“For God's sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself!”

— Robert Louis Stevenson, Crabbed Age and Youth, in Virginibus Puerisque, 1881

About Robert Louis Stevenson

1850 – 1894

Scottish novelist and essayist, author of "Treasure Island" and "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde".

“To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.”

“Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life.”

“To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”

“The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.”

“Old age deprives the intelligent man only of qualities useless to wisdom.”

“The young have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations.”

“My loneliness was born when men praised my talkative faults and blamed my silent virtues.”

“Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever.”

“No man who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free.”