Quotes from book
Witch Wood

Name: Witch Wood
Author: John Buchan

John Buchan

Witch Wood is a 1927 novel by the Scots author John Buchan, set in the Scottish Borders during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. A significant portion of the dialogue is in Lowland Scots.

“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"

“[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"

“Honest intention will not cure faulty practice.”

John Buchan book Witch Wood

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

“[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"

“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"

“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"

“[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"

“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"

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