Quotes · verified word for word in the text
Kidnapped quotes
12 quotes from Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson. Source: Project Gutenberg e-text #421 (public domain in the USA), the text this site’s reader shows. Each quote is copied exactly from that text and links to its passage in the reader; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against the reader’s text.
I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both; and I believe they both get paid in the end; but the fools first.
“am I no a bonny fighter?”
— Spoken by a character · X. THE SIEGE OF THE ROUND-HOUSE
There are two things that men should never weary of, goodness and humility; we get none too much of them in this rough world among cold, proud people; but Mr. Henderland had their very speech upon his tongue.
To be feared of a thing and yet to do it, is what makes the prettiest kind of a man.
— Alan · XX. THE FLIGHT IN THE HEATHER: THE ROCKS
“Not yet,” says he; “but I’ve a grand memory for forgetting, David.”
— Spoken by a character · XVIII. I TALK WITH ALAN IN THE WOOD OF LETTERMORE
I would have given the world to take back what I had said; but a word once spoken, who can recapture it?
No class of man is altogether bad, but each has its own faults and virtues; and these shipmates of mine were no exception to the rule.
There’s bad folk everywhere, and what’s far worse, weak ones.
— Spoken by a character · XXI. THE FLIGHT IN THE HEATHER: THE HEUGH OF CORRYNAKIEGH
And life is all a variorum, at the best.
— Spoken by a character · VII. I GO TO SEA IN THE BRIG COVENANT OF DYSART
“O, man, if you would only take one point of the compass and let me take any other, it would be the best for both of us.”
— Spoken by a character · XXII. THE FLIGHT IN THE HEATHER: THE MOOR
The inn at Kinlochaline was the most beggarly vile place that ever pigs were styed in, full of smoke, vermin, and silent Highlanders.
And yet Alan had behaved like a child, and (what is worse) a treacherous child.