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John Buchan Quotes
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John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir was a Scottish novelist, historian and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada, the 15th since Canadian Confederation.

After a brief legal career, Buchan simultaneously began his writing career and his political and diplomatic careers, serving as a private secretary to the colonial administrator of various colonies in southern Africa. He eventually wrote propaganda for the British war effort in the First World War. Buchan was in 1927 elected Member of Parliament for the Combined Scottish Universities, but he spent most of his time on his writing career, notably writing The Thirty-Nine Steps and other adventure fiction. In 1935 he was appointed Governor General of Canada by King George V, on the recommendation of Prime Minister of Canada R. B. Bennett, to replace the Earl of Bessborough. He occupied the post until his death in 1940. Buchan proved to be enthusiastic about literacy, as well as the evolution of Canadian culture, and he received a state funeral in Canada before his ashes were returned to the United Kingdom.

✵ 26. August 1875 – 11. February 1940   •   Other names Barone John Buchan
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John Buchan: 145   quotes 3   likes

John Buchan Quotes

“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 book The Power-House

Source: The Power-House (1916), Ch. 1 "Beginning of the Wild-Goose Chase"

Feeling

“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 book Salute to Adventurers

Source: Salute to Adventurers (1915), Ch. 28 "How Three Souls Found Their Heritage"

Love , Men , Way , Home

“You may hear people say that submarines have done away with the battleship, and that aircraft have annulled the mastery of the sea. That is what our pessimists say. But do you imagine that the clumsy submarine or the fragile aeroplane is really the last word of science?”

John Buchan book The Power-House

Source: The Power-House (1916), Ch. 3 "Tells of a Midsummer Night"

People , Imagination , Science , Sea

“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.”

John Buchan book The Path of the King

Source: The Path of the King (1921), Ch. XIV "The End of the Road", II

Men , God , War

“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

Space (1912)

God , Madness

“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 book Salute to Adventurers

Source: Salute to Adventurers (1915), Ch. 16 "The Ford of the Rapidan"

“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 book A Lodge in the Wilderness

Source: A Lodge in the Wilderness (1906), Ch. X, p. 272

Life , Truth , Faith , Nature

“Her voice had a thrill in it like music, frosty music.”

John Buchan book Huntingtower

Prologue
Huntingtower (1922)

Music

“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.”

John Buchan

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

Failure , Suffering , Success , Dependency

“The things we call aristocracies and reigning houses are the last places to look for masterful men. They began strongly, but they have been too long in possession. They have been cosseted and comforted and the devil has gone out of their blood. Don't imagine that I undervalue descent. It is not for nothing that a great man leaves posterity. But who is more likely to inherit the fire — the elder son with his flesh-pots or the younger son with his fortune to find?”

John Buchan book The Path of the King

Prologue
The Path of the King (1921)

Men , Imagination , Housing

“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

Space (1912)

Fate , Confidence , Mathematics

“I have known fellows to whom the earth was so full of little pleasures that after the worst clouts they rose like larks from a furrow. A wise philosophy—but I had none of it. I always saw the little pageant of man's life like a child's peep-show beside the dark wastes of eternity.”

John Buchan book The Path of the King

Source: The Path of the King (1921), Ch. VIII "The Hidden City"

Life , Pleasure

“The profession of religion was not the same thing as godliness, and he was coming to doubt whether the insistence upon minute conformities of outward conduct and the hair-splitting doctrines were not devices of Satan to entangle souls.”

John Buchan book Witch Wood

Source: Witch Wood (1927), Ch. VIII "The Second Blast"

Religion , Soul

“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 book Prester John

Dedication
Prester John (1910)

Travel , Time , Heart

“There may be Peace without Joy, and Joy without Peace, but the two combined make Happiness.”

John Buchan

Pilgrim's Way (1940), p. 117
Memory Hold-The-Door (1940)

Peace , Joy , Happiness

“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 book Prester John

Source: Prester John (1910), Ch. X

Soul , Passion

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

John Buchan book The Path of the King

Source: The Path of the King (1921), Ch. XIV "The End of the Road", II

“Mrs. Brisbane-Brown was a relic, but only the unthinking would have called her a snob. For snobbishness implies some sense of insecurity, and she was perfectly secure.”

