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We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.
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
Debts
Debt
Putting
Pay
Future
Past
More quotes by John Buchan
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.
John Buchan
That is the supreme value of history. The study of it is the best guarantee against repeating it.
John Buchan
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.
John Buchan
You 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 Buchan
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.
John Buchan
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.
John Buchan
The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.
John Buchan
I always try to suit my clothes to my company. It is the only way to be inconspicuous.
John Buchan
Without humility there can be no humanity.
John Buchan
Most true points are fine points. There never was a dispute between mortals where both sides hadn't a bit of right.
John Buchan
There may be peace without joy, and joy without peace, but the two combined make happiness.
John Buchan
What would you call the highest happiness, Lewie? he asked. The sense of competence, was the answer, given without hesitation.
John Buchan
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.
John Buchan
London is like the tropical bush -- if you don't exercise constant care the jungle, in the shape of the slums, will break in.
John Buchan
An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.
John Buchan
I 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 Buchan
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
John Buchan
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.
John Buchan
Any large-scale organization must lose some of the merits of its rudimentary beginnings. Quantity will have a coarsening effect on quality.
John Buchan
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.
John Buchan
