John Buchan: Likeness

John Buchan was British politician. Explore interesting quotes on likeness.
John Buchan: 290 quotes3 likes

“I venerate the intellect of man. I believe in its undreamed-of possibilities, when it grows free like an oak in the forest and is not dwarfed in a flower-pot. From that allegiance I have never wavered. That is the God I have never forsworn.”

John Buchan book The Power-House

Source: The Power-House (1916), Ch. 8 "The Power-House"
Context: I am a sceptic about most things... but, believe me, I have my own worship. I venerate the intellect of man. I believe in its undreamed-of possibilities, when it grows free like an oak in the forest and is not dwarfed in a flower-pot. From that allegiance I have never wavered. That is the God I have never forsworn.

“Truth's like a dollar-piece, it's got two sides, and both are wanted to make it good currency.”

John Buchan book The Path of the King

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

“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 book The Power-House

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

“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"

“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

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

John Buchan book Huntingtower

Prologue
Huntingtower (1922)

“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)

“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"

“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

“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

“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

“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"

“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

“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"

“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

“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"