“The best way to be rid of quaking knees is to keep a busy mind.”
Source: Huntingtower
“A man’s courage is like a horse that refuses a fence; you have got to take him by the head and cram him at it again. If you don’t, he will funk worse next time. I hadn’t enough courage to be able to take chances with it, though I was afraid of many things, the thing I feared most was being afraid.”
Source: Mr. Standfast
“I loathed having to screw myself up to emergencies late in the day. Such things should take place in the early morning. It was like going over the top in France; I didn’t mind it so much when it happened during a drizzling dawn, when one was anyhow depressed and only half-awake, but I abominated an attack in the cold-blooded daylight, or in the dusk when one wanted to relax.”
Source: The Three Hostages
“In the last two centuries mankind has advanced far on the road to toleration, one of the first of the civic virtues; but now an intolerant spirit is abroad which claims for this or that dogma the status of final truth, and would compel its acceptance by fire and sword.”
Source: The Interpreter's House - The Chancellor's Installation Address Delivered Before the University of Edinburgh, July 20th 1938
“To select arbitrarily a set of first principles, and to make all our studies subordinate to them, is in effect to establish an intellectual dictatorship amd to kill the freedom of mind. It is true that it would give us orderliness, but it would be the orderliness of death.”
Source: The Interpreter's House - The Chancellor's Installation Address Delivered Before the University of Edinburgh, July 20th 1938
“Here were we wretched creatures of men making for each other's throats, and outraging the good earth which God had made so fair a habitation.”
“It was pretty clear that he was mad, for madness means just this dislocation of the modes of thought which mortals have agreed upon as necessary to keep the world together.”
Source: The Three Hostages
“It was strange how fear had gone,now that we knew the worst and had a fighting man by our side.”
“I seek above all things to bring men and women to God's mercy-seat.”
Source: Witch Wood
“It portends," said Mr. Proudfoot, whom food did not mellow, "that our pure and reformed Kirk of Scotland is linked more than ever with sectaries and antinomians and those, like the bloody and deceitful Cromwell, that would defile the milk of the Word with the sour whey of their human inventions. What avails a triumphant Kirk if its doctrine be sullied?”
Source: Witch Wood
“There is a famous Cambridge toast that I have always liked: “God bless the higher mathematics, and may they never be of the slightest use to anybody”.”
Source: The Interpreter's House - The Chancellor's Installation Address Delivered Before the University of Edinburgh, July 20th 1938
“I have been back among fairy tales,” she says. “I do not quite understand, Alesha. Those gallant little boys! They are youth, and youth is always full of strangeness. Mr. Heritage! He is youth, too, and poetry, perhaps, and a soldier’s tradition. I think I know him... But what about Dickson? He is the petit bourgeois, the épicier, the class which the world ridicules. He is unbelievable.
“No,” is the answer. “You will not find him in Russia. He is what they call the middle-class, which we who were foolish used to laugh at. But he is the stuff which aboveall others makes a great people. He will endure when aristocracies crack and proletariats crumble. In our own land we have never known him, but till we create him our land will not be a nation.”
Source: Huntingtower
“I get into a tearing passion about something I know very little about, and when I learn more my passion ebbs away.”
Source: Castle Gay
“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.”
Source: The House of the Four Winds
“By God!' he whispered, drawing his breath in sharply, 'it is all pure Rider Haggard and Conan Doyle.”
Source: The 39 Steps
“All this was very loose guessing, and I don't pretend it was ingenious or scientific. I wasn't any kind of Sherlock Holmes. But I have always fancied I had a kind of instinct about questions like this. I don't know if I can explain myself, but I used to use my brains as far as they went, and after they came to a blank wall I guessed, and I usually found my guesses pretty right.”
Source: The 39 Steps
“My chief passion in those years was for the Border countryside, and my object in all my prentice writings was to reproduce its delicate charm, to catch the aroma of its gracious landscape and turbulent history and the idiom of its people. When I was absent from it, I was homesick, my memory was full of it, my happiest days were associated with it, and some effluence from its ageless hills and waters laid a spell upon me which has never been broken. I found in its people what I most admired in human nature – realism coloured by poetry, a stalwart independence sweetened by courtesy, a shrewd kindly wisdom. I asked for nothing better than to spend my life by the Tweed.”
