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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

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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
Chance
Quarters
Making
Solitary
Jobs
Corner
Place
Desert
Thankless
Work
Corners
Blossom
Would
Content
Remote
Glad
However
Quarter

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The book trade is a spiritual barometer of a nations well-being.
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We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.
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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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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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Wise men never grow up indeed, they grow younger, for they lose the appalling worldly wisdom of youth.
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He disliked emotion, not because he felt lightly, but because he felt deeply.
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Leadership is only courage and wisdom, and a great carefulness of self.
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That is the supreme value of history. The study of it is the best guarantee against repeating it.
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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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Civilization is a conspiracy. Modern life is the silent compact of comfortable folk to keep up pretences.
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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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Every man at the bottom of his heart believes that he is a born detective.
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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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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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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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[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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