John Buchan Quotes

But let none, he added, pray to have the full music; for it will make him who hears it a footsore traveller in

[W]ithout humour you cannot run a sweetie-shop, let alone a nation.

It was strange how fear had gone,now that we knew the worst and had a fighting man by our side.

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.

I mused upon the ironic fate which had compelled a mathematical genius to make his sole confidant of a philistine lawyer, and induced that lawyer to repeat it confusedly to an ignoramus at twilight on a Scotch hill.

I have been told that, when you can adequately formulate a grief, you have removed half the sting of it, and I fancy that in the case of the pleasing emotions the same explication doubles the pleasure. That is the virtue of the poets, since they do for the ordinary man what he cannot do for himself.

Honest intention will not cure faulty practice.

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.

The war had called forth the finest qualities of human nature, and with the advent of peace there seemed a risk of the world slipping back into a dull materialism. Men had begun to ask of everything its cash value, and to cherish, as if it were a virtue, a narrow utilitarian commonsense.

There is no merit in an empire as such. Extension in space does not necessarily mean spiritual advancement. The small community is easier to govern, and, it may well be, more pleasant to live in. If its opportunities are limited its perils are also circumscribed. But the alternatives which confronted him were empire or anarchy.