Source: Memory Hold-the-Door: The Autobiography of John Buchan
“He who would valiant be against all disaster; let him in constancy follow the Master. There's no discouragement shall make him once relent; his first avowed intent to be a pilgrim.”
“But some love not the method of your first; Romance they count it, throw't away as dust; If I should meet with such, what should I say; Must I slight them as they slight me, or nay”
“London is like the tropical bush -- if you don't exercise constant care the jungle, in the shape of the slums, will break in.”
Source: The Complete Works of John Buchan (Unabridged): Thriller Classics, Spy Novels, Supernatural Tales, Short Stories, Poetry, Historical Works, The Great War Writings, Essays, Biographies & Memoirs – All in One Volume
“Any large-scale organization must lose some of the merits of its rudimentary beginnings. Quantity will have a coarsening effect on quality.”
Source: Augustus
“In our modern world we have seen inaugurated the reign of a dull bourgeois rationalism, which finds some inadequate reason for all things in heaven and earth and makes a god of its own infallibility.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)
“Young girls passed me with romance still in their eyes, and others, a little older, with the romance dead.”
Source: The Complete Works of John Buchan (Unabridged): Thriller Classics, Spy Novels, Supernatural Tales, Short Stories, Poetry, Historical Works, The Great War Writings, Essays, Biographies & Memoirs – All in One Volume
“The vows we take in the holy place bind us till we are purged of them at Inanda's Kraal. Till then no blood must be shed and no flesh eaten. It was the fashion of our forefathers.”
Source: JOHN BUCHAN Ultimate Collection: Spy Classics, Thrillers, Adventure Novels & Short Stories, Including Historical Works and Essays (Illustrated): Scottish Poems, World War I Books & Mystery Novels like Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle, Huntingtower, No Man’s Land, Prester John and many more
“Fortunately for mankind the brain in a life of action turns more to the matter in hand than to conjuring up the chances of the future.”
Source: The Complete Novels of John Buchan: 25+ Spy Classics, Thrillers & Adventure Novels in One Premium Edition (Unabridged): Including Richard Hannay Series, Dickson McCunn Trilogy & Sir Edward Leithen Series along with Midwinter, Witchwood, The Blanket of the Dark, The Free Fishers and more
“I believe that every man has in his soul a passion for treasure-hunting, which will often drive a coward into prodigies of valour.”
Source: Prester John
“It was foreordained that I should go alone to Umvelos', and in the promptings of my own infallible heart I believed I saw the workings of Omnipotence. Such is our moral arrogance, and yet without such a belief I think that mankind would have ever been content to bide sluggishly at home.”
“I once played the chief part in a rather exciting business without ever once budging from London . And the joke of it was that the man who went out to look for adventure only saw a bit of the game, and I who sat in my chambers saw it all and pulled the strings. 'They also serve who only stand and wait,' you know.”
Source: The Complete Works of John Buchan (Unabridged): Thriller Classics, Spy Novels, Supernatural Tales, Short Stories, Poetry, Historical Works, The Great War Writings, Essays, Biographies & Memoirs – All in One Volume
“Civilisation needs more than the law to hold it together. You see, all mankind are not equally willing to accept as divine justice what is called human law.”
Source: JOHN BUCHAN Ultimate Collection: Spy Classics, Thrillers, Adventure Novels & Short Stories, Including Historical Works and Essays (Illustrated): Scottish Poems, World War I Books & Mystery Novels like Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle, Huntingtower, No Man’s Land, Prester John and many more
“You may hear people say that submarines have done away with the battleship, and that aircraft have annulled the mastery of the sea. That is what our pessimists say. But do you imagine that the clumsy submarine or the fragile aeroplane is really the last word of science?”
Source: SIR EDWARD LEITHEN Complete Collection – 6 Titles in One Premium Edition (Mystery & Thriller Series): The Power-House, John Macnab, The Dancing Floor, The Gap in the Curtain, Sick Heart River & Sing a Song of Sixpence
“You see only the productions of second-rate folk who are in a hurry to get wealth and fame. The true knowledge, the deadly knowledge, is still kept secret. But, believe me, my friend, it is there.”
Source: The Complete Works of John Buchan (Unabridged): Thriller Classics, Spy Novels, Supernatural Tales, Short Stories, Poetry, Historical Works, The Great War Writings, Essays, Biographies & Memoirs – All in One Volume
“If those extra-social brains are so potent, why after all do they effect so little? A dull police-officer, with the machine behind him, can afford to laugh at most experiments in anarchy.”
