Robert Louis Stevenson

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

So long as we love, we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I should say that we are almost indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.

You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving.

The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us.

If a man loves the labour of his trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him.

We must accept life for what it actually is - a challenge to our quality without which we should never know of what stuff we are made, or grow to our full stature.

Marriage is like life - it is a field of battle, not a bed of roses.

Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.

Keep your eyes open to your mercies. The man who forgets to be thankful has fallen asleep in life.

To become what we are capable of becoming is the only end in life.

Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a poor substitute for life.