StevensonianaSir John Alexander Hammerton |
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admiration adventure Apia appeared artist Balfour beautiful Catriona character charm child Child's Garden Colvin copy criticism Deacon Brodie death delight Edinburgh edition editor Edmund Gosse English essay eyes fame fiction friends genius Gosse hand heart Henley Hyde imagination interest Jekyll Kidnapped knew letters light literary literature live Lloyd Osbourne look Magazine Master of Ballantrae memory mother native never night novel novelist once paper passages Pentland perhaps play portrait printed prose published R. L. Stevenson remember Robert Louis Stevenson romance Samoa San Francisco Scotland Scots Scott Scottish seems Sidney Colvin Skerryvore soul South Sea spirit story strange style Swanston talk tell things Thomas Stevenson thought tion told touch Treasure Island Tusitala Vailima volume W. E. Henley Weir of Hermiston words writing written wrote York young
Popular passages
Page 239 - Whenever I read a book or a passage that particularly pleased me, in which a thing was said or an effect rendered with propriety, in which there was either some conspicuous force or some happy distinction in the style, I must sit down at once and set myself to ape that quality. I was unsuccessful, and I knew it; and tried again, and was again unsuccessful and always unsuccessful; but at least in these vain bouts, 1 got some practice in rhythm, in harmony, in construction and the co-ordination of...
Page 231 - A spirit goes out of the man who means execution, which outlives the most untimely ending. All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it.
Page 291 - They do not pin the reader to a dogma, which he must afterwards discover to be inexact; they do not teach him a lesson, which he must afterwards unlearn. They repeat, they rearrange, they clarify the lessons of life; they disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintance of others ; and they show us the web of experience, not as we can see it for ourselves, but with a singular change — that monstrous, consuming ego of ours being, for the nonce, struck out.
Page 129 - Requiem Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill.
Page 199 - MY tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky; It's time to take the window to see Leerie going by ; For every night at teatime and before you take your seat, With lantern and with ladder he comes posting up the street. Now Tom would be a driver and Maria go to sea, And my papa's a banker...
Page 291 - The most influential books, and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction. They do not pin the reader to a dogma, which he must afterwards discover to be inexact ; they do not teach him a lesson, which he must afterwards unlearn. They repeat, they rearrange, they clarify the lessons of life...
Page 165 - SAY not of me that weakly I declined The labours of my sires, and fled the sea, The towers we founded and the lamps we lit, To play at home with paper like a child. But rather say : In the afternoon of time A strenuous family dusted from its hands The sand of granite, and beholding far Along the sounding coast its pyramids And tall memorials catch the dying sun, Smiled well content, and to this childish task Around the fire addressed its evening hours.
Page 99 - BLOWS the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying, Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now, Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying, My heart remembers how!
Page 32 - Extreme busyness, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality ; and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity. There is a sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people about, who are scarcely conscious of living except in the exercise of some conventional occupation. Bring these fellows into the country, or set them aboard ship, and you will see how they pine for their desk or their study. They have no curiosity ; they...
Page 164 - The world is so full of a number of things, I 'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.