Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson (1850-1894), also Robert Louis Stevenson or simply R L Stevenson, was a novelist and essayist, grandson of the preceding, born at Edinburgh, where in 1875 he was called to the bar, after disappointing his father by not following the family vocation of engineering. He had already begun to write for the magazines, and soon abandoned law for the profession of letters, in which he rapidly came to the front.

In 1878 appeared his first book, "An Inland Voyage," quickly followed by "Travels with a Donkey," "Virginibus Puerisque," "Familiar Studies". With "Treasure Island" (1883) he found a wider public as a writer of adventure and romance, and established himself permanently in the public favour with "Kidnapped" (1886, most popular story), "The Master of Ballantrae," "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," &c. His versatility in letters was further revealed in his charming "A Child's Garden of Verse," "Ballads," "Memories and Portraits," and "A Footnote to History" (on Samoan politics). In 1890 failing health induced him to make his home in the island of Samoa, where he died and is buried. "His too short life," says Professor Saintsbury, "has left a fairly ample store of work, not always quite equal, seldom quite without a flaw, but charming, stimulating, distinguished as few things in this last quarter of a century have been".

Wisdom & Quotes

• Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitutes for life.

- An Apology for Idlers, in Virginibus Puerisque

• In marriage, a man becomes slack and selfish, and undergoes a fatty degeneration of his moral being.

- Virginibus Puerisque

• To travel hopefully is better than to arrive, and true success is to labour.

- Virginibus Puerisque

• A child should always say what's true

And speak when he is spoken to.
And behave mannerly at table:
At least as far as he is able.
- A Child's Garden of Verses

• I regard you with an indifference closely bordering on aversion.

- Story of the Bandbox in New Arabian Nights

• Here he lies where he longs to be;

Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
- Requiem, in Underwoods

• Old and young, we are all on our last cruise.

- Crabbed Age and Youth

• It's a long time between drinks.

- The Wrong Box

• Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.

- Familiar Studies of Men and Books

• I travel not to go anywhere but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.

- Travel with a Donkey

• In winter I get up by night

And dress by yellow candlelight.
In summer quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.
- Bed in Summer in A Child's Garden of Verses

• The world is so full of a number of things,

I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.
- Happy Thoughts, in A Child's Garden of Verses

Edward Bellamy