Quote

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

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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
Without
Content
Foreordained
Heart
Saws
Bide
Would
Mankind
Promptings
Think
Alone
Workings
Thinking
Belief
Omnipotence
Moral
Infallible
Home
Arrogance
Ever
Believed
Sluggishly

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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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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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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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Without humility there can be no humanity.
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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.
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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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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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[W]ithout humour you cannot run a sweetie-shop, let alone a nation.
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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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The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.
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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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