Robert Louis Stevenson

A man finds he has been wrong at every preceding stage of his
career, only to deduce the astonishing read more

A man finds he has been wrong at every preceding stage of his
career, only to deduce the astonishing conclusion that he is at
last entirely right.

Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind, spare read more

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.

Umbrellas, like faces, acquire a certain sympathy with the
individual who carries them. . . . May it not read more

Umbrellas, like faces, acquire a certain sympathy with the
individual who carries them. . . . May it not be said of the
bearers of these inappropriate umbrellas, that they go about the
streets "with a lie in their right hand?" . . . Except in a very
few cases of hypocrisy joined to a powerful intellect, men, not
by nature, umbrellarians, have tried again and again to become so
by art, and yet have failed--have expended their patrimony in the
purchase of umbrella after umbrella, and yet have systematically
lost them, and have finally, with contrite spirits and strunken
purses, given up their vain struggle, and relied on theft and
borrowing for the remainder of their lives.

The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean

The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.