Robert Louis Stevenson

“You must suffer me to go my own dark way.”

“Strange as my circumstances were, the terms of this debateare as old and commonplace as man; much the same inducements andalarms cast the die for any tempted and trembling sinner; and itfell out with me, as it falls with so vast a majority of myfellows, that I chose the better part and was found wanting in thestrength to keep to it.”

“This was the shocking thing; that the slime of the pit seemed to utter cries and voices; that the amorphous dust gesticulated and sinned; that what was dead, and had no shape, should usurp the offices of life. And this again, that that insurgent horror was knit to him closer than a wife, closer than an eye; lay caged in his flesh, where he heard it mutter and felt it struggle to be born; and at every hour of weakness, and in the confidence of slumber, prevailed against him, and deposed him out of life.”

“There comes an end to all things; the most capacious measure is filled at last; and this brief condescension to evil finally destroyed the balance of my soul.”

“I know; I don't care to die either. But when whining mendeth nothing, wherefore whine?”

“Some places speak distinctly. Certain dank gardens cry aloud for a murder; certain old houses demand to be haunted; certain coasts are set apart for shipwrecks.”

“In many ways an artistic nature unfits a man for a practical existence.”

“That is the bitterness of art: you see a good effect, and some nonsense about sense continually intervenes.”

“Fiction is to grown men what play is to the child.”

“Seaward ho! Hang the treasure! It's the glory of the sea that has turned my head.”

“Thems that die'll be the lucky ones.”

“Although I express myself with some degree of pleasantry, the purport of my words is entirely serious.”

“The horror with which blind and unjust law regards an action never attaches to the doer in the eyes of those who love him.”

“Curiosity and timidity fought a long battle in his heart.”

“Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.”

“With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to the truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.”

“It was for one minute that I saw him, but the hair stood upon my head like quills. Sir, if that was my master, why had he a mask upon his face?”

“O God!' I screamed, and 'O God!' again and again; for there before my eyes--pale and shaken, and half fainting, and groping before him with his hands, like a man restored from death--there stood Henry Jekyll!”

“If he be Mr. Hyde" he had thought, "I shall be Mr. Seek.”

“He is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something downright detestable. I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn’t specify the point. He’s an extraordinary-looking man, and yet I really can name nothing out of the way. No sir; I can make no hand of it; I can’t describe him. And it’s not want of memory; for I declare I can see him this moment.”

“I swear to God I will never set eyes on him again. I bind my honour to you that I am done with him in this world. It is all at an end. And indeed he does not want my help; you do not know him as I do; he is safe, he is quite safe; mark my words, he will never more be heard of. ~Jekyll”

“I am painfully situated, Utterson; my position is a very strange--a very strange one. It is one of those affairs that cannot be mended by talking. ~Jekyll”

“To be feared of a thing and yet to do it, is what makes the prettiest kind of a man.”

“There is only one difference between a long life and a good dinner: that, in the dinner, the sweets come last.”

“Now this was one of the things I had been brought up to eschew like disgrace; it being held by my father neither the part of a Christian nor yet of a gentleman to set his own livelihood and fish for that of others, on the cast of painted pasteboard.”

“There are two things that men should never weary of, goodness and humility; we get none too much of them in this rough world among cold, proud people.”

“Sir, with no intention to take offence, I deny your right to put words into my mouth.”

“The captain has said too much or he has said too little, and I'm bound to say that I require an explanation of his words.”

“We got together in a few days a company of the toughest old salts imaginable--not pretty to look at, but fellows, by their faces, of the most indomitable spirit.”

“The workpeople, to be sure, were most annoyingly slow, but time cured that.”

“Sometimes the isle was thick with savages, with whom we fought, sometimes full of dangerous animals that hunted us, but in all my fancies nothing occurred to me so strange as our actual adventures.”

“If it comes to a swinging, swing all, say I.”

“The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness. There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but innocent freedom of the soul. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine.”

“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.”

“Suicide carried off many. Drink and the devil took care of the rest”

“...That insurgent horror was knit to him closer than a wife, closer than an eye lay caged in his flesh, where he heard it mutter and felt it struggle to be born; and at every hour of weakness, and in the confidence of slumber, prevailed against him, and deposed him out of life.”

“Everyone, at some time or another, sits down to a banquet of consequences. ”

“The FlowersAll the names I know from nurse:Gardener's garters, Shepherd's purse,Bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock,And the Lady Hollyhock.Fairy places, fairy things,Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,Tiny trees for tiny dames--These must all be fairy names!Tiny woods below whose boughsShady fairies weave a house;Tiny tree-tops, rose or thyme,Where the braver fairies climb!Fair are grown-up people's trees,But the fairest woods are these;Where, if I were not so tall,I should live for good and all”

“I regard you with an indifference closely bordering on aversion.”

“Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”

“I feel very strongly about putting questions; it partakes too much of the style of the day of judgment.”

“I often think the happiest consequences seem to follow when a gentelman consults his lawyer, and takes all the law allows him.”

“I cannot tell if I was more tired or more grateful. Both at least, I was: tired as I never was before that night; and grateful to Gd as I trust I have been often, though never with more cause.”

“You're either my ship's cook-and then you were treated handsome-or Cap'n Silver, a common mutineer and pirate, and then you can go hang!”

“Ние консумираме труповете на същества, които имат апетит, страсти и органи като нашите и изпълваме ежедневно кланиците с викове на болка и страх.”

“Idleness does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognized in the dogmatic formualries of the ruling class.”

“It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it. ”

“We all know what Parliament is, and we are all ashamed of it. ”

“An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding.”

“Three,' reckoned the captain, 'ourselves make seven, counting Hawkins, here. Now, about honest hands?'Most likely Trelawney's own men," said the doctor; 'those he had picked up for himself, before he lit on Silver.'Nay,' replied the squire. 'Hands was one of mine.'I did think I could have trusted Hands,' added the captain.”