Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes

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

“With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to the truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.”

“You must suffer me to go my own dark way.”

“If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also.”

“If he be Mr. Hyde,” he had thought, “I shall be Mr. Seek.”

“I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both.”

“You start a question, and it’s like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others...”

“There comes an end to all things; the most capacious measure is filled at last; and this brief condescension to evil finally destroyed the balance of my soul.”

“All human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone, in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil.”

“She had an evil face, smoothed by hypocrisy; but her manners were excellent.”

“Jekyll had more than a father’s interest; Hyde had more than a son’s indifference.”

“Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.”

“I incline to Cain’s heresy,” he used to say quaintly: “I let my brother go to the devil in his own way.”

“It was for one minute that I saw him, but the hair stood upon my head like quills. Sir, if that was my master, why had he a mask upon his face?”

“I sometimes think if we knew all, we should be more glad to get away.”

“This was the shocking thing; that the slime of the pit seemed to utter cries and voices; that the amorphous dust gesticulated and sinned; that what was dead, and had no shape, should usurp the offices of life. And this again, that that insurgent horror was knit to him closer than a wife, closer than an eye; lay caged in his flesh, where he heard it mutter and felt it struggle to be born; and at every hour of weakness, and in the confidence of slumber, prevailed against him, and deposed him out of life.”

“Under the strain of this continually impending doom and by the sleeplessness to which I now condemned myself, ay, even beyond what I had thought possible to man, I became, in my own person, a creature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly weak both in body and mind, and solely occupied by one thought: the horror of my other self.”

“The less I understood of this farrago, the less I was in a position to judge of its importance.”

“I had learned to dwell with pleasure as a beloved daydream on the thought of the separation of these elements. If each I told myself could be housed in separate identities life would be relieved of all that was unbearable the unjust might go his way delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path doing the good things in which he found his pleasure and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil.”

“Strange as my circumstances were, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace as man; much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any tempted and trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls with so vast a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part and was found wanting in the strength to keep to it.”

“Some day...after I am dead, you may perhaps come to learn the right and wrong of this. I cannot tell you.”

“O my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan’s signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend.”

“His affections, like ivy, were the growth of time, they implied no aptness in the object.”

“To cast in it with Hyde was to die a thousand interests and aspirations.”

“Seaward, ho! Hang the treasure! It’s the glory of the sea that has turned my head.”

“If you keep on drinking rum, the world will soon be quit of a very dirty scoundrel!”

“How many it had cost in the amassing, what blood and sorrow, what good ships scuttled on the deep, what brave men walking the plank blindfold, what shot of cannon, what shame and lies and cruelty, perhaps no man alive could tell.”

“If it comes to swinging, swing all, say I.”

“I’ve sailed the seas and seen good and bad, better and worse, fair weather and foul, provisions running out, knives going, and what not. Well, now I tell you, I never seen good come o’ goodness yet. Him as strikes first is my fancy; dead men don’t bite; them’s my views—amen, so be it.”

“My father was always saying the inn would be ruined, for people would soon cease coming there to be tyrannized over and put down, and sent shivering to their beds; but I really believe his presence did us good. People were frightened at the time, but on looking back they rather liked it; it was a fine excitement in a quiet country life . . . ”

“I like that boy, now; I never seen a better boy than that. He’s more a man than any pair of rats of you in this here house, and what I say is this: let me see him that’ll lay a hand on him—that’s what I say, and you may lay to it.”

“Sir, with no intention to take offence, I deny your right to put words into my mouth.”

“Fifteen men on the dead man’s 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!”

“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest— Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”

“Dead men don’t bite.”

“There’s never a man looked me between the eyes and seen a good day a’terwards . . . ”

“We must go on, because we can’t turn back.”

I’m cap’n here because I’m the best man by a long sea-mile.

This grove that was now so peaceful must then have rung with cries, I thought; and even with the thought I could believe I heard it ringing still.

Between Silver and myself we got together in a few days a company of the toughest old salts imaginable—not pretty to look at, but fellows, by their faces, of the most indomitable spirit.

But what is the black spot, captain?

Then it was that there came into my head the first of the mad notions that contributed so much to save our lives.

The captain has said too much or he has said too little, and I’m bound to say that I require an explanation of his words.

I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow—a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white.

I remember him looking round the cover and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so often afterwards: “Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest— Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”

[T]hese gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17__ and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof.

But it was not its size that now impressed my companions; it was the knowledge that seven hundred thousand pounds in gold lay somewhere buried below its spreading shadow. The thought of the money, as they drew nearer, swallowed up their previous terrors. Their eyes burned in their heads; their feet grew speedier and lighter; their whole soul was bound up in that fortune, that whole lifetime of extravagance and pleasure, that lay waiting there for each of them.

“The thought of a separation ran always the stronger in my mind; and the more I approved of it, the more ashamed I grew of my approval. It would be a fine, handsome, generous thing, indeed, for Alan to turn round and say to me: “Go, I am in the most danger, and my company only increases yours.” But for me to turn to the friend who certainly loved me, and say to him: “You are in great danger, I am in but little; your friendship is a burden; go, take your risks and bear your hardships alone––” no, that was impossible; and even to think of it privily to myself, made my cheeks to burn.”

“Alan and I went slowly forward upon our way, having little heart either to walk or speak. The same thought was uppermost in both, that we were near the time of our parting; and remembrance of all the bygone days sate upon us sorely.”

