Robert Louis Stevenson

Literary Birthday – 13 November – Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson was born 13 November 1850, and died 3 December 1894.

Nine Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes

  1. Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life.
  2. Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.
  3. The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.
  4. The cruellest lies are often told in silence.
  5. All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.
  6. It is not likely that posterity will fall in love with us, but not impossible that it may respect or sympathise; so a man would rather leave behind him the portrait of his spirit than a portrait of his face.
  7. I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.
  8. To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.
  9. Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.

'The Skye Boat Song' from 'Outlander' was adapted from Stevenson's 1892 poem, 
'Sing me a Song of a Lad that is Gone'

Sing me a song of a lad that is gone
Say, could that lad be I?
Merry of soul he sailed on a day
Over the sea to Skye

Mull was astem, Rum on the port,
Eigg on the starboard bow:
Glory of youth glowed in his soul:
Where is that glory now?

Sing me a song of the lad that is gone,
Say, could that lad be I?
Merry of soul he sailed on a day
Over the sea to Skye.

Give me again all that was there,
Give me the sun that shone,
Give me the eyes, give me the soul,
Give me the lad that's gone.

Sing me a song of the lad that is gone,
Say, could that lad be I?
Merry of soul he sailed on a day
Over the sea to Skye.

Billow and breeze, islands and seas,
Mountains of rain and sun,
All that was good, all that was fair
All that was me is gone.

Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer. His most famous works are Treasure Island, Kidnapped,  and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. He died in Upolu, an island in Samoa. He wrote the first draft of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in three days while high on cocaine, burnt the manuscript after his wife read it, and then took six days to rewrite it.  (via narrativemag)

Source for Image

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robert_Louis_Stevenson_by_Henry_Walter_Barnett_bw.jpg

Henry Walter Barnett, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

by Amanda Patterson

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Posted on: 13th November 2012
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