John Buchan Quotes

The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.

I believe that all wisdom consists in caring immensely for a few right things, and not caring a straw about the rest.

The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.

An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.

That is the supreme value of history. The study of it is the best guarantee against repeating it.

You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilization from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn.

There may be peace without joy, and joy without peace, but the two combined make happiness.

The true definition of a snob is one who craves for what separates men rather than for what unites them.

It's a great life, if you don't weaken.

And where the deepest current crawls/ Like thistledown the dainty fly falls./ Then from the depths a silver gleam/ Quick flashes, like a jewel bright./ Up through the waters of the stream/ An instant visible to sight/ As lightning cleaves to sombre sky/ A rainbow rises to the fly.

Every man at the bottom of his heart believes that he is a born detective.

The robe of flesh wears thin, and with the years God shines through all things.

Without humility there can be no humanity.

You may hear people say that submarines have done away with the battleship, and that aircraft have annulled the mastery of the sea. That is what our pessimists say. But do you imagine that the clumsy submarine or the fragile aeroplane is really the last word of science?

I believe that every man has in his soul a passion for treasure-hunting, which will often drive a coward into prodigies of valour.

I would have been content with any job however thankless, in any quarter however remote, if I had a chance of making a corner of the desert blossom and the solitary place glad.

Peace is that state in which fear of any kind is unknown.

Leadership is only courage and wisdom, and a great carefulness of self.

We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.

Wise men never grow up; indeed, they grow younger, for they lose the appalling worldly wisdom of youth.

He who would valiant be against all disaster; let him in constancy follow the Master. There's no discouragement shall make him once relent; his first avowed intent to be a pilgrim.

To live for a time close to great minds is the best kind of education.

It struck me that Albania was the sort of place that might keep a man from yawning.

Civilization is a conspiracy. Modern life is the silent compact of comfortable folk to keep up pretences.

I believe everything out of the common. The only thing to distrust is the normal.

He disliked emotion, not because he felt lightly, but because he felt deeply.

[W]ithout humour you cannot run a sweetie-shop, let alone a nation.

The book trade is a spiritual barometer of a nations well-being.

You see only the productions of second-rate folk who are in a hurry to get wealth and fame. The true knowledge, the deadly knowledge, is still kept secret. But, believe me, my friend, it is there.

"What would you call the highest happiness, Lewie?" he asked. "The sense of competence," was the answer, given without hesitation.

I am an ordinary sort of fellow, not braver than other people, but I hate to see a good man downed, and that long knife would not be the end of Scudder if I could play the game in his place.

The vows we take in the holy place bind us till we are purged of them at Inanda's Kraal. Till then no blood must be shed and no flesh eaten. It was the fashion of our forefathers.

I wondered whether the scientific modern brain could not get to the stage of realising that Space is not an empty homogeneous medium, but full of intricate differences, intelligible and real, though not with our common reality.

But some love not the method of your first; Romance they count it, throw't away as dust; If I should meet with such, what should I say; Must I slight them as they slight me, or nay

It was foreordained that I should go alone to Umvelos', and in the promptings of my own infallible heart I believed I saw the workings of Omnipotence. Such is our moral arrogance, and yet without such a belief I think that mankind would have ever been content to bide sluggishly at home.

Any large-scale organization must lose some of the merits of its rudimentary beginnings. Quantity will have a coarsening effect on quality.

To see what is right and not to do it is cowardice. It is never a question of who is right but what is right.

History gives us a kind of chart, and we dare not surrender even a small rushlight in the darkness. The hasty reformer who does not remember the past will find himself condemned to repeat it.

The Church of Christ is an anvil which has worn out many hammers. Our opponents may boast of their strength, but they do not realize what they have challenged.

It would scarcely be destruction," he replied gently. "Let us call it iconoclasm, the swallowing of formulas, which has always had its full retinue of idealists. And you do not want a Napoleon . All that is needed is direction, which could be given by men of far lower gifts than a Bonaparte. In a word, you want a Power-House, and then the age of miracles will begin.

Civilisation is a conspiracy.

Pessimism is the one ism which kills the soul.

Our sufferings have taught us that no nation is sufficient unto itself, and that our prosperity depends in the long run, not upon the failures of our neighbors but their successes.

In our modern world we have seen inaugurated the reign of a dull bourgeois rationalism, which finds some inadequate reason for all things in heaven and earth and makes a god of its own infallibility.

I was a peaceful sedentary man, a lover of a quiet life, with no appetite for perils and commotions. But I was beginning to realise that I was very obstinate.

If those extra-social brains are so potent, why after all do they effect so little? A dull police-officer, with the machine behind him, can afford to laugh at most experiments in anarchy.

Fortunately for mankind the brain in a life of action turns more to the matter in hand than to conjuring up the chances of the future.

The sea has formed the English character and the essential England is to be found in those who follow it. From blue waters they have learned mercifulness, and they have also learned - in the grimmest of schools - precision and resolution. The sea endures no makeshifts. If a thing is not exactly right it will be vastly wrong.

The world was arrogant and self-satisfied, but behind all this confidence there was an uneasy sense of impending disaster. The old creeds, both religious and political, were largely in the process of dissolution, but we did not realise the fact, and therefore did not look for new foundations.

A fool tries to look different: a clever man looks the same and is different.