The true definition of a snob is one who craves for what separates men rather than for what unites them.
John BuchanThere may be peace without joy, and joy without peace, but the two combined make happiness.
John BuchanThe task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.
John BuchanI believe that all wisdom consists in caring immensely for a few right things, and not caring a straw about the rest.
John BuchanYou think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilization from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn.
John BuchanI would have been content with any job however thankless, in any quarter however remote, if I had a chance of making a corner of the desert blossom and the solitary place glad.
John BuchanBethink you of the blessedness. Every wife is like the Mother of God and has the hope of bearing a saviour of mankind.
John BuchanAnd 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.
John Buchan"What would you call the highest happiness, Lewie?" he asked. "The sense of competence," was the answer, given without hesitation.
John BuchanHistory gives us a kind of chart, and we dare not surrender even a small rushlight in the darkness. The hasty reformer who does not remember the past will find himself condemned to repeat it.
John BuchanThat is the supreme value of history. The study of it is the best guarantee against repeating it.
John BuchanOur 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.
John BuchanTo see what is right and not to do it is cowardice. It is never a question of who is right but what is right.
John BuchanI am an ordinary sort of fellow, not braver than other people, but I hate to see a good man downed, and that long knife would not be the end of Scudder if I could play the game in his place.
John BuchanThe 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.
John BuchanCivilization is a conspiracy. Modern life is the silent compact of comfortable folk to keep up pretences.
John BuchanThe charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.
John BuchanI 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.
John Buchan