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John Buchan
139 quotes
“The robe of flesh wears thin, and with the years God shines through all things.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) first seen 1912 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Wise Years", The Moon Endureth (1912)
“The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) first seen 1930 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Montrose and Leadership (1930), p 24; republished in Men and Deeds (1977)
“We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Address to the people of Canada on the coronation of George VI (12 May 1937)
“The Simple Life is the last refuge of complicated and restless souls.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Happiness lies only in a divine unrest; and if you are lapped in comfort you stagnate and miss it.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The secret of life is to find out what one really wants.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is only a dying cause which can attain to perfect taste.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Young girls passed me with romance still in their eyes, and others, a little older, with the romance dead.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was a very happy time, but like all happy times it had no landmarks.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was a very young man's confession of faith, and yet there was the glimmering of a truth at the back of it. It was my instinctive protest against the undue simplification of life. We are all a strange compound, and we shall never reach our full stature by starving certain parts of our nature of their due.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wise men never grow up; indeed, they grow younger, for they lose the appalling worldly wisdom of youth.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What do we mean by spiritual development? Surely, the broadening and deepening of the mind till it regards the world in its true perspective, and the strengthening of the character so that the will is a tempered and unerring weapon in the charge of a man's soul. And this end is to be achieved only by the exercise of the mind upon the largest possible manifold of experience, and by the conflict of character with the alien forces of the world.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Time, they say, must the best of us capture, And travel and battle and gems and gold No more can kindle the ancient rapture, For even the youngest of hearts grows old.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Perfect love casteth out fear, the Bible says; but, to speak it reverently, so does perfect hate.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I believe that every man has in his soul a passion for treasure-hunting, which will often drive a coward into prodigies of valour.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Supposing you knew — not by sight or by instinct, but by sheer intellectual knowledge, as I know the truth of a mathematical proposition — that what we call empty space was full, crammed. Not with lumps of what we call matter like hills and houses, but with things as real — as real to the mind.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How if Space is really full of things we cannot see and as yet do not know? How if all animals and some savages have a cell in their brain or a nerve which responds to the invisible world? How if all Space be full of these landmarks, not material in our sense, but quite real? A dog barks at nothing, a wild beast makes an aimless circuit. Why? Perhaps because Space is made up of corridors and alleys, ways to travel and things to shun? For all we know, to a greater intelligence than ours the top of Mont Blanc may be as crowded as Piccadilly Circus.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am bound to say that it took me a long time to understand what he meant. He began by saying that everybody thought of Space as an 'empty homogeneous medium.' 'Never mind at present what the ultimate constituents of that medium are. We take it as a finished product, and we think of it as mere extension, something without any quality at all. That is the view of civilised man. You will find all the philosophers taking it for granted. Yes, but every living thing does not take that view.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Remember his mind and no other part of him lived in his new world. He said it gave him an odd sense of detachment to sit in a room among people, and to know that nothing there but himself had any relation at all to the infinite strange world of Space that flowed around them. He would listen, he said, to a great man talking, with one eye on the cat on the rug, thinking to himself how much more the cat knew than the man.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'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.'”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Of course he could only describe his impressions very lamely, for they were purely of the mind, and he had no material peg to hang them on, so that I could realise them. But the gist of it was that he had been gradually becoming conscious of what he called 'Presences' in his world. They had no effect on Space — did not leave footprints in its corridors, for instance — but they affected his mind. There was some mysterious contact established between him and them. I asked him if the affection was unpleasant and he said 'No, not exactly.' But I could see a hint of fear in his eyes.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I dropped all my own views of sense and nonsense. I told him that, taking all that he had told me as fact, the Presences might be either ordinary minds traversing Space in sleep; or minds such as his which had independently captured the sense of Space's quality; or, finally, the spirits of just men made perfect, behaving as psychical researchers think they do. It was a ridiculous task to set a prosaic man, and I wasn't quite serious.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'Think,' I told him, 'what may be waiting for you. You may discover the meaning of Spirit. You may open up a new world, as rich as the old one, but imperishable. You may prove to mankind their immortality and deliver them for ever from the fear of death. Why, man, you are picking at the lock of all the world's mysteries.'”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh, I agree he went mad in the end. It is the only explanation. Something must have snapped in that fine brain, and he saw the little bit more which we call madness. Thank God, you and I are prosaic fellows...”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man, I’ve often thought that an innkeeper would make the best story-teller in the world.” “Not now,” he said eagerly. “Maybe in the old days when you had pilgrims and ballad-makers and highwaymen and mail-coaches on the road. But not now. Nothing comes here but motor-cars full of fat women, who stop for lunch, and a fisherman or two in the spring, and the shooting tenants in August. There is not much material to be got out of that. I want to see life, to travel the world, and write things like Kipling and Conrad.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'I'm in the Lord's hands,' he said humbly. 'I'm but a penny whistle for His breath to blow on.' This he said with such solemnity that the meaning of a fanatic was suddenly revealed to me. One or two distorted notions, a wild imagination, and fierce passions, and there you have the ingredients ready.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They were happy years, the four I spent in Glasgow, for I was young and ardent, and had not yet suffered the grave miscarriage of hope which is our human lot.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I never mind choler in a man if he have also honesty and good sense.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'What does a woman desire?' she asked, speaking as if to herself, and her voice was soft as she gazed over the valley. 'Men think it is a handsome face or a brisk air or a smooth tongue. And some will have it that it is a deep purse or a high station. But I think it is the honest heart that goes all the way with a woman's love. We are not so blind as to believe that the glitter is the gold. We love romance, but we seek it in its true home.'”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I must get off for a bit or I'll bonnet Joggleberry or get up and propose a national monument to Guy Fawkes or something silly.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He was a bad acquaintance for a placid, sedentary soul like me, for though he could work like a Trojan when the fit took him, he was never at the same job very long. In the same week he would harass an Under-Secretary about horses for the Army, write voluminously to the press about a gun he had invented for potting aeroplanes, give a fancy-dress ball which he forgot to attend, and get into the semi-final of the racquets championship. I waited daily to see him start a new religion.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every man at the bottom of his heart believes that he is a born detective.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source