John Buchan Quotes

30 quotes in 371 categories

• The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.
• The true definition of a snob is one who craves for what separates men rather than for what unites them.
• Civilization is a conspiracy. Modern life is the silent compact of comfortable folk to keep up pretences.
• Every man at the bottom of his heart believes that he is a born detective.
• We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.
• He disliked emotion, not because he felt lightly, but because he felt deeply.
• Without humility there can be no humanity.
• 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…
• I believe that all wisdom consists in caring immensely for a few right things, and not caring a straw about the rest.
• There may be peace without joy, and joy without peace, but the two combined make happiness.
• What would you call the highest happiness? Wratislaw was asked. The sense of competence, was the answer, given without hesitation.
• Bethink you of the blessedness. Every wife is like the Mother of God and has the hope of bearing a saviour of mankind.
• A fool tries to look different: a clever man looks the same and is different.
• It's a great life, if you don't weaken,
• 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…
• That is the supreme value of history. The study of it is the best guarantee against repeating it.
• To live for a time close to great minds is the best kind of education.
• The robe of flesh wears thin, and with the years God shines through all things.
• I would be content with any job, however thankless, in any quarter, however remote, if I had the chance of making a corner of the…
• 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…

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