John Buchan Quotes
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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.
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I believe that every man has in his soul a passion for treasure-hunting, which will often drive a coward into prodigies of valour.
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I mused upon the ironic fate which had compelled a mathematical genius to make his sole confidant of a philistine lawyer, and induced that lawyer to repeat it confusedly to an ignoramus at twilight on a Scotch hill.
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'There's a queer performance going on in the other world,' he said. 'It's unbelievable. I never dreamed of such a thing. I - I don't quite know how to put it, and I don't know how to explain it, but - but I am becoming aware that there are other beings - other minds - moving in Space besides mine.'
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The promise had not failed her. . . . She had won everything from life, for she had given the world a master. Words seemed to speak themselves in her ear. . . . 'Bethink you of the blessedness. Every wife is like the Mother of God and has the hope of bearing a saviour of mankind.'
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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.
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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.'
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I have known fellows to whom the earth was so full of little pleasures that after the worst clouts they rose like larks from a furrow. A wise philosophy-but I had none of it. I always saw the little pageant of man's life like a child's peep-show beside the dark wastes of eternity.
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We look for romance in the well-cultivated garden-plots, and when it springs out of virgin soil we are surprised, though any fool might know it was the natural place for it.
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There comes a time to everyone when the world narrows for him to a strait alley, with Death at the end of it, and all his thoughts are fixed on that waiting enemy of mankind.
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We none of us know our ancestors beyond a little way. We all of us may have kings' blood in our veins.
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Happiness lies only in a divine unrest; and if you are lapped in comfort you stagnate and miss it.
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The true achievement of Augustus is that he saved the world from disintegration. Without him Rome must have lost her conquests one by one, and seen them relapse into barbarism or degenerate into petty satrapies. The wild peoples of the East and North would have ante-dated their invasions by centuries.
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It was as if he were watching a tall stranger with a wand pointing to the embarrassed phantom that was himself, and ruthlessly exposing its frailties! And yet that pitiless showman was himself too - himself as he wanted to be, cheerful, brave, resourceful, indomitable.
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I am a minister of Christ first and of the Kirk second. If the Kirk forgets its Master's teaching, we part company.
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He knew nothing accurately about any subject in the world, but he could clothe his ignorance in pontifical garments and give his confusion the accents of authority. He had a remarkable flair for discerning and elaborating the tiny quantum of popular knowledge on any matter.
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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.
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He knew less about women than he knew about the physics of hyperspace.
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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.
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It was a very happy time, but like all happy times it had no landmarks.
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Honest intention will not cure faulty practice.
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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.
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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.
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The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.