John Buchan: Quotes about the world

John Buchan was British politician. Explore interesting quotes on world.
John Buchan: 290   quotes 3   likes

“This crowded world of Space was perfectly real to him. How he had got to it I do not know.”

John Buchan

Space (1912)
Context: This crowded world of Space was perfectly real to him. How he had got to it I do not know. Perhaps his mind, dwelling constantly on the problem, had unsealed some atrophied cell and restored the old instinct. Anyhow, he was living his daily life with a foot in each world.

World

“The true achievement of Augustus is that he saved the world from disintegration.”

John Buchan

Augustus (1937)
Context: The true achievement of Augustus is that he saved the world from disintegration. Without him Rome must have lost her conquests one by one, and seen them relapse into barbarism or degenerate into petty satrapies. The wild peoples of the East and North would have ante-dated their invasions by centuries.

World

“How if Space is really full of things we cannot see and as yet do not know? How if all animals and some savages have a cell in their brain or a nerve which responds to the invisible world? How if all Space be full of these landmarks, not material in our sense, but quite real?”

John Buchan

Space (1912)
Context: How if Space is really full of things we cannot see and as yet do not know? How if all animals and some savages have a cell in their brain or a nerve which responds to the invisible world? How if all Space be full of these landmarks, not material in our sense, but quite real? A dog barks at nothing, a wild beast makes an aimless circuit. Why? Perhaps because Space is made up of corridors and alleys, ways to travel and things to shun? For all we know, to a greater intelligence than ours the top of Mont Blanc may be as crowded as Piccadilly Circus.

World , Sense , Animals

“The spark once transmitted may smoulder for generations under ashes, but the appointed time will come, and it will flare up to warm the world.”

John Buchan book The Path of the King

Prologue
The Path of the King (1921)
Context: The spark once transmitted may smoulder for generations under ashes, but the appointed time will come, and it will flare up to warm the world. God never allows waste. And we fools rub our eyes and wonder, when we see genius come out of the gutter. It didn't begin there. We tell ourselves that Shakespeare was the son of a woolpedlar, and Napoleon of a farmer, and Luther of a peasant, and we hold up our hands at the marvel. But who knows what kings and prophets they had in their ancestry!

World , Time

“Leithen's story had bored and puzzled me at the start, but now it had somehow gripped my fancy. Space a domain of endless corridors and Presences moving in them! The world was not quite the same as an hour ago.”

John Buchan

Space (1912)
Context: Leithen's story had bored and puzzled me at the start, but now it had somehow gripped my fancy. Space a domain of endless corridors and Presences moving in them! The world was not quite the same as an hour ago. It was the hour, as the French say, "between dog and wolf," when the mind is disposed to marvels.

World

“If his "magna imago" could return to earth, he would be puzzled at some of our experiments in empire, and might well complain that the imperfections of his work were taken as its virtues, and that so many truths had gone silently out of mind. He had prided himself on having given the world peace, and he would be amazed by the loud praise of war as a natural and wholesome concomitant of a nation's life.”

John Buchan

Augustus (1937)
Context: If his "magna imago" could return to earth, he would be puzzled at some of our experiments in empire, and might well complain that the imperfections of his work were taken as its virtues, and that so many truths had gone silently out of mind. He had prided himself on having given the world peace, and he would be amazed by the loud praise of war as a natural and wholesome concomitant of a nation's life. Wars he had fought from an anxious desire to safeguard his people, as the shepherd builds the defences of his sheepfold; but he hated the thing, because he knew well the deadly "disordering," which the Greek historian noted as the consequence of the most triumphant campaign. He would marvel, too, at the current talk of racial purity, the exaltation of one breed of men as the chosen favourites of the gods. That would seem to him not only a defiance of the new Christian creed, but of the Stoicism which he had sincerely professed.

Life , War , Truth , World

“Of course he could only describe his impressions very lamely, for they were purely of the mind, and he had no material peg to hang them on, so that I could realise them. But the gist of it was that he had been gradually becoming conscious of what he called 'Presences' in his world. They had no effect on Space — did not leave footprints in its corridors, for instance — but they affected his mind. There was some mysterious contact established between him and them. I asked him if the affection was unpleasant and he said 'No, not exactly.”

John Buchan

But I could see a hint of fear in his eyes.
Space (1912)

World , Fear

“In our modern world we have seen inaugurated the reign of a dull bourgeois rationalism, which finds some inadequate reason for all things in heaven and earth and makes a god of its own infallibility.”

John Buchan book A Lodge in the Wilderness

Source: A Lodge in the Wilderness (1906), Ch. III, p. 69

God , World

“You can help me to keep my head cool," was the answer. "You stand for the world of common sense which will always win in the long run. When I'm inclined to run amok you'll remind me of England. You'll lower the temperature.”

John Buchan book The House of the Four Winds

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

World , Sense , Help

“He knew nothing accurately about any subject in the world, but he could clothe his ignorance in pontifical garments and give his confusion the accents of authority. He had a remarkable flair for discerning and elaborating the tiny quantum of popular knowledge on any matter.”

John Buchan book Castle Gay

Source: Castle Gay (1930), Ch. 2

World , Knowledge , Clothes

“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)

Death , World , Fear , Thinking

“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

Love , Women , World , Sex

“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

World , Exercises , Soul

“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 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

“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

“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

“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

“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