Public life is regarded as the crown of a career, and to young men it is the worthiest ambition. Politics is still the greatest and the most honorabl… - John Buchan

What’s dooty, if you won’t carry it to the other side of Hell? What’s the use of yapping about your country if you’re going to keep something back when she calls for it? What’s the good of meaning to win the war if you don’t put every cent you’ve got on your stake?... No, Dick, that kind of dooty don’t deserve a blessing. You dursn’t keep anything back if you want to save your soul.

The promise had not failed her. . . . She had won everything from life, for she had given the world a master. Words seemed to speak themselves in her ear. . . . "Bethink you of the blessedness. Every wife is like the Mother of God and has the hope of bearing a saviour of mankind."

It was from the Pilgrim's Progress that I read next morning, when in the lee of an apple-orchard Mary and Blenkiron and I stood in the soft spring rain beside his grave. And what I read was the tale in the end not of Mr Standfast, whom he had singled out for his counterpart, but of Mr Valiant-for-Truth whom he had not hoped to emulate. I set down the words as a salute and a farewell: Then said he, 'I am going to my Father's; and though with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought His battles who now will be my rewarder.' So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.