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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.

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
Rest
Wisdom
Passion
Right
Straw
Believe
Immensely
Things
Straws
Life
Consists
Caring

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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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There may be peace without joy, and joy without peace, but the two combined make happiness.
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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.
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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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An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.
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Without humility there can be no humanity.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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I always try to suit my clothes to my company. It is the only way to be inconspicuous.
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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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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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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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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.
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We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.
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[W]ithout humour you cannot run a sweetie-shop, let alone a nation.
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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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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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What would you call the highest happiness, Lewie? he asked. The sense of competence, was the answer, given without hesitation.
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