A good while ago, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote:
Generous lads, irritated at the injustices of society, see nothing for it but the abolishment of everything and Kingdom Come of anarchy. Shelley was a young fool; so are these cock-sparrow revolutionaries. But it is better to be a fool than to be dead. It is better to emit a scream in the shape of a theory than to be entirely insensible to the jars and incongruities of life and take everything as it comes in a forlorn stupidity. Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind. For God’s sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself.
(Quoted from page 28 of Crabbed Age and Youth, by Robert Louis Stevenson. Thomas B. Mosher, 1907.)
For a brief biography of Robert Louis Stevenson, click here. For images of or relating to Robert Louis Stevenson, click here.
Comments