An Inland Voyage

“To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.””

— Robert Louis Stevenson

“An imperturbable demeanour comes from perfect patience. Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.””

— Robert Louis Stevenson

“Come back?  There is no coming back, young ladies, on the impetuous stream of life.””

— Robert Louis Stevenson

“He was breaking his fast on white wine and raw onions, in order to keep up the character of martyr, I conclude. ””

— Robert Louis Stevenson

“But at a certain stage of prosperity, as in a balloon ascent, the fortunate person passes through a zone of clouds, and sublunary matters are thenceforward hidden from his view.  He sees nothing but the heavenly bodies, all in admirable order, and positively as good as new.  He finds himself surrounded in the most touching manner by the attentions of Providence, and compares himself involuntarily with the lilies and the skylarks.  He does not precisely sing, of course; but then he looks so unassuming in his open landau!  If all the world dined at one table, this philosophy would meet with some rude knocks.””

— Robert Louis Stevenson

“But now that was all gone by, and had left her neither happier nor wiser; and the best she could do with her mornings was to come up here into the cold church and juggle for a slice of heaven. ””

— Robert Louis Stevenson

“and I am sure that food is much more generally entertaining than scenery.  Do you give in, as Walt Whitman would say, that you are any the less immortal for that?  The true materialism is to be ashamed of what we are.  To detect the flavour of an olive is no less a piece of human perfection than to find beauty in the colours of the sunset.””

— Robert Louis Stevenson

“We now lay in towns, where nobody troubled us with questions; we had floated into civilised life, where people pass without salutation. ””

— Robert Louis Stevenson

“It is nothing to get wet; but the misery of these individual pricks of cold all over my body at the same instant of time made me flail the water with my paddle like a madman. ””

— Robert Louis Stevenson