1. Education
About.com
Classic Literature

Discuss in my forum

Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes

By , About.com Guide

See More About:
  • "Fifteen men on the dead man's chest—
    Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
    Drink and the devil had done for the rest—
    Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
    -Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

  • "How that personage haunted my dreams, I need scarcely tell you. On stormy nights, when the wind shook the four corners of the house and the surf roared along the cove and up the cliffs, I would see him in a thousand forms, and with a thousand diabolical expressions. Now the leg would be cut off at the knee, now at the hip; now he was a monstrous kind of a creature who had never had but the one leg, and that in the middle of his body. To see him leap and run and pursue me over hedge and ditch was the worst of nightmares. And altogether I paid pretty dear for my monthly fourpenny piece, in the shape of these abominable fancies."
    -Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

  • "Dead men don't bite."
    -Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

  • "I been in places hot as pitch, and mates dropping round with Yellow Jack, and the blessed land a-heaving like the sea with earthquakes—what do the doctor know of lands like that?"
    -Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

  • "I lived on rum, I tell you. It's been meat and drink, and man and wife, to me."
    -Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

  • "I clear my conscience--the name of rum for you is death."
    -Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

  • "I have never seen the sea quiet round Treasure Island. The sun might blaze overhead, the air be without a breath, the surface smooth and blue, but still these great rollers would be running along all the external coast, thundering and thundering by day and night; and I scarce believe there is one spot in the island where a man would be out of earshot of their noise."
    -Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

  • "Here it is about gentlemen of fortune. They lives rough, and they risk swinging, but they eat and drink like fighting-cocks, and when a cruise is done, why, it's hundreds of pounds instead of hundreds of farthings in their pockets."
    -Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

  • "I seen a thing or two at sea, I have. If you would on'y lay your course, and a p'int to windward, you would ride in carriages, you would. But not you! I know you. You'll have your mouthful of rum tomorrow, and go hang."
    -Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

  • "You're either my ship's cook-and then you were treated handsome-or Cap'n Silver, a common mutineer and pirate, and then you can go hang!"
    -Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

  • "Many's a long night I've dreamed of cheese—toasted mostly."
    -Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

  • "Them that die will be the lucky ones!"
    -Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

  • "Of Silver we have heard no more. That formidable seafaring man with one leg has at last gone clean out of my life; but I dare say he met his old Negress, and perhaps still lives in comfort with her and Captain Flint. It is to be hoped so, I suppose, for his chances of comfort in another world are very small."
    -Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

©2012 About.com. All rights reserved.

A part of The New York Times Company.