Quote

The book trade is a spiritual barometer of a nations well-being.

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
Barometer
Trade
Nations
Spiritual
Wells
Book
Well

More quotes by John Buchan

Image
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
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
We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.
John Buchan
Image
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
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
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
Image
I believe that all wisdom consists in caring immensely for a few right things, and not caring a straw about the rest.
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
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
Image
He disliked emotion, not because he felt lightly, but because he felt deeply.
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
Most true points are fine points. There never was a dispute between mortals where both sides hadn't a bit of right.
John Buchan
Image
Leadership is only courage and wisdom, and a great carefulness of self.
John Buchan
Image
It struck me that Albania was the sort of place that might keep a man from yawning.
John Buchan
Image
An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.
John Buchan
