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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

“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

Space (1912)

Understanding , Thinking , Time

“And at times I'm tempted to think that our way and the Kirk's way is not God's way, for we're apt to treat the natural man as altogether corrupt, and put him under over-strict pains and penalties, whereas there's matter in him that might be shaped to the purposes of grace. If there's original sin, there's likewise original innocemce.”

John Buchan book Witch Wood

Source: Witch Wood (1927), Ch. IX "Before Lammas"

God , Pain , Penalty , Way

“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.”

John Buchan

This has appeared on the internet attributed to Buchan, but is actually John Bunyan, as quoted in The Westminster Collection of Christian Quotations (2001) by Martin H. Manser
Misattributed

“It is due to him that the Roman concepts of public duty and service are still a living force among us. Historians have denied him the name of genius which they grant readily to Alexander and Julius and Napoleon; but if it be not genius to re-make and re-direct the world by a courageous realism and supreme powers of character and mind, then the word has no meaning in human speech..”

John Buchan

Augustus (1937)

World , Courage

“Civilisation is a conspiracy. What value would your police be if every criminal could find a sanctuary across the Channel, or your law courts, if no other tribunal recognised their decisions? Modern life is the silent compact of comfortable folk to keep up pretences. And it will succeed till the day comes when there is another compact to strip them bare.”

John Buchan book The Power-House

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

Life , Law , Decision

“What had become of his dream of idylls, his gentle bookish romance? Vanished before a reality which smacked horribly of crude melodrama and possibly of sordid crime. His gorge rose at the picture, but a thought troubled him. Perhaps all romance in its hour of happening was rough and ugly like this, and only shone rosy in the retrospect. Was he being false to his deepest faith?”

John Buchan book Huntingtower

Source: Huntingtower (1922), Ch. 4

Faith , Dreams , Reality , Falseness

“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 book Salute to Adventurers

Source: Salute to Adventurers (1915), Ch. 4 "Of a Stairhead and a Sea-Captain"

Hope , Suffering , Happiness

“The promise had not failed her.... She had won everything from life, for she had given the world a master. Words seemed to speak themselves in her ear.... "Bethink you of the blessedness. Every wife is like the Mother of God and has the hope of bearing a saviour of mankind."”

John Buchan book The Path of the King

Source: The Path of the King (1921), Ch. XIII "The Last Stage"

Life , God , World , Hope

“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 book Prester John

First lines
Prester John (1910)

Sleep , Time

“[T]here was never an army that did not accuse its enemies of barbarity.”

John Buchan book Witch Wood

Source: Witch Wood (1927), Ch. XIII "White Magic"

“The world was arrogant and self-satisfied, but behind all this confidence there was an uneasy sense of impending disaster. The old creeds, both religious and political, were largely in the process of dissolution, but we did not realise the fact, and therefore did not look for new foundations.”

John Buchan

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

World , Confidence , Sense

“They want to hurry things quicker than the Almighty means them to go. I don't altogether blame them either, for I'm mortally impatient myself. But it s no good thinking that saying a thing should be so will make it so. We're not the Creator of this universe. You've got to judge results according to your instruments.”

John Buchan book The Path of the King

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

Thinking , Universe

“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.”

John Buchan book The Power-House

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

“I am not courageous. To be brave means that you have conquered fear, but I have never had any fear to conquer. Believe me, Mr Leithen, I am quite impervious to threats. You come to me to-night and hold a pistol to my head. You offer me two alternatives, both of which mean failure. But how do you know that I regard them as failure? I have had what they call a good run for my money. No man since Napoleon has tasted such power. I may be willing to end it. Age creeps on and power may grow burdensome. I have always sat loose from common ambitions and common affections. For all you know I may regard you as a benefactor.”

John Buchan book The Power-House

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

Money , Age , Fear , Failure

“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

Space (1912)

World , Dreams

“The clean delicate lines of her figure, the exquisite pure colouring of hair and skin, the charming young arrogance of the eyes — this was beauty, he reflected, a miracle, a revelation. Her virginal fineness and her dress, which was the tint of pale fire, gave her the air of a creature of ice and flame.”

John Buchan book Huntingtower

Prologue
Huntingtower (1922)

Beauty

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

John Buchan book Castle Gay

Source: Castle Gay (1930), Ch. 19

“It was as if he were watching a tall stranger with a wand pointing to the embarrassed phantom that was himself, and ruthlessly exposing its frailties! And yet that pitiless showman was himself too — himself as he wanted to be, cheerful, brave, resourceful, indomitable.”

John Buchan book Huntingtower

Source: Huntingtower (1922), Ch. 6

“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 book Prester John

Source: Prester John (1910), Ch. XII

Heart , Parting , Night

“I am a minister of Christ first and of the Kirk second. If the Kirk forgets its Master's teaching, we part company.”

John Buchan book Witch Wood

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

Christ , Parting , Forgetting

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

John Buchan book A Lodge in the Wilderness

The scene is a society ball in London.
Source: A Lodge in the Wilderness (1906), Ch. V, p. 145.

Girl , Dead

“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

Space (1912)

Intelligence , Reality

“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 book Salute to Adventurers

Source: Salute to Adventurers (1915), Ch. 24 "I Suffer the Heathen's Rage"

Death , World , Time , Waiting

“Every wife is like Mary the Blessed and may bear a saviour of mankind. The road is long, but the ways of Heaven are sure.”

John Buchan book The Path of the King

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

Way