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John Buchan: 290 quotes3 likes

“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

Space (1912)

“He looked up startled, and saw in her face that which gave him a view into a strange new world. He had thought that women blushed when they talked of love, but her eyes were as grave and candid as a boy's. Here was one who had gone through waters so deep that she had lost the foibles of sex. Love to her was only a word of ill omen, a threat on the lips of brutes, an extra battalion of peril in an army of perplexities.”

John Buchan book Huntingtower

Source: Huntingtower (1922), Ch. 10

“The Athenian empire lasted for fifty years at the most, and the stupendous creation of Alexander the Great for less. What has been the fate of succeeding imperialisms? That of Spain endured on the grand scale for little more than a century; that of Napoleon for a decade; the British Empire is less than two centuries old, and in its present form is a thing of yesterday. In the brief span of recorded history empires have had a shorter life than many monarchies, theocracies, and even republics. The Augustan alone reached a venerable age. In the coming of Christianity it had to face the greatest of all historic convulsions, but such was its potency that it weathered the storm and influenced profoundly the organization of the Christian church.”

John Buchan

Augustus (1937)

“I felt myself in the presence of something enormously big, as if a small barbarian was desecrating the colossal Zeus of Pheidias with a coal hammer. But I also felt it inhuman, and I hated it, and I clung to that hatred.
"You fear nothing and you believe nothing," I said. "Man, you should never have been allowed to live."”

John Buchan book The Power-House

Source: The Power-House (1916), Ch. 8 "The Power-House"

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

John Buchan book The Power-House

Source: The Power-House (1916), Ch. 2 "I First Hear Of Mr Andrew Lumley"

“If anyone makes trouble I've advised him to dot him one on the jaw in the best British style.”

John Buchan book The House of the Four Winds

Source: The House of the Four Winds (1935), Ch. III

“Now it was all behind him — but by God, he did not, he would not regret it. He had taken the only way, and if it had pleased Fate to sport cruelly with him, that was no fault of his. He had sacrificed one loyalty to a more urgent, and with the thought bitterness went out of his soul. […] Tragedy had ensued, but the endeavour had been honest. He saw the ironic pattern of life spread out beneath him, as a man views a campaign from a mountain, and he came near to laughter — laughter with an undertone of tears.”

John Buchan

Source: Midwinter (1923), Ch. XVIII

“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 book A Lodge in the Wilderness

Source: A Lodge in the Wilderness (1906), Ch. XII, pp. 336–7

“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.”

John Buchan book The Power-House

Source: The Power-House (1916), Ch. 4 "I Follow The Trail Of The Super-Butler"

“We none of us know our ancestors beyond a little way. We all of us may have kings' blood in our veins.”

John Buchan book The Path of the King

Prologue
The Path of the King (1921)

“[T]he Kirk of Scotland as at present guidit […] is a kind o' Papery wi' fifty Papes instead o' ane.”

John Buchan book Witch Wood

Source: Witch Wood (1927), Ch. XVII "Woodilee and Calidon"

“We had our pride shattered, and without humility there can be no humanity.”

John Buchan

"A University's Bequest to Youth" (10 October 1936)
Canadian Occasions (1940)

“I never mind choler in a man if he have also honesty and good sense.”

John Buchan book Salute to Adventurers

Source: Salute to Adventurers (1915), Ch. 6 "Tells of My Education"

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

John Buchan

Augustus (1937)

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

John Buchan

Pilgrim's Way (1940), p. 26
Memory Hold-The-Door (1940)

“It is only a dying cause which can attain to perfect taste.”

John Buchan book A Lodge in the Wilderness

Source: A Lodge in the Wilderness (1906), Ch. III, p. 83

“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.”

John Buchan book Witch Wood

Source: Witch Wood (1927), Ch. X "What the Moon Saw"

“It's the Idea that wins every time — the Idea with brains and guts behind it.”

John Buchan book The House of the Four Winds

Envoi
The House of the Four Winds (1935)

“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.”

John Buchan book The Path of the King

Source: The Path of the King (1921), Ch. V "The Maid"

“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 book Prester John

Source: Prester John (1910), Ch. IX