Robert Louis Stevenson
Well, well, Henry James is pretty good, though he is of the nineteenth century, and that glaringly.
The man is a success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who leaves the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who never lacked appreciation of earth's beauty or failed to express it; who looked for the best in others and gave the best he had.Collection: Love
Make the most of the best and the least of the worst.Collection: Inspiration
The person who has stopped being thankful has fallen asleep in life.Collection: Being Thankful
Make up your mind to be happy. Learn to find pleasure in simple things.Collection: Happiness
Like a bird singing in the rain, let grateful memories survive in time of sorrow.Collection: Sympathy
Be what you are, and become what you are capable of becoming.Collection: Becoming
In each of us, two natures are at war – the good and the evil. All our lives the fight goes on between them, and one of them must conquer. But in our own hands lies the power to choose – what we want most to be we are.Collection: War
Everyday courage has few witnesses. But yours is no less noble because no drum beats for you and no crowds shout your name.Collection: Courage
Don't ever confuse motion with progress.Collection: Work
Do not measure success by today's harvest. Measure success by the seeds you plant today.Collection: Today
The bold may not live long, but the timid never live at all.Collection: Long
Keep busy at something: a busy person never has time to be unhappy.Collection: Sadness
Being happy enables you to be free from domination by the outside world.Collection: Happiness
The saints are the sinners who keep on trying.Collection: Positive
Since hate poisons the soul, don't cherish enmities or grudges: avoid people who make you unhappy.Collection: Hate
The essence of love is kindness.Collection: Love
There is nothing but God's grace. We walk upon it; we breathe it; we live and die by it; it makes the nails and axles of the universe.Collection: Friendship
A man should stop his ears against paralyzing terror and run the race that is set before him with a single mind.Collection: Running
To avoid an occasion for our virtues is a worse degree of failure than to push forward pluckily and make a fall.Collection: Inspirational
Ice and iron cannot be welded.Collection: Ice
When Christ came into my life, I came about like a well-handled ship.Collection: Ships
When your toil has been a pleasure, you have not earned money merely, but money, health, delight, and moral profit, all in one.Collection: Happiness
Take care of each other.Collection: Inspirational
It is better to be a fool than to be dead. It is better to emit a scream in the shape of a theory than to be entirely insensible to the jars and incongruities of life and take everything as it comes in a forlorn stupidity. Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind. For God's sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself!Collection: Men
In the law of God, there is no statute of limitations.Collection: Law
When I say writing, O believe me, it is rewriting that I have chiefly in mind.Collection: Believe
Extreme busyness, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality.Collection: School
Things looked at patiently from one side after another generally end by showing a side that is beautiful.Collection: Beautiful
I know what happiness is, for I have done good work.Collection: Happiness
Money alone is only a mean; it presupposes a man to use it. The rich man can go where he pleases, but perhaps please himself nowhere. He can buy a library or visit the whole world, but perhaps has neither patience to read nor intelligence to see.... The purse may be full and the heart empty. He may have gained the world and lost himself; and with all his wealth around him ... he may live as blank a life as any tattered ditcher.Collection: Money
Lastly (and this is, perhaps, the golden rule), no woman should marry a man who does not smoke.Collection: Men
We consume the carcasses of creatures of like appetites, passions and organs with our own, and fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of pain and fear.Collection: Pain
The mark of a Scot of all classes [is that] he ... remembers and cherishes the memory of his forebears, good or bad; and there burns alive in him a sense of identity with the dead even to the twentieth generation.Collection: Memories
Loving God, help us remember the birth of Jesus, that we may share in the song of the angels, the gladness of the shepherds, and the worship of the wise men.Collection: Wise
The spirit, Sir, is one of mockery.Collection: Spirit
A birdie with a yellow bill Hoped upon the window sill, Cocked his shining eye and said: 'Ain't you 'shamed, you sleepy-'ead?Collection: Eye
He who has learned to love an art or science has wisely laid up riches against the day of riches.Collection: Art
In the harsh face of life faith can read a bracing gospel.Collection: Faith
The smack of California earth shall linger on the palate of your grandson.Collection: California
We live thetime that a match flickers; we pop the corkof a ginger-beer bottle, and the earthquake swallows us on the instant. Is it not odd, is it not incongruous, is it not, in the highest sense of human speech, incredible, that we should think so highly of the ginger-beer, and regard so little the devouring earthquake?Collection: Beer
They say cowardice is infectious; but then argument is, on the other hand, a great emboldener.Collection: Hands
O my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan's signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend.Collection: Signatures
When we look in to the long avenue of the future, and see the good there is for each one of us to do, we realize, after all, what a beautiful thing it is to work, and to live, and to be happy.Collection: Beautiful
One more touch of the bow, smell of the virginal Green - one more, and my bosom Feels new life with an ecstasy.Collection: Smell
But of works of art little can be said.Collection: Art
I love this quote uttered by the character Widget in The Night Circus. He credits it to Herr Thiessen but knows it is a literary quote by the another author. "Wine is bottled poetryCollection: Wine