Robert Louis Stevenson: How to Know HimBobbs-Merrill Company, 1916 - 395 pages |
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adventure artist asked Barbizon began called captain CHAPTER character charm cheerful child cold Colvin cried Davos dead Desprez Doctor door dream Edinburgh Elvira energy essay experience eyes fable face Falesá fancy father Franchard François Villon friends genius hand heart Henry humor Hyères imagination Inland Voyage Jean-Marie Jekyll learned Leon letters light literary live Lloyd Osbourne looked lord Mackellar Madame Master Master of Ballantrae Memories and Portraits Mentone mind moral nature never night once Osbourne Papeete Penny Plain perhaps philosophy plain play plot poet reader returned romance Samoa scene seems son's sort South Seas spirit Steven Stevenson story strange success Tabary tale tell thing Thomas Stevenson thought tion Treasure Island turned Vailima venson Villon vivid voice voyage Weir of Hermiston whimsical whole wife wind words Wrecker write young youth
Popular passages
Page 379 - To be honest, to be kind — to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not to be embittered, to keep a few friends but these without capitulation — above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself — here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy.
Page 94 - Chapter xx, which is the differential calculus, or in Chapter xxxix, which is hearing the band play in the gardens. As a matter of fact, an intelligent person, looking out of his eyes and hearkening in his ears, with a smile on his face all the time, will get more true education than many another in a life of heroic vigils. There is certainly some chill and arid knowledge to be found upon the summits of formal and laborious science ; but it is all round about you, and for the trouble of looking,...
Page 94 - Sainte-Beuve, as he grew older, came to regard all experience as a single great book, in which to study for a few years ere we go hence ; and it seemed all one to him whether you should read in Chapter xx., which is the differential calculus, or in Chapter xxxix., which is hearing the band play in the gardens.
Page 75 - And even if death catch people, like an open pitfall, and in midcareer, laying out vast projects, and planning monstrous foundations, flushed with hope, and their mouths full of boastful language, they should be at once tripped up and silenced ; is there not something brave and spirited in such a termination ? and does not life go down with a better grace, foaming in full body over a precipice, than miserably straggling to an end in sandy deltas...
Page 289 - ... an isolated brigand with circumspect manners? I steal a couple of mutton chops, without so much as disturbing people's sleep; the farmer grumbles a bit, but sups none the less wholesomely on what remains. You come up blowing gloriously on a trumpet, take away the whole sheep, and beat the farmer pitifully into the bargain. I have no trumpet; I am only Tom, Dick, or Harry; I am a rogue and a dog, and hanging's too good for me — with all my heart; but just ask the farmer which of us he prefers,...
Page 269 - Or parsley on a golden dish," scribbled the poet. The wind was freshening without; it drove the snow before it, and sometimes raised its voice in a victorious whoop, and made sepulchral grumblings in the chimney. The cold was growing sharper as the night went on. Villon, protruding his lips, imitated the gust with something between a whistle and a groan. It was an eerie, uncomfortable talent of the poet's, much detested by the Picardy monk. "Can't you hear it rattle in the gibbet?" said Villon. "They...
Page 49 - ... the world and mixed with clever people, but all the time they were thinking of their own affairs. As if a man's soul were not too small to begin with, they have dwarfed and narrowed theirs by a life of all work and no play until here they are at forty, with a listless attention, a mind vacant of all material of amusement, and not one thought to rub against another, while they wait for the train.
Page 267 - ... the cemetery of St. John. Yet there was a small house, backed up against the cemetery wall, which was still awake, and awake to evil purpose, in that snoring district. There was not much to betray it from without; only a stream of warm vapor from the chimney-top, a patch where the snow melted on the roof, and a few half-obliterated footprints at the door. But within, behind the shuttered windows, Master Francis Villon the poet, and some of the thievish crew with whom he consorted, were keeping...
Page 88 - That, like it or not, is the way to learn to write; whether I have profited or not, that is the way.
Page 267 - ... alarm. If there were any belated birds in heaven, they saw the island like a large white patch, and the bridges like slim white spars, on the black ground of the river. High up overhead the snow settled among the tracery of the cathedral towers. Many a niche was drifted full ; many a statue wore a long white bonnet on its grotesque or sainted head. The gargoyles had been transformed into great false noses, drooping towards the point. The crockets were like upright pillows swollen on one side.