: that is style, that is the foundation of the art of literature.

It is not likely that posterit...

It is not likely that posterity will fall in love with us, but not impossible that it may respect or sympathize; so a man would rather leave behind him the portrait of his spirit than a portrait of his face.

There is an idea abroad among ...

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.

There is no progress whatever....

There is no progress whatever. Everything is just the same as it was thousands, and tens of thousands, of years ago. The outward form changes. The essence does not change.

For God's sake give me the you...

For God's sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself!

The obscurest epoch is to-day....

The obscurest epoch is to-day.

In the harsh face of life fait...

In the harsh face of life faith can read a bracing gospel.

We can only know others by our...

We can only know others by ourselves.

It is in virtue of his own des...

It is in virtue of his own desires and curiosities that any man continues to exist with even patience, that he is charmed by the look of things and people, and that he wakens every morning with a renewed appetite for work and pleasure. Desire and curiosity are the two eyes through which he sees the world in the most enchanted colours...and the man may squander his estate and come to beggary, but if he keeps these two amulets he is still rich in the possibilities of pleasure.

When your toil has been a plea...

When your toil has been a pleasure, you have not earned money merely, but money, health, delight, and moral profit, all in one.

It is a great thing if you can...

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.

A happy man or woman is a bett...

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.

To be truly happy is a questio...

To be truly happy is a question of how we begin, and not how we end, of what we want and not what we have.

We advance in years somewhat i...

We advance in years somewhat in the manner of an invading army in a barren land; the age that we have reached, as the saying goes, we but hold with an outpost, and still keep open communications with the extreme rear and first beginnings of the march.

Away with funeral music-set

Away with funeral music-set
The pipe to powerful lips-
The cup of life's for him that drinks
And not for him that sips.

Robert Louis Stevenson 03.03.2018 03:03:03 555 quotes