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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.

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
Peaceful
Sedentary
Lovers
Perils
Beginning
Obstinate
Quiet
Peril
Men
Realise
Life
Realising
Appetite
Lover

More quotes by John Buchan

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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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An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.
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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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I believe that all wisdom consists in caring immensely for a few right things, and not caring a straw about the rest.
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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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What would you call the highest happiness, Lewie? he asked. The sense of competence, was the answer, given without hesitation.
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Leadership is only courage and wisdom, and a great carefulness of self.
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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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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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Every man at the bottom of his heart believes that he is a born detective.
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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.
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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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There may be peace without joy, and joy without peace, but the two combined make happiness.
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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.
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[W]ithout humour you cannot run a sweetie-shop, let alone a nation.
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Without humility there can be no humanity.
John Buchan
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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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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.
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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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We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.
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