John Buchan Quotations

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What would you call the highest happiness? Wratislaw was ask. The sense of competence, was the answer, given without hesitation.

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.

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?

Civilisation needs more than the law to hold it together. You see, all mankind are not equally willing to accept as divine justice what is called human law.

I once played the chief part in a rather exciting business without ever once budging from London . And the joke of it was that the man who went out to look for adventure only saw a bit of the game, and I who sat in my chambers saw it all and pulled the strings. 'They also serve who only stand and wait,' you know.

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.

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 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.

Young girls passed me with romance still in their eyes, and others, a little older, with the romance dead.

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.

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

London is like the tropical bush -- if you don't exercise constant care the jungle, in the shape of the slums, will break in.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Most true points are fine points. There never was a dispute between mortals where both sides hadn't a bit of right.

Pessimism is the one ism which kills the soul.

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

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

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.

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.

I always try to suit my clothes to my company. It is the only way to be inconspicuous.

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

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

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

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

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.

Bethink you of the blessedness. Every wife is like the Mother of God and has the hope of bearing a saviour of mankind.

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

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.

Without humility there can be no humanity.

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.

Civilisation is a conspiracy.

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.

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

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

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

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