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What would you call the highest happiness, Lewie? he asked. The sense of competence, was the answer, given without hesitation.
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
Would
Asked
Highest
Answers
Call
Happiness
Sense
Hesitation
Given
Competence
Without
Answer
More quotes by John Buchan
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.
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
Civilization is a conspiracy. Modern life is the silent compact of comfortable folk to keep up pretences.
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 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
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.
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
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
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.
John Buchan
The book trade is a spiritual barometer of a nations well-being.
John Buchan
Every man at the bottom of his heart believes that he is a born detective.
John Buchan
I believe that all wisdom consists in caring immensely for a few right things, and not caring a straw about the rest.
John Buchan
Wise men never grow up indeed, they grow younger, for they lose the appalling worldly wisdom of youth.
John Buchan
It struck me that Albania was the sort of place that might keep a man from yawning.
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
We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.
John Buchan
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.
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
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
