Browse quotations by Robert Louis Stevenson with named works, context notes, meanings and recurring themes.
“he must try to give happiness to others.”
Stevenson makes other people’s happiness part of ordinary moral duty even while admitting that a person may not possess a complete theory of goodness.
Source note: A Christmas Sermon, section II, published in Scribner’s Magazine in 1888 and preserved as Project Gutenberg #14535. The sentence is part of an ethical sermon rather than a guarantee that good intentions always produce good outcomes.
“One person’s happiness is as sacred as another’s”
The claim gives equal moral weight to another person’s well-being, supporting intervention against injury without treating one individual’s happiness as inherently more valuable than another’s.
Source note: A Christmas Sermon, section II; Project Gutenberg #14535. The surrounding paragraph contrasts personal revenge with defending a neighbour, so “sacred” functions as moral rhetoric rather than legal doctrine.
“By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the world”
The essay treats visible good spirits as a diffuse social contribution whose effects may reach other people without the cheerful person ever knowing where they landed.
Source note: “An Apology for Idlers,” 1877; evidence text in Project Gutenberg editions. The sentence belongs to Stevenson’s broader defense of leisure and sociability against relentless busyness.
“There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.”
Stevenson argues that a person’s happiness can benefit others socially, so cheerfulness is not merely private pleasure in the essay’s deliberately provocative moral accounting.
Source note: “An Apology for Idlers,” first printed in the Cornhill Magazine in July 1877 and later collected in Virginibus Puerisque; represented through Project Gutenberg public-domain editions. The essay is polemical, not clinical advice about mood.
“To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.”
The value of a journey can lie in purposeful movement and effort rather than only in the moment of arrival.
Source note: Essay “El Dorado.”
“Thus it is: added difficulty, added beauty;”
In the specific context of verse technique, Stevenson argues that an additional formal constraint can create another opportunity for artistic achievement and aesthetic interest.
Source note: Essays in the Art of Writing, “On Some Technical Elements of Style in Literature”; Project Gutenberg #492. “Difficulty” here concerns literary form and craft, not a universal claim that hardship automatically makes things better.
“We shall never learn the affinities of beauty”
Stevenson treats beauty as deeper than any complete technical explanation, warning that analysis of artistic mechanism does not exhaust why form can move or delight.
Source note: Essays in the Art of Writing, “On Some Technical Elements of Style in Literature,” represented by the 1905 Chatto & Windus edition in Project Gutenberg #492. The collection is posthumous; the excerpt concerns literary aesthetics.
“To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”
Stevenson’s formulation links self-acceptance with development: a worthwhile life is not imitation of someone else’s pattern but fuller realization of capacities that belong to one’s own character.
Source note: Familiar Studies of Men and Books, essay “Henry David Thoreau: His Character and Opinions,” section V; Project Gutenberg #425. The surrounding paragraph quotes several Thoreau statements, but this sentence is Stevenson’s own connective judgment, so it is not attributed to Thoreau.
“This ground is hallowed by the heroes of defeat.”
The phrase grants dignity to people who struggled without conventional victory, reframing defeat as compatible with courage and a life still worthy of remembrance.
Source note: Memories and Portraits, in Stevenson’s reflection on graves and failed lives; Project Gutenberg #381. The sentence is literary commemoration, not a claim that every defeat is heroic.
“there falls along with him a whole wing of the palace of our life.”
The death of a close friend is pictured as structural loss inside the survivor’s own life because shared memory, recognition and companionship disappear with that person.
Source note: Memories and Portraits; Project Gutenberg #381. The surrounding passage describes friendship, mortality and memory; the architectural metaphor is kept as grief writing rather than literal psychology.
“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake.”
Stevenson values movement and lived experience as ends in themselves, making the act of travelling more important here than reaching a prestigious destination.
Source note: Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, “Cheylard and Luc,” Project Gutenberg #535. Stevenson follows the sentence by calling movement “the great affair” and describing the physical needs and difficulties of the road; it is literary travel reflection, not contemporary destination guidance.