John Buchan Quotes

You find hate more among journalists and politicians at home than among fighting men.

Sir Archibald looked upon the earnest flushed face of Dickson with admiration. “I’m blessed if you’re not the most whole-hearted brigand I’ve ever struck.”“I’m not. I’m just a business man.”
“Do you realize that you’re levying a private war and breaking every law of the land?”
“Hoots!” said Dickson. “I don’t care a docken about the law. I’m for seeing this job through. What force can you produce?”
“Only cripples , I’m afraid.

We had our pride shattered, and without humility there can be no humanity.

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.

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.

If you’re going to be killed you invent some kind of flag and country to fight for, and if you survive you get to love the thing

"How will you deal with him?" Belses asked.
Jock lifted a brawny fist and regarded it lovingly. "Knock him out — truss him up — whatever the Almighty permits us."
Supposing he's not alone?"
Oh, then, if his trusties are with him, there'll be a bonny rumpus."

The Simple Life is the last refuge of complicated and restless souls.

Time, they say, must the best of us capture,
And travel and battle and gems and gold
No more can kindle the ancient rapture,
For even the youngest of hearts grows old.

'I'm in the Lord's hands,' he said humbly. 'I'm but a penny whistle for His breath to blow on.' This he said with such solemnity that the meaning of a fanatic was suddenly revealed to me. One or two distorted notions, a wild imagination, and fierce passions, and there you have the ingredients ready.

It struck me that Albania was the sort of place that might keep a man from yawning.

The robe of flesh wears thin, and with the years God shines through all things.

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.

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.

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.