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

— Robert Louis Stevenson

For marriage is like life in this—that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

For my part I travel not to go anywhere but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

From the bonny bells of heather, They brewed a drink long sine, Was sweeter far than honey, Was stronger far than wine. They brewed it, and they drank it, And lay in blessed sound, For days and days together, In their dwellings underground. There rose a King in Scotland, A fell man to his foes, He smote the Picts in battle, He hunted them like roes. Over miles of the red mountain He hunted as they fled, And strewed the dwarfish bodies Of the dying and the dead. Summer came in the country, Red was the heather bell, But the manner of the brewing, Was none alive to tell. In graves that were like children’son many a mountain’s head, The Brewster's of the Heather Lay numbered with the dead. The king in the red moorland Rode on a summer’s day;And the bees hummed and the curlews Cried beside the way. The King rode and was angry, Black was his brow and pale, To rule in a land of heather, And lack the Heather Ale. It fortune that his vassals, Riding free upon the heath, Came on a stone that was fallen And vermin hid beneath. Roughly plucked from their hiding, Never a word they spoke:A son and his aged father –Last of the dwarfish folk. The king sat high on his charger, He looked down on the little men;And the dwarfish and swarthy couple Looked at the king again. Down by the shore he had them:And there on the giddy brink –“I will give the life ye vermin, For the secret of the drink.” There stood the son and fatherland they looked high and low;The heather was red around them, The sea rumbled below. And up spoke the father, Shrill was his voice to hear:“I have a word in private, A word for the royal ear.“Life is dear to the aged, And honor a little thing;I would gladly sell the secret”, Quoth the Pict to the King. His voice was small as a sparrow’s, And shrill and wonderful clear:“I would gladly sell my secret, Only my son I fear.“For life is a little matter, And death is bought to the young;And I dare not sell my honor, Under the eye of my son. Take him, O king, and bind him, And cast him far in the deep;And it’s I will tell the secret That I have sworn to keep.” They took the son and bound him, Neck and heels in a thong, And a lad took him and swung him, And flung him far and strong And the sea swallowed his body, Like that of a child of ten;And there on the cliff stood the father, Last of the dwarfish men.“True was the word I told you:Only my son I feared;For I doubt the sapling courage, That goes without the beard. But now in vain is the torture, Fire shall not avail:Here dies in my bosom The secret of the Heather Ale.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

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.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Give us grace and strength to preserve. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind. Spare to us our friends and soften to us our enemies. Give us the strength to encounter that which is to come that we may be brave in peril constant in tribulation temperate in wrath and in all changes of fortune and down to the gates of death loyal and loving to one another.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Give us the strength to encounter that which is to come that we may be brave in peril constant in tribulation temperate in wrath and in all changes of fortune and down to the gates of death loyal and loving one to another.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Good and evil are so close as to be chained together in the soul.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Half a capital and half a country town, the whole city leads a double existence; it has long trances of the one and flashes of the other; like the king of the Black Isles, it is half alive and half a monumental marble.

— Robert Louis Stevenson