An aspiration is a joy forever, a possession as solid as a landed estate, a fortune which we can never exhaust and which gives us year by year a revenue of pleasurable activity.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Bright is the ring of words When the right man rings them, Fair the fall of songs When the singer sings them. Still they are carolled and said - On wings they are carried - After the singer is dead And the maker buried.

Robert Louis Stevenson

song men fall

The FlowersAll the names I know from nurse:Gardener's garters, Shepherd's purse,Bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock,And the Lady Hollyhock.Fairy places, fairy things,Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,Tiny trees for tiny dames-These must all be fairy names!Tiny woods below whose boughsShady fairies weave a house;Tiny tree-tops, rose or thyme,Where the braver fairies climb!Fair are grown-up people's trees,But the fairest woods are these;Where, if I were not so tall,I should live for good and all

Robert Louis Stevenson

names rose wings

I know what happiness is, for I have done good work.

Robert Louis Stevenson

good-work done happiness

There is but one art, to omit! Oh, if I knew how to omit I would ask no other knowledge. A man who knows how to omit would make an Iliad of a daily paper.

Robert Louis Stevenson

paper men art

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.

Robert Louis Stevenson

beautiful long looks

Fiction is to grown men what play is to the child.

Robert Louis Stevenson

play men children

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

white heart food

Being happy enables you to be free from domination by the outside world.

Robert Louis Stevenson

domination happiness world

Everything is true; only the opposite is true too; you must believe both equally or be damned.

Robert Louis Stevenson

opposites believe

Jealousy is the most radical primeval and naked form of admiration in war paint, so to speak.

Robert Louis Stevenson

naked jealousy war

Under the strain of this continually impending doom and by the sleeplessness to which I now condemned myself, ay, even beyond what I had thought possible to man, I became, in my own person, a creature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly weak both in body and mind, and solely occupied by one thought: the horror of my other self.

Robert Louis Stevenson

self mind men

The physician...is the flower (such as it is) of our civilization.

Robert Louis Stevenson

physicians flower civilization

To miss the joy is to miss everything.

Robert Louis Stevenson

missing joy

Don't ever confuse motion with progress.

Robert Louis Stevenson

progress work

Nobody speaks of a beautifful view for 5 minutes

Robert Louis Stevenson

minutes speak views

There is no music like a little river's . . . It takes the mind out-of-doors . . . and . . . it quiets a man down like saying his prayers.

Robert Louis Stevenson

prayer doors men

Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I lay me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be: Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill.

Robert Louis Stevenson

home death lying

To love playthings well as a child, to lead an adventurous and honorable youth, and to settle when the time arrives, into a green and smiling age, is to be a good artis en life and deserve well of yourself and your neighbor.

Robert Louis Stevenson

balance age children

The world was made before English language, and seemingly upon a different design.

Robert Louis Stevenson

design different world

For the forest takes away from you all excuse to die. There is nothing here to cabin or thwart your free desires. Here all impudences of the brawling world reach you no more.

Robert Louis Stevenson

cabins desire world