Stevenson, Robert Louis -- Essay (1877-07), “An Apology for Idlers,” Cornhill Magazine, Vol. 36

Dave — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 16:49:48 +0000

A happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a five-pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of goodwill; and their entrance into a room is as though another candle had been lighted. We need not care whether they could prove the forty-seventh proposition; they do a better thing than that, they practically demonstrate the great Theorem of the Liveableness of Life.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Essay (1877-07), “An Apology for Idlers,” Cornhill Magazine, Vol. 36
(Source)

Euclid's 47th Proposition (in his Elements, Book 1) is the Pythagorean Theorem. Collected in Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers, ch. 3 (1881).

WIST Quotations

Stevenson, Robert Louis -- Essay (1877-07), “An Apology for Idlers,” Cornhill Magazine, Vol. 36