John Buchan book Castle Gay

Source: Castle Gay (1930), Ch. 6

Sense

“[A] falsehood, which may be pardoned if it is to save another, is black sin if used by a coward to save himself.”

John Buchan book Witch Wood

Source: Witch Wood (1927), Ch. XIV "The Counterblast"

“Perfect love casteth out fear, the Bible says; but, to speak it reverently, so does perfect hate.”

John Buchan book Prester John

Source: Prester John (1910), Ch. IX

Love , Hate , Fear , Perfection

“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 book Prester John

Source: Prester John (1910), Ch. X

Home , Thinking , Heart

“It was a very happy time, but like all happy times it had no landmarks.”

John Buchan book A Lodge in the Wilderness

Source: A Lodge in the Wilderness (1906), Ch. X, p. 268

Time , Happiness

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

John Buchan book The House of the Four Winds

Prologue
The House of the Four Winds (1935)

Way , Clothes

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

John Buchan

Pilgrim's Way (1940), p. 117
Memory Hold-The-Door (1940)

Fear , Peace

“Statesmanship […] must consider first the fortunes of the common people. No statesman has a right to risk these fortunes unless he be reasonably assured of success.”

John Buchan

Source: Midwinter (1923), Ch. II

People , Success

“He knew less about women than he knew about the physics of hyperspace.”

John Buchan book The House of the Four Winds

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

Women

“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

Space (1912)

Understanding , Thinking , Sense , Madness

“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.”

John Buchan

Source: Midwinter (1923), Ch. XVII

Age , Confidence , Boy

“The law and the constitution are like a child's pants. They've got to be made wider and longer as the child grows so as to fit him. If they're kept too tight, he'll burst them; and if you're in a hurry and make them too big all at once, they'll trip him up.”

John Buchan book The Path of the King

Source: The Path of the King (1921), Ch. XIV "The End of the Road", I

Law

“The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.”

John Buchan

Montrose and Leadership (1930), p 24; republished in Men and Deeds (1977)

Leadership

“Honest intention will not cure faulty practice.”

John Buchan book Witch Wood

Source: Witch Wood (1927), Ch. III "Guests in Calidon Tower"

“He realised how oddly detached he was. […] He enjoyed every moment, but he knew that his enjoyment came largely from standing a little apart. He was not a cynic, for there was no sourness in him. He had a kindliness towards most things, and a large charity. But he did not take sides. He had not accepted any mood, or creed, or groove of his own. Vix ea nostra voco [I scarcely call these things our own] was his motto. He was only a seeker […] occupied in finding out what was in his soul.”

John Buchan book Castle Gay

Source: Castle Gay (1930), Ch. 20

Soul , Mood

“[L]oyalty and religion have many meanings, and self-interest is a skilled interpreter.”

John Buchan

Source: Midwinter (1923), Ch. I

Religion

“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 book The Power-House

Source: The Power-House (1916), Ch. 3 "Tells of a Midsummer Night"

Thinking

“The Scottish Communist is a much misunderstood person. When he is a true Caledonian, and not a Pole or an Irishman, he is simply the lineal descendant of the old Radical. The Scottish Radical was a man who held a set of inviolable principles on which he was entirely unable to compromise. It did not matter what the principles were; the point was that they were like the laws of Sinai, which could not be added to or subtracted from. When the Liberal party began to compromise, he joined Labour; when Labour began to compromise, by a natural transition he became a Communist. Temperamentally he has not changed. He is simply the stuff which in the seventeenth century made the unyielding Covenanter, and in the eighteenth the inflexible Jacobite. He is honesty incarnate, but his mind lacks flexibility.”

John Buchan book Castle Gay

Source: Castle Gay (1930), Ch. 14

Law , Nature , Change , Personality

“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"

Hate , Fear

“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"

Heart

“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

“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)

Way

“[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"

Sense

“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)

Education , Time

“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

Perfection

“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"

Women , Men , Secret , World

“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)

Idea , Time

“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"

God , Hope

“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

Fashion

“Wise men never grow up; indeed, they grow younger, for they lose the appalling worldly wisdom of youth.”

John Buchan book A Lodge in the Wilderness

Source: A Lodge in the Wilderness (1906), Ch. XI, pp. 313–4

Wisdom , Men , Youth