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The time would fail me if I were to recite all the big names in history whose exploits are perfectly irrational and even shocking to the business mind.

— Robert Louis Stevenson Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)

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More quotes by Robert Louis Stevenson

The true wisdom is to be always seasonable, and to change with a good grace in changing circumstances.

Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)

In every part and corner of our life, to lose oneself is to be a gainer; to forget oneself is to be happy.

Old Mortality (1884)

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

Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)

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

Familiar Studies of Men and Books (1882)

Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to continue to fail, in good spirits.

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A generation which ignores history has no past —and no future.

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History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

James Joyce Ulysses (1922)

If we don’t care about our past we can’t have very much hope for our future.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past, — so good night!

Thomas Jefferson

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Robert Louis Stevenson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.