816 Quotes by Robert Louis Stevenson

We all know what Parliament is, and we are all ashamed of it.

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

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

High up overhead the snow settled among the traceryof the cathedral towers. Many a niche was drifted full; many a statuewore a long white bonnet on its grotesque or sainted head. The gargoyleshad been transformed into great false noses, drooping toward the point.The crockets were like upright pillows swollen on one side. In theintervals of the wind there was a dull sound dripping about theprecincts of the church.

...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.

We must lay to, if you please, and keep a bright lookout. It's trying on a man, I know. It would be pleasanter to come to blows. But there's no help for it till we know our men. Lay to, and whistle for a wind, that's my view.

... Bear up until you see you're gaining.

I'm cap'n here by 'lection. I'm cap'n here because I'm the best man by a long sea-mile. You won't fight, as gentlemen o' fortune should; then, by thunder, you'll obey, and you may lay to it! 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.

I never in my life saw men so careless of the morrow; hand to mouth is the only word that can describe their way of doing; and what with wasted food and sleeping sentries, though they were bold enough for a brush and be done with it, I could see their entire unfitness for anything like a prolonged campaign.