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Who really said it

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy

Written by Robert Louis Stevenson 1850–1894 · Scottish essayist, novelist & poet
Verified Free to reuse

This one is genuine. It comes from Stevenson’s essay “An Apology for Idlers,” first published in the Cornhill Magazine in July 1877 and collected in Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881). The full sentence runs on: “… By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the world.”

Last verified 10 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy” Robert Louis Stevenson, "An Apology for Idlers" (Cornhill Magazine, 1877; collected in Virginibus Puerisque, 1881)

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Provenance

The source

Work
An Apology for Idlers
Collected in
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
First published
Cornhill Magazine, Vol. 36 (July 1877)
Author
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the world, which remain unknown even to ourselves, or when they are disclosed, surprise nobody so much as the benefactor.

The line most people quote is only the first sentence; Stevenson’s point is completed by the sentence that follows it.

Read “An Apology for Idlers” on Wikisource

How we verified it

  • The exact sentence appears in the Wikisource text of the essay, followed by “By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the world.”
  • A WIST catalog record dates the essay to the Cornhill Magazine, Vol. 36, July 1877, later gathered into Virginibus Puerisque (1881).
  • Because both the 1877 magazine printing and the 1881 collection long predate 1931, the essay is firmly in the public domain in the United States.
Public domain

“An Apology for Idlers” was first published in 1877 and collected in 1881 — both well before the 1931 U.S. public-domain cutoff — and its author died in 1894, so the essay and this sentence are in the public domain.

Fact-check

Misquotes & mix-ups

The attribution to Stevenson is correct — the wobble here is in the wording, not the author.

“… the duty of being happy” (full stop) Truncation

Reposts almost always drop Stevenson’s second sentence, “By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the world,” which carries the actual argument — that your happiness quietly helps others. The two sentences sit together in the original essay.

“so much underrated as the duty” Typo variant

A common variant swaps Stevenson’s “underrate” for “underrated,” which breaks the grammar; the source text reads “we so much underrate.”

Genuinely Stevenson, from “An Apology for Idlers” — just usually quoted as a fragment. See the full passage.

Context

Why it resonates

Stevenson’s essay flips the Victorian cult of busyness on its head: instead of treating diligence as the highest virtue, he argues that being happy is itself a duty — one we habitually undervalue. The line landed a second time in the 1990s when Sarah Ban Breathnach built a passage of her bestseller Simple Abundance around it, which is why it circulates so widely on wellness and gratitude sites today.

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Happiness

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

An Apology for Idlers (full text)en.wikisource.org

The complete essay containing the sentence, in the 1881 collected text.
An Apology for Idlersgutenberg.org

Project Gutenberg edition of the standalone essay.
Robert Louis Stevensonen.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote’s sourced entry attributing the line to An Apology for Idlers.
WIST catalog recordwist.info

Bibliographic record dating the essay to Cornhill Magazine, July 1877.
Robert Louis Stevensonen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the author and his works.

The true author

About Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson

1850–1894 · Scottish essayist, novelist & poet

Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish writer whose novels Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde became classics. Before the fiction made him famous he was an accomplished essayist; his early collection Virginibus Puerisque (1881) gathered pieces like “An Apology for Idlers,” a witty defense of leisure and unhurried living. Dogged by chronic illness his whole life, he settled in Samoa and died there in 1894.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Robert Louis Stevenson, “An Apology for Idlers,” Cornhill Magazine 36 (July 1877); collected in Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (London: C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1881).

MLA (9th ed.)

Stevenson, Robert Louis. “An Apology for Idlers.” Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers, C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1881.

APA (7th ed.)

Stevenson, R. L. (1881). An apology for idlers. In Virginibus puerisque and other papers. C. Kegan Paul & Co. (Original work published 1877)

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy’?” Last verified 10 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/there-is-no-duty-we-so-much-underrate-as-the-duty-of-being

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