Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes

There is no evil in the atom; only in men's souls.

It is always a vulgar and often an unhealthy pastime, and it is a vice which does not go alone; the man who gambles will find himself capable of any evil.

War being the greatest of evils, all its accessories necessarily partake of the same character.

To know only artificial night is as absurd and evil as to know only artificial day.

When the soul hears no other calls than those of the sweet chaos of daily good and evil.

Other sins find their vent in the accomplishment of evil deeds, whereas pride lies in wait for good deeds, to destroy them.

Before crime is committed conscience must be corrupted, and every bad man who succeeds in reaching a high point of wickedness begins with this.

The evil works from a bad center both ways. It demoralizes those who practice it and destroys the faith of those who suffer by it in the efficiency of the law as a safe protector

The future will be no primrose path. It will have its own problems. Some will be the secular problems of the past, giant flowers of evil blossoming at last to their own destruction. Others will be wholly new.

Evil is retributive: every trespass slips fetters on the will, holds the soul in durance till contrition and repentance restore it to liberty.

As you sell your soul and sow your seeds, and you wound yourself and your loved ones bleed. And your habits grow and your conscience feeds, on all that you thought you should be.

What did it avail to pray when he knew his soul lusted after its own destruction?

Being against evil doesn't make you good. Tonight I was against it and then I was evil myself. I could feel it coming just like a tide... I just want to destroy them. But when you start taking pleasure in it you are awfully close to the thing you're fighting.

Avalanches of evil begin with a single pebble of sin.

The evil-doer mourns in the next; he mourns in both. He mourns and suffers when he sees the evil of his own work.

Motion is created by the destruction of balance.

But souls can't be sold. They can only be lost and never found again.

Dark things have always existed but they used to be in a proper balance with good when life was slower.

The secret of life is balance, and the absence of balance is life's destruction.

The most dangerous flaws are those which are good in moderation," she said. "Evil is easy to fight. Lack of wisdom… that is very hard indeed.

There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distill it out.

You cannot dissociate birth from death, creation from destruction, good from evil. Thus any art is a form of drama standing between the two extreme poles of birth and death, just like life is drama. This is not sad, because to be alive means to be mortal, to pass through.

To cast in it with Hyde was to die a thousand interests and aspirations.

I have no balance. My life is a hot mess.

A shadowless man is a monster, a devil, a thing of evil. A man without a shadow is soulless. A shadow without a man is a pitiable shred. Yet together, light and dark, they make a whole.