Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes

I think he came to die with me," I say. I clamp my hand over my mouth to stifle a sob. If I can keep breathing, I can stop crying. I didn't need or want him to die with me. I wanted to keep him safe. What an idiot, I think, but my heart isn't in it. "That's ridiculous," he says. "That doesn't make any sense. He's eighteen; he'll find another girlfriend once you're dead. And he's stupid if he doesn't know that." Tears run down my cheeks, hot at first and then cold. I close my eyes. "If you think that's what it's about..." I swallow another sob. "...you're the stupid one.

What are heavy? sea-sand and sorrow. What are brief? today and tomorrow. What are frail? spring blossoms and youth. What are deep? the ocean and truth.

You know, without my telling you, how sometimes a word or name eludes you, and you seek it through running ghosts of shadow -- leaping at it, lying in wait for it to spring upon it, spreading faint snares for it of sense or sound: until, of a sudden, as if in a phantom forest, you hear it, see it flash among the branches, and scarcely knowing how, suddenly have it.

Many things they sawe with us as mathematicall instruments, sea compasses... spring clocks that seemed to goe of themselves - and many other things we had - were so strange unto them, and so farre exceeded their capacities to comprehend the reason and meanes how they should be made and done, that they thought they were rather the workes of gods then men.

There's nothing in the sea this fish would fear. Other fish run from bigger things. That's their instinct. But this fish doesn't run from anything. He doesn't fear.

Walter loves the sea, and I need it in some elemental way that I cannot even come close to verbalizing. I become dim and shriveled somehow at my very core if I am away from the sea too long. When I return to it I seem to fill up and overflow with it, soaking in the vast, sighing wetness of it like a parched vine in a long, soft spring rain.

Seas wept from our deep sorrows.

Dear Prince, I must leave you, but I will never forget you, and next spring I will bring you back two beautiful jewels in place of those you have given away. The ruby shall be redder than a red rose, and the sapphire shall be as blue as the great sea.

The streams, rejoiced that winter's work is done, Talk of to-morrow's cowslips as they run.

All flesh is one: what matter scores; Or color of the suit Or if the helmet glints with blue or gold? All is one bold achievement, All is fine spring-found-again-in-autumn day When juices run in antelopes along our blood, And green our flag, forever green...

The elks, on the other hand live up in the hills, and in the spring they come down for their annual convention. It is very interesting to watch them come to the water hole. And you should see them run when they find it is only a water hole. What they're looking for is an 'elk-a-hole'.

Even in a jungle, lovely flowers will spring up here and there, such being the fecundity of nature, and however badly our pastors and masters run our society, however much they pull to pieces that which they claim to be keeping intact, nature remains fecund, human beings are born with human traits, sometimes human strength outweighs human weakness, and human grace shows itself amid human ugliness. ‘In the bloodiest times,’ as our play has it, ‘there are kind people.’

Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety,--all this rust of life, ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. It is better than emery. Every man ought to rub himself with it. A man without mirth is like a wagon without springs, in which one is caused disagreeably to jolt by every pebble over which it runs.

The problem with water, though, is that the shortfalls don't show up until the very end. You can go on pumping unsustainably until the day you run out. Then all you have is the recharge flow, which comes from precipitation. This is not decades away, this is years away. We're already seeing huge shortages in China, where the Yellow River runs dry for part of each year. The Yellow River is the cradle of Chinese civilization. It first failed to reach the sea in 1972, and since 1985 it's run dry for part of each year. For 1997 it was dry for 226 days.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride, In the sepulchre there by the sea, In her tomb by the sounding sea.

A man would know the end he goes to, but he cannot know it if he does not turn, and return to his beginning, and hold that beginning in his being. If he would not be a stick whirled and whelmed in the stream, he must be the stream itself, all of it, from its spring to its sinking in the sea.

Maybe Liz was right and she'd wanted someplace safe. Maybe Mr. Solomon really did understand that running was the only way Macey would find out if we'd run after her. Or maybe, like me, she just wanted to disappear for a little while

To run over better waters the little vessel of my genius now hoists her sails, as she leaves behind her a sea so cruel.

Shall we mourn here deedless forever a shadow-folk mist-haunting dropping vain tears in the thankless sea

I can understand the idea that there is a conspiracy. In fact, in much of the world there is a sense of an ultra-powerful CIA manipulating everything that happens, such as running the Arab Spring, running the Pakistani Taliban, etc. That is just nonsense. They [CIA] created a monster and now they are appalled by it.

The methods by which men have met and conquered trouble, or been slain by it, are the same in every age. Some have floated on the sea, and trouble carried them on its surface as the sea carries cork. Some have sunk at once to the bottom as foundering ships sink. Some have run away from their own thoughts. Some have coiled themselves up into a stoical indifference. Some have braved the trouble, and defied it. Some have carried it as a tree does a wound, until by new wood it can overgrow and cover the old gash.