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About this quote

What does it mean?
Gentleness and cheerfulness are more important than complex moral rules.
In plain terms
Being nice and happy is the most important duty.
What can you take from it?
Basic kindness is the highest moral duty.

Where it applies

  • relationships
  • conflict resolution

Putting it to work

  • practicing kindness
  • improving mood

Questions to consider

  • What is a true duty?
  • Why be gentle?

Another view

It ignores situations where sternness is required.

More from Robert Louis Stevenson

  1. To be honest, to be kind - to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall b…

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  2. If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say 'give them up,' for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest th…

    Permalink to quote #72
  3. We should wipe two words from our vocabulary: gratitude and charity. In real life, help is given out of friendship, or it is not valued; it is received from th…

    Permalink to quote #69

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