Source: JOHN BUCHAN Ultimate Collection: Spy Classics, Thrillers, Adventure Novels & Short Stories, Including Historical Works and Essays (Illustrated): Scottish Poems, World War I Books & Mystery Novels like Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle, Huntingtower, No Man’s Land, Prester John and many more
“It would scarcely be destruction," he replied gently. "Let us call it iconoclasm, the swallowing of formulas, which has always had its full retinue of idealists. And you do not want a Napoleon . All that is needed is direction, which could be given by men of far lower gifts than a Bonaparte. In a word, you want a Power-House, and then the age of miracles will begin.”
Source: The Complete Works of John Buchan (Unabridged): Thriller Classics, Spy Novels, Supernatural Tales, Short Stories, Poetry, Historical Works, The Great War Writings, Essays, Biographies & Memoirs – All in One Volume
“I was a peaceful sedentary man, a lover of a quiet life, with no appetite for perils and commotions. But I was beginning to realise that I was very obstinate.”
Source: JOHN BUCHAN Ultimate Collection: Spy Classics, Thrillers, Adventure Novels & Short Stories, Including Historical Works and Essays (Illustrated): Scottish Poems, World War I Books & Mystery Novels like Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle, Huntingtower, No Man’s Land, Prester John and many more
“[W]ithout humour you cannot run a sweetie-shop, let alone a nation.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)
“Wise men never grow up; indeed, they grow younger, for they lose the appalling worldly wisdom of youth.”
Source: JOHN BUCHAN Ultimate Collection: Spy Classics, Thrillers, Adventure Novels & Short Stories, Including Historical Works and Essays (Illustrated): Scottish Poems, World War I Books & Mystery Novels like Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle, Huntingtower, No Man’s Land, Prester John and many more
“I always try to suit my clothes to my company. It is the only way to be inconspicuous.”
Source: JOHN BUCHAN – Ultimate Collection: 28 Novels & 40+ Short Stories (Including Poems, War Writings, Essays, Biographies & Memoirs) - Illustrated: Thriller Classics, Spy Novels, Supernatural Tales, Historical Works, The Great War Writings & Autobiography; Including Complete Richard Hannay, Dickson McCunn & Sir Edward Leithen Series
“The world was arrogant and self-satisfied, but behind all this confidence there was an uneasy sense of impending disaster. The old creeds, both religious and political, were largely in the process of dissolution, but we did not realise the fact, and therefore did not look for new foundations.”
“Our sufferings have taught us that no nation is sufficient unto itself, and that our prosperity depends in the long run, not upon the failures of our neighbors but their successes.”
“And where the deepest current crawls/ Like thistledown the dainty fly falls./ Then from the depths a silver gleam/ Quick flashes, like a jewel bright./ Up through the waters of the stream/ An instant visible to sight/ As lightning cleaves to sombre sky/ A rainbow rises to the fly.”
“The sea has formed the English character and the essential England is to be found in those who follow it. From blue waters they have learned mercifulness, and they have also learned - in the grimmest of schools - precision and resolution. The sea endures no makeshifts. If a thing is not exactly right it will be vastly wrong.”
Source: Nelson's History of the war
“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.”
Source: NO-MAN’S-LAND & Other Supernatural Stories (Mystery & Horror Series): The Watcher by the Threshold, Space, The Keeper of Cademuir, A Journey of Little Profit, The Outgoing of the Tide, The Grove of Ashtaroth, Basilissa & Fullcircle
“Civilisation is a conspiracy.”
Source: The Leithen Stories
“Most true points are fine points. There never was a dispute between mortals where both sides hadn't a bit of right.”
Source: THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS & Other Adventure Stories (7 Action-Packed Titles in One Volume): Gripping Tales of Dangerous Exploits, Mysteries & Espionage Intrigue: The Thirty-Nine Steps, Midwinter, Prester John, A Prince of the Captivity, Salute to Adventurers, The Path of the King...
“The Church of Christ is an anvil which has worn out many hammers. Our opponents may boast of their strength, but they do not realize what they have challenged.”
“Leadership is only courage and wisdom, and a great carefulness of self.”
“To see what is right and not to do it is cowardice. It is never a question of who is right but what is right.”
“The book trade is a spiritual barometer of a nations well-being.”
“Pessimism is the one ism which kills the soul.”
“The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.”
Source: Great Hours in Sport
