An Inland Voyage Quotes

“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 Inland Voyage

“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, An Inland Voyage

“Come back?  There is no coming back, young ladies, on the impetuous stream of life.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

“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, An Inland Voyage

“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, An Inland Voyage

“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, An Inland Voyage

“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, An Inland Voyage

“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, An Inland Voyage

“Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral: a thing as single and specious as a statue to the first glance, and yet, on examination, as lively and interesting as a forest in detail. ”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

“What a number of things a river does, by simply following Gravity in the innocence of its heart!”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

“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, An Inland Voyage

“The humiliation of their arms and the loss of Alsace and Lorraine made a sore pull on the endurance of this sensitive people; and their hearts are still hot, not so much against Germany as against the Empire. ”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

“The Cigarette had a mackintosh which put him more or less above these contrarieties.  But I had to bear the brunt uncovered.  I began to remember that nature was a woman.  My companion, in a rosier temper, listened with great satisfaction to my Jeremiads, and ironically concurred. ”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

“I do not know, to my shame, any spot in my native land where I should have been so warmly received by the same number of people.  We were English boating-men, and the Belgian boating-men fell upon our necks.  I wonder if French Huguenots were as cordially greeted by English Protestants when they came across the Channel out of great tribulation.  But after all, what religion knits people so closely as a common sport?”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

“Not Diana herself, although this was more of a Venus after all, could have done a graceful thing more gracefully. ”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

“The drum, at any rate, from its martial voice and notable physiological effect, nay, even from its cumbrous and comical shape, stands alone among the instruments of noise. ”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage