Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Matter
Mankind
Life
Hand
Brain
Chance
Turns
Future
Conjuring
Action
Fortunately
Hands
Chances

More quotes by John Buchan

Image
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.
John Buchan
Image
I always try to suit my clothes to my company. It is the only way to be inconspicuous.
John Buchan
Image
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
Image
What would you call the highest happiness, Lewie? he asked. The sense of competence, was the answer, given without hesitation.
John Buchan
Image
An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.
John Buchan
Image
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
Image
It struck me that Albania was the sort of place that might keep a man from yawning.
John Buchan
Image
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
Image
[W]ithout humour you cannot run a sweetie-shop, let alone a nation.
John Buchan
Image
The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.
John Buchan
Image
The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.
John Buchan
Image
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
Image
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.
John Buchan
Image
Without humility there can be no humanity.
John Buchan
Image
The book trade is a spiritual barometer of a nations well-being.
John Buchan
Image
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
Image
Wise men never grow up indeed, they grow younger, for they lose the appalling worldly wisdom of youth.
John Buchan
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Any large-scale organization must lose some of the merits of its rudimentary beginnings. Quantity will have a coarsening effect on quality.
John Buchan