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.

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

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.

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

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

Without humility there can be no humanity.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Civilisation is a conspiracy.

Pessimism is the one ism which kills the soul.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

We can pay our debt 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 asked. 'The sense of competence ' was the answer given without hesitation.