John Buchan Quotes

He said that the great offensives of the future would be psychological, and he thought the Governments should get busy about it and prepare their defence... He considered that the most deadly weapon in the world was the power of mass-persuasion.

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.

Most true points are fine points. There never was a dispute between mortals where both sides hadn't a bit of right.

It's a wise conspirator that knows his own name.

He disliked emotion, not because he felt lightly, but because he felt deeply.

I have to consider the honour of my house.'
'Honour?' Jaikie queried.
'Yes, honour,' said Ashie severely. 'Have you anything to say against it?'
'N-o-o. But it’s an awkward word and apt to obscure reason.'
'It is a very real thing, which you English do not understand.'
'We understand it well enough, but we are shy of talking about it.

The devils are after me, and the police are after them. It’s a race that I mean to win.

Perfect love casteth out fear, the Bible says; but, to speak it reverently, so does perfect hate.

It was as if he were watching a tall stranger with a wand pointing to the embarrassed phantom that was himself, and ruthlessly exposing its frailties! And yet that pitiless showman was himself too — himself as he wanted to be, cheerful, brave, resourceful, indomitable.

He felt singularly light-hearted, and the immediate cause was his safety razor. A week ago he had bought the thing in a sudden fit of enterprise, and now he shaved in five minutes, where before he had taken twenty, and no longer confronted his fellows, at least one day in three, with a countenance ludicrously mottled by sticking-plaster.

Why does wealth make dull people so much duller?

must have been very tired, for I was getting as full of silly prejudices as a minor poet.

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.

Pardon,' he said, 'I'm a bit rattled tonight. You see, I happen at this moment to be dead.

When a man comes out of great danger, he is apt to be a little deaf to the call of duty.