"There are circumstances in which even the least energetic of mankind learn to behave with vigour and decision; and the most cautious forget their prudence and embrace foolhardy resolutions."

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

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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.”

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