Robert Louis Stevenson

I believe you to be strictly honorable.'He thoughtfully emptied his cup. 'I wish I could add you were intelligent,' he went on, knocking on his head with his knuckles.

There is a romance about all those who are abroad in the black hours.

Old is the tree and the fruit good,Very old and thick the wood.Woodman, is your courage stout?Beware! the root is wrapped aboutYour mother's heart, your father's bones;And like the mandrake comes with groans.

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

Suicide carried off many. Drink and the devil took care of the rest

Everyone who got where he is has had to begin where he was.

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.

He felt ready to face the devil, and strutted in the ballroom with the swagger of a cavalier.

REQUIEMUnder the wide and starry skyDig the grave and let me lie:Glad did I live and gladly die,And I laid me down with a will.This be the verse you grave for me:Here he lies where he long'd to be;Home is the sailor, home from the sea,

...with a strong strong glow of courage, drank off the potion.

Don't you know Poole, you and I are about to place ourselves in a position of some peril?

he should have done all things otherwise: poignant regrets, weary, incessant toiling of the mind to change what was unchangeable, to plan what was now useless, to be the architect of the irrevocable past.

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

Death, like a host, comes smiling to the door;Smiling, he greets us, on that tranquil shoreWhere neither piping bird nor peeping dawnDisturbs the eternal sleep,But in the stillness far withdrawnOur dreamless rest for evermore we keep.

The thoughts of his mind, besides, were of the gloomiest dye; and when he glanced at the companion of his drive, he was conscious of some touch of that terror of the law and the law__ officers, which may at times assail the most honest.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.

It is a phrase that may well perplex a poor modern, girt about on every side by clocks and chimes...For we are all so busy, and have so many far-off projects to realise, and castles in the fire to turn into solid habitable mansions on a gravel soil, that we can find no time for pleasure trips into the Land of Thought and among the Hills of Vanity.

To My MotherYou too, my mother, read my rhymesFor love of unforgotten times,And you may chance to hear once moreThe little feet along the floor.