Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about John Buchan
John Buchan Quotes
138 Sourced Quotes
Source
Report...
Happiness lies only in a divine unrest; and if you are lapped in comfort you stagnate and miss it.
John Buchan
Source
Report...
I am not courageous. To be brave means that you have conquered fear, but I have never had any fear to conquer. Believe me, Mr Leithen, I am quite impervious to threats. You come to me to-night and hold a pistol to my head. You offer me two alternatives, both of which mean failure. But how do you know that I regard them as failure? I have had what they call a good run for my money. No man since Napoleon has tasted such power. I may be willing to end it. Age creeps on and power may grow burdensome. I have always sat loose from common ambitions and common affections. For all you know I may regard you as a benefactor.
John Buchan
Source
Report...
Last night I had looked into the heart of darkness, and the sight had terrified me. What part should I play in the great purification? Most likely that of the Biblical scapegoat.
John Buchan
Source
Report...
I am bound to say that it took me a long time to understand what he meant. He began by saying that everybody thought of Space as an 'empty homogeneous medium.' 'Never mind at present what the ultimate constituents of that medium are. We take it as a finished product, and we think of it as mere extension, something without any quality at all. That is the view of civilised man. You will find all the philosophers taking it for granted. Yes, but every living thing does not take that view.
John Buchan
Source
Report...
To be watchful, I decided, was my business. And I could not get rid of the feeling that I might soon have cause for all my vigilance.
John Buchan
Source
Report...
They were happy years, the four I spent in Glasgow, for I was young and ardent, and had not yet suffered the grave miscarriage of hope which is our human lot.
John Buchan
Source
Report...
Our sufferings have taught us that no nation is sufficient unto itself, and that our prosperity depends in the long run, not upon the failure of our neighbors but their successes.
John Buchan
Source
Report...
I mind as if it were yesterday my first sight of the man. Little I knew at the time how big the moment was with destiny, or how often that face seen in the fitful moonlight would haunt my sleep and disturb my waking hours.
John Buchan
Source
Report...
It was a very happy time, but like all happy times it had no landmarks.
John Buchan
Source
Report...
I felt myself in the presence of something enormously big, as if a small barbarian was desecrating the colossal Zeus of Pheidias with a coal hammer. But I also felt it inhuman, and I hated it, and I clung to that hatred.
"You fear nothing and you believe nothing," I said. "Man, you should never have been allowed to live."
John Buchan
Source
Report...
There come moments to every man when he is thankful to be alive, and every breath drawn is a delight; so at that hour I praised my Maker for His good earth, and for sparing me to rejoice in it.
John Buchan
Source
Report...
We can only pay our debt to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.
John Buchan
Source
Report...
They[Australians]'ve all kinds of accents, but you can never mistake their voice. It's got the sun in it. Canadians have got grinding ice in theirs, and Virginians have got butter. So have the Irish. In Britain there are no voices, only speaking-tubes.
John Buchan
Source
Report...
Oh, I agree he went mad in the end. It is the only explanation. Something must have snapped in that fine brain, and he saw the little bit more which we call madness. Thank God, you and I are prosaic fellows...
John Buchan
Source
Report...
I have heard an atheist defined as a man who had no invisible means of support.
John Buchan
Source
Report...
He was a bad acquaintance for a placid, sedentary soul like me, for though he could work like a Trojan when the fit took him, he was never at the same job very long. In the same week he would harass an Under-Secretary about horses for the Army, write voluminously to the press about a gun he had invented for potting aeroplanes, give a fancy-dress ball which he forgot to attend, and get into the semi-final of the racquets championship. I waited daily to see him start a new religion.
John Buchan
Source
Report...
You don't know old Charles as I know him. He's got into a queer set, and there's no knowing what mischief he's up to. He's perfectly capable of starting a revolution in Armenia or somewhere merely to see how it feels like to be a revolutionary. That's the damned thing about the artistic temperament.
John Buchan
Source
Report...
Perfect love casteth out fear, the Bible says; but, to speak it reverently, so does perfect hate.
John Buchan
Source
Report...
I am a sceptic about most things... but, believe me, I have my own worship. I venerate the intellect of man. I believe in its undreamed-of possibilities, when it grows free like an oak in the forest and is not dwarfed in a flower-pot. From that allegiance I have never wavered. That is the God I have never forsworn.
John Buchan
Source
Report...
I believe that every man has in his soul a passion for treasure-hunting, which will often drive a coward into prodigies of valour.
John Buchan
Source
Report...
Bethink you of the blessedness. Every wife is like the Mother of God—she has the hope of bearing a saviour of mankind. She is the channel of the eternal purpose of Heaven.
John Buchan
Source
Report...
It was a very young man's confession of faith, and yet there was the glimmering of a truth at the back of it. It was my instinctive protest against the undue simplification of life. We are all a strange compound, and we shall never reach our full stature by starving certain parts of our nature of their due.
John Buchan
Source
Report...
History does not repeat itself except with variations, and it is idle to look for exact parallels, but we can trace a resemblance between the conditions of his time and those of today. Once again the crust of civilization has worn thin, and beneath can be heard the muttering of primeval fires. Once again many accepted principles of government have been overthrown, and the world has become a laboratory where immature and feverish minds experiment with unknown forces. Once again problems cannot be comfortably limited, for science has brought the nations into an uneasy bondage to each other. In the actual business of administration there is no question of today which Augustus had not to face and answer.
John Buchan
Source
Report...
Truth's like a dollar-piece, it's got two sides, and both are wanted to make it good currency.
John Buchan
Source
Report...
Any large-scale organization must lose some of the merits of its rudimentary beginnings. Quantity will have a coarsening effect on quality.
John Buchan
1
2
3
4
5
6
Quote of the day
We owe something to extravagance, for thrift and adventure seldom go hand in hand.
Lady Randolph Churchill
John Buchan
Creative Commons
Born:
August 26, 1875
Died:
February 11, 1940
(aged 64)
Bio:
John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir was a Scottish novelist, historian and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada, the 15th since Canadian Confederation.
Known for:
The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915)
Greenmantle (1916)
Mr Standfast (1919)
Prester John (1910)
The Three Hostages (1924)
Most used words:
man
life
space
mind
time
god
sense
mankind
romance
call
fear
earth
common
young
real
John Buchan on Wikipedia
John Buchan works on Gutenberg Project
John Buchan works on Wikisource
Suggest an edit or a new quote
John Buchan Quotes
John Buchan Short Quotes
British Politician Quotes
Politician Quotes
19th-century Politician Quotes
Related People
Alfred Hitchcock
British Director
John Bunyan
English Theologian
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes