"It is the mark of a modest man to accept his friendly circle ready-made from the hands of opportunity."

Robert Louis Stevenson Literature See all quotes by Robert Louis Stevenson →

React to this quote

More by Robert Louis Stevenson

“I have thus played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt, to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas Browne, to Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne, to Baudelaire and to Obermann. (...) That, like it or not, is the way to learn to write whether I have profited or not, that is the way.”

“For there is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly understood, is solitude made perfect.”

“Nothing like a little judicious levity.”

“To be overwise is to ossify; and the scruple-monger ends by standing stockstill.”

“The devil, depend upon it, can sometimes do a very gentlemanly thing.”

“Sanity itself is a kind of convention.”

Resonant Thoughts

"With differing, but equally fallible views, I think it is best that they be aired and sorted out in an environment of civility, consistent with the institutions in which we are involved. In this case,…"

— Clarence Thomas

Law1945–2011

#friendship

"She's here with her girlfriend. She's half a man."

— Martina Hingis

Sports1980

#friendship

"The Nazis spoke of having a Jewish problem. We now speak of having a drug-abuse problem. Actually, “Jewish problem” was the name the Germans gave to their persecution of the Jews; “drug-abuse problem”…"

— Thomas Szasz

Education1920–2012

#friendship

"Like most vigorous-minded men, seeing that there was no stopping-place between dogma and negation, he preferred to accept dogma. Of all weaknesses he most disliked timid and half-hearted faith. He wou…"

— Henry Adams

Politics1838–1918

#love