To be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise is to have succeeded in life.

(Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), Scottish novelist, essayist, poet. Weir of Hermiston, ch. 2 (1896).)

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.

(Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), Scottish novelist, essayist, poet. Virginibus Puerisque, "An Apology for Idlers," (1881).)

Once you are married, there is nothing for you, not even suicide, but to be good.

(Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), Scottish novelist, essayist, poet. Virginibus Puerisque, "Virginibus Puerisque," sct. 2 (1881). Stevenson referred to "matrimony at its lowest" as "no more than a sort of friendship recognised by the police.")

The friendly cow, all red and white,
I love with all my heart:
She gives me cream with all her might,
To eat with apple tart.

(Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), Scottish author. The Cow (l. 1-4). . . Oxford Book of Children's Verse, The. Iona Opie and Peter Opie, eds. (1973) Oxford University Press.)

It is just this rage for consideration that has betrayed the dog into his satellite position as the friend of man. The cat, an animal of franker appetites, preserves his independence. But the dog, with one eye ever on the audience, has been wheedled into slavery, and praised and patted into the renunciation of his nature. Once he ceased hunting and became man's plate-licker, the Rubicon was crossed. Thenceforth he was a gentleman of leisure; and except the few whom we keep working, the whole race grew more and more self-conscious, mannered and affected.

(Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), Scottish author. "The Character of Dogs," Memories and Portraits, Scribner (1916).)

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.

(Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), Scottish author. Windy Nights (l. 1-4). . . Oxford Book of Children's Verse, The. Iona Opie and Peter Opie, eds. (1973) Oxford University Press.)

By at the gallop he goes, and then
By he comes back at the gallop again.

(Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), Scottish author. Windy Nights (l. 11-12). . . Oxford Book of Children's Verse, The. Iona Opie and Peter Opie, eds. (1973) Oxford University Press.)

Away down the river,
A hundred miles or more,
Other little children
Shall bring my boats ashore.

(Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), Scottish author. Where Go the Boats? (L. 13-16). . . Oxford Book of Children's Verse, The. Iona Opie and Peter Opie, eds. (1973) Oxford University Press.)

The very flexibility and ease which make men's friendships so agreeable while they endure, make them the easier to destroy and forget. And a man who has a few friends, or one who has a dozen (if there be any one so wealthy on this earth), cannot forget on how precarious a base his happiness reposes; and how by a stroke or two of fate?a death, a few light words, a piece of stamped paper, a woman's bright eyes?he may be left, in a month, destitute of all.

(Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), Scottish novelist, essayist, poet. Virginibus Puerisque, title essay, sct. 1 (1881).)

All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.

(Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), Scottish novelist, essayist, poet. repr. In Complete Works, vol. 26 (1924). Reflections and Remarks on Human Life, sct. 3 (first published 1878).)