John Buchan Quotes
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The Kirk of Scotland as at present guidit … is a kind o' Papery wi' fifty Papes instead o' ane.
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Without humility there can be no humanity.
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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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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.
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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.
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Peace is that state in which fear of any kind is unknown.
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On the newspapers of the Craw Press: Their politics are an opiate to prevent folk thinking.
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The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.
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Every wife is like Mary the Blessed and may bear a saviour of mankind. The road is long, but the ways of Heaven are sure.
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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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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.
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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.
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Every man at the bottom of his heart believes that he is a born detective.
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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.
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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 is no merit in an empire as such. Extension in space does not necessarily mean spiritual advancement. The small community is easier to govern, and, it may well be, more pleasant to live in. If its opportunities are limited its perils are also circumscribed. But the alternatives which confronted him were empire or anarchy.
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I gathered from Hollond that he was always conscious of corridors and halls and alleys in Space, shifting, but shifting according to inexorable laws. I never could get quite clear as to what this consciousness was like. When I asked he used to look puzzled and worried and helpless.
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If the Lord sends us war, we have got to face it like men, but God forbid we should manufacture war, and use it as an escape from our domestic difficulties. You can't expect a blessing on that.
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A great storm destroys much that is precious, but it may also clear the air and blow down trees which might have been obscuring the view and making our life stuffy, and reveal in our estate possibilities of development that we had not thought of.
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If anyone makes trouble I've advised him to dot him one on the jaw in the best British style.
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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.
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It is only a dying cause which can attain to perfect taste.
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Too young for wife, too old for child, but the ripe age for comrade - and such a comrade, for there was a boy's gallantry in her eyes and something of a child's confident fearlessness.
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If the Kirk confines human nature too strictly, it will break out in secret ways, for men and women are born into a terrestrial world, though they have hopes of Heaven.