"Alas! in the clothes of the greatest potentate, what is there but a man?"

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

"The events of these last few days constitute one of the greatest diplomatic defeats that this country and France have ever sustained. There can be no doubt that it is a tremendous victory for Herr Hit…"

— Clement Attlee

Politics1883–1967

#success

"In the cases of heat and electricity the form of the persisting energy is pretty well ascertained. But there are cases in which we do not know if it is energy of motion or energy position, such as tha…"

— William Kingdon Clifford

Philosophy1845–1879

#knowledge

"In this connection I may say that there should not be any doubt to anyone regarding archaeological facts unearthed by Prof. A.K. Narain and Prof. B.B. Lal or about the nature of the structure of Babri…"

— Kishore Kunal

Politics1950–2024

#nature

"A sturdy old Muslim villager of Multan cam in, rushing and jostling his way through the impeding volunteers, shook hand with Gandhiji and sat down. He was in the highest spirits, but then Maulana Moha…"

— Mahadev Desai

Social Activism1892–1942

#religion