“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson, a favorite author of mine, was born on November 13, 1850. He wrote poetry, essays, novels, and more. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, is a short but haunting lesson in creating atmosphere in a thriller and A Child’s Garden’s of Verses is a delight! In his honor, some of his wise words on writing and life:

“The difficult of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect hinm precisely as you wish.

“Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.”

“Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.”

“You can give without loving,, but you can never love without giving.”

“Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.”

“The man is a success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much.”

“We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.”

“Keep your eyes open to your mercies. The man who forgets to new thankful has fallen asleep in life.”

“To be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise is to have succeeded in life.”

“All human beings are commingled out of good and evil.”

“There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world.”

“If a man loves the labor of his trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him.”

“All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.”

“The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us.”

“The world is full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be happy as kings.”

“An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding.”

“To forget oneself is to be happy.”

And now inspired and emboldened, let’s all write on!