Success Quote by Robert Louis Stevenson

Stevenson turns health into money and, with one sly metaphor, indicts two kinds of self-sabotage. The spendthrift “loses” health by living: taking the trip, writing the book, staying up too late with friends, saying yes to a life that leaves marks. The miser “wastes” health by hoarding it: shrinking the day to protect the body, treating every risk as a debit, confusing preservation with purpose. The twist is in the verbs. Losing sounds tragic but honest; wasting sounds stupid. Stevenson isn’t romanticizing illness so much as mocking the fantasy that carefulness automatically equals wisdom.

The line carries the pressure of biography. Stevenson was chronically ill, often forced into regimes of rest and restraint, and spent much of his adulthood moving climates in search of relief. That context matters: this isn’t advice from a wellness influencer; it’s a writer negotiating with a body that won’t cooperate. The spendthrift image lets him reclaim agency. If health is going to be taken anyway, he implies, better to have spent it on something that reads like a life.

There’s also a Victorian sting here. In an era newly obsessed with productivity, hygiene, and “good habits,” Stevenson pushes back against moralized self-care. He reframes caution as a kind of cowardice dressed up as prudence. The subtext is almost political: your body isn’t a vault, and a culture that teaches you to guard it at all costs may be quietly stealing your days.