“This it was that gave me a thought. No apology could blot out what I had said; it was needless to think of one, none could cover the offense; but where an apology was vain, a mere cry for help might bring Alan back to my side. I put my pride away from me. ‘Alan!’ I said; ‘if ye cannae help me, I must just die here.’ ”

″ ‘Why, David,’ said [Alan], ‘the innocent have aye a chance to get assoiled in court; but for the lad that shot the bullet, I think the best place for him will be the heather. Them that havenae dipped their hands in any little difficulty, should be very mindful of the case of them that have. And that is the good Christianity. For if it was the other way round about, and the lad whom I couldnae just clearly see had been in our shoes, and we in his (as might very well have been), I think we would be a good deal obliged to him oursel’s if he would draw the soldiers.’ ”

“Thereupon we all touched glasses and drank. I am sure I wished no ill to King George; and if he had been there himself in proper person, it’s like he would have done as I did. No sooner had I taken out the drain than I felt hugely better, and could look on and listen, still a little mistily perhaps, but no longer with the same groundless horror and distress of mind.”

″ ‘What,’ cried I, ‘were you in the English army?’ ‘That was I,’ said Alan. ‘But I deserted to the right side at Prestonpans–and that’s some comfort.’ I could scarcely share this view: holding desertion under arms for an unpardonable fault in honour. But for all I was so young, I was wiser than say my thought. ‘Dear, dear,’ says I, ‘the punishment is death.’ ”

“I said nothing, nor so much as lifted my face. I had seen murder done, and a great, ruddy, jovial gentleman struck out of life in a moment; the pity of that sight was still sore within me, and yet that was but a part of my concern. Here was murder done upon the man Alan hated; here was Alan skulking in the trees and running from the troops; and whether his was the hand that fired or only the head that ordered, signified but little. By my way of it, my only friend in that wild country was blood-guilty in the first degree; I held him in horror; I could not look upon his face; I would have rather lain alone in the rain on my cold isle, than in that warm wood beside a murderer.”

“No class of man is altogether bad, but each has its own faults and virtues; and these shipmates of mine were no exception to the rule. Rough they were, sure enough; and bad, I suppose; but they had many virtues. They were kind when it occurred to them, simple even beyond the simplicity of a country lad like me, and had some glimmerings of honesty.”

“Man Alan,” said I, “ye are neither very wise nor very Christian to blow off so many words of anger. They will do the man ye call the Fox no harm, and yourself no good. Tell me your tale plainly out. What did he next?” ” ‘And that’s a good observe, David,’ said Alan. ‘Troth and indeed, they will do him no harm; the more’s the pity! And barring that about Christianity (of which my opinion is quite otherwise, or I would be nae Christian), I am much of your mind.’ ‘Opinion here or opinion there,’ said I, ‘it’s a kent thing that Christianity forbids revenge.’ ‘Ay’ said he, ‘it’s well seen it was a Campbell taught ye! It would be a convenient world for them and their sort, if there was no such a thing as a lad and a gun behind a heather bush!’ ”

″ ‘Ah!’ says he, falling again to smiling, ‘I got my wastefulness from the same man I got the buttons from; and that was my poor father, Duncan Stewart, grace be to him! He was the prettiest man of his kindred; and the best swordsman in the Hielands, David, and that is the same as to say, in all the world, I should ken, for it was him that taught me. He was in the Black Watch, when first it was mustered; and, like other gentlemen privates, had a gillie at his back to carry his firelock for him on the march. Well, the King, it appears, was wishful to see Hieland swordsmanship; and my father and three more were chosen out and sent to London town, to let him see it at the best.’ ”

At the Seaside When I was down beside the sea A wooden spade they gave to me To dig the sandy shore, My holes were empty like a cup, In every hole the sea came up Till it could come no more

Rain The rain is raining all around, It falls on field and tree, It rains on the umbrellas here, And on the ships at sea.

Foreign Lands Up into the cherry tree Who should climb but little me? I held the trunk with both my hands And looked abroad on foreign lands. I saw the next-door garden lie, Adorned with flowers, before my eye, And many pleasant places more That I had never seen before.

Looking Forward 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.

The Whole Duty of Children A child should always say what’s true And speak when he is spoken to, And behave mannerly at table; At least as far as he is able.

Singing Of speckled eggs the birdie sings And nests among the trees; The sailor sings of ropes and things In ships upon the seas. The children sing in far Japan, The children sing in Spain; The organ with the organ man Is singing in the rain.

“Time to Rise A birdie with a yellow bill Hopped upon the window sill, Cocked his shining eye and said: ‘Ain’t you ‘shamed, you sleepy-head!’ ”

“Fairy Bread Come up here, O dusty feet! Here is fairy bread to eat, Here in my retiring room, Children, you may dine On the golden smell of broom And the shade of the pine; And when you have eaten well, Fairy stories hear and tell.”

“Windy Nights Whenever the moon and stars are set, Whenever the wind is high, All night long in the dark and wet, A man goes riding by, Late in the night when the fires are out, Why does he gallop and gallop about? Whenever the trees are crying aloud, And ships are tossed at sea, By, on the highway, low and loud, By at the gallop goes he, By at the gallop he goes, and then By he comes back at the gallop again.”

“Autumn Fires In the other gardens And all up the vale, From the autumn bonfires See the smoke trail! Pleasant summer over And all the summer flowers, The red fire blazes, The gay smoke towers. Sing a song of seasons! Something bright in all! Flowers in the summer, Fires in the fall!”