John Buchan Quotes
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The Augustan constitution remains one of the major products of the human intelligence. It was a whole into which the parts fitted smoothly, but both whole and parts were elastic and capable of swift adaptation to unforeseen conditions. It was elaborate, but that was necessary, both because of its origin and its purpose.
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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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Oh, it sounds ridiculous, I know, in Britain in the twentieth century, but I learned in the war that civilization anywhere is a very thin crust.
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Statesmanship … must consider first the fortunes of the common people. No statesman has a right to risk these fortunes unless he be reasonably assured of success.
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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.
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Truth's like a dollar-piece, it's got two sides, and both are wanted to make it good currency.
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Honest intention will not cure faulty practice.
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The true definition of a snob is one who craves for what separates men rather than for what unites them.
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And yet - and yet! He had done the right thing, though the Lord alone knew how it would end. He began to pluck courage from his very melancholy, and hope from his reflexions on the transitoriness of life. He was austerely following Romance as he conceived it, and if that capricious lady had taken one dream from him she might yet reward him with a better.
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And at times I'm tempted to think that our way and the Kirk's way is not God's way, for we're apt to treat the natural man as altogether corrupt, and put him under over-strict pains and penalties, whereas there's matter in him that might be shaped to the purposes of grace. If there's original sin, there's likewise original innocemce.
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'You can help me to keep my head cool,' was the answer. 'You stand for the world of common sense which will always win in the long run. When I'm inclined to run amok you'll remind me of England. You'll lower the temperature.'
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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?
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I think a man cannot strive wholeheartedly with an enemy unless he have much in common with him, and as the strife goes on he gets liker.
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This crowded world of Space was perfectly real to him. How he had got to it I do not know. Perhaps his mind, dwelling constantly on the problem, had unsealed some atrophied cell and restored the old instinct. Anyhow, he was living his daily life with a foot in each world.
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Leithen's story had bored and puzzled me at the start, but now it had somehow gripped my fancy. Space a domain of endless corridors and Presences moving in them! The world was not quite the same as an hour ago. It was the hour, as the French say, 'between dog and wolf,' when the mind is disposed to marvels.
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He never went mad in your sense. My dear fellow, you're very much wrong if you think there was anything pathological about him - then. The man was brilliantly sane. His mind was as keen as a keen sword. I couldn't understand him, but I could judge of his sanity right enough.
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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.
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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.
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Young girls passed me with romance still in their eyes, and others, a little older, with the romance dead.
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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.
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I always try to suit my clothes to my company. It is the only way to be inconspicuous.
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There may be Peace without Joy, and Joy without Peace, but the two combined make Happiness.
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TheyAustralians'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.
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On the newspapers of the Craw Press: Their politics are an opiate to prevent folk thinking.