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.

There is no progress whatever. Everything is just the same as it was thousands, and tens of thousands, of years ago. The outward form changes. The essence does not change.

Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.

Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.

Compromise is the best and cheapest lawyer.

We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.

It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.

The web, then, or the pattern, a web at once sensuous and logical, an elegant and pregnant texture: that is style, that is the foundation of the art of literature.

Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but primarily by catchwords.

Talk is by far the most accessible of pleasures. It costs nothing in money, it is all profit, it completes our education, founds and fosters our friendships, and can be enjoyed at any age and in almost any state of health.