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Treasure Island Quotes

26 of the best book quotes from Treasure Island
01
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“If it comes to swinging, swing all, say I.”
Robert Louis Stevenson
author
Treasure Island
book
Black Dog
character
effort
concept
02
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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!”
Pirates
person
Jim Hawkins
Billy Bones
characters
03
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“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 . . . ”
04
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“Dead men don’t bite.”
05
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“There’s never a man looked me between the eyes and seen a good day a’terwards . . . ”
06
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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.
07
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“It was Silver’s voice, and before I had heard a dozen words, I would not have shown myself for all the world, but lay there, trembling and listening, in the extreme of fear and curiosity, for from these dozen words I understood that the lives of all the honest men aboard depended upon me alone.”
08
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“We must go on, because we can’t turn back.”
09
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“His stories were what frightened people worst of all. . . . By his own account he must have lived his life among some of the wickedest men that God ever allowed upon the sea, and the language in which he told these stories shocked our plain country people almost as much as the crimes that he described.”
10
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“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.”
11
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“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.”
12
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I’m cap’n here because I’m the best man by a long sea-mile.
13
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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.
14
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Certainly he took no pains to hide his thoughts, and certainly I read them like print. In the immediate nearness of the gold, all else had been forgotten: his promise and the doctor’s warning were both things of the past, and I could not doubt that he hoped to seize upon the treasure, find and board the Hispaniola under cover of night, cut every honest throat about that island, and sail away as he had at first intended, laden with crimes and riches.
15
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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.
16
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“Seaward, ho! Hang the treasure! It’s the glory of the sea that has turned my head.”
17
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“If you keep on drinking rum, the world will soon be quit of a very dirty scoundrel!”
18
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“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.”
19
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But what is the black spot, captain?
20
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Then it was that there came into my head the first of the mad notions that contributed so much to save our lives.
21
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[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.
22
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“Sir, with no intention to take offence, I deny your right to put words into my mouth.”
23
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“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!”
24
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“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest— Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
25
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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.
26
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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.

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