
Life of Agesilaus II
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Critic and Poet: an Epilogue http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/critic-and-poet-an-epilogue/
Life of Agesilaus II
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“I have heard an atheist defined as a man who had no invisible means of support.”
A play on words commonly used referring to vagrants or paupers as having "no visible means of support" financially, speaking to the Law Society of Upper Canada, (21 February 1936); published in Canadian Occasions (1940), p. 201. Buchan's source for this definition remains unknown. The witticism was repeated by Harry Emerson Fosdick in his On Being a Real Person (1943), ch. 1, with due acknowledgement to Buchan, and was again used by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen in Look magazine (December 14, 1955). The credit for this line is therefore often wrongly given to Fosdick or to Sheen. Credit has also been given to the conductor Walter Damrosch (1862-1950).
Canadian Occasions (1940)
“A nightingale dies for shame if another bird sings better.”
Section 2, member 3, subsection 6.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I
The Crisis No. VII
1770s, The American Crisis (1776–1783)
Homo Neanderthalensis Baltimore Sun (June 29th, 1925), The Impossible Mencken
1920s
“The man could be frightfully keen…except when he was utterly obtuse.”
Source: Arabella and the Battle of Venus (2017), Chapter 16, “Espionage” (p. 246)