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Civilization is a conspiracy. Modern life is the silent compact of comfortable folk to keep up pretences.

John Buchan

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John Buchan
Age: 64 †
Born: 1875
Born: August 26
Died: 1940
Died: February 11
Barrister
Biographer
Former Governor General Of Canada
Journalist
Military Personnel
Novelist
Poet
Politician
Science Fiction Writer
Perth
Scotland
John Buchan
1st Baron Tweedsmuir
Lord Tweedsmuir
Life
Conspiracy
Folks
Silent
Civilization
Pretences
Quiet
Pretence
Comfortable
Compact
Modern
Modernism
Keep
Folk

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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.
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Wise men never grow up indeed, they grow younger, for they lose the appalling worldly wisdom of youth.
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I believe that all wisdom consists in caring immensely for a few right things, and not caring a straw about the rest.
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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.
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[W]ithout humour you cannot run a sweetie-shop, let alone a nation.
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London is like the tropical bush -- if you don't exercise constant care the jungle, in the shape of the slums, will break in.
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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.
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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.
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Every man at the bottom of his heart believes that he is a born detective.
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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
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It struck me that Albania was the sort of place that might keep a man from yawning.
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History 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.
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I 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.
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An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.
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The book trade is a spiritual barometer of a nations well-being.
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Any large-scale organization must lose some of the merits of its rudimentary beginnings. Quantity will have a coarsening effect on quality.
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Without humility there can be no humanity.
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Most true points are fine points. There never was a dispute between mortals where both sides hadn't a bit of right.
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The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.
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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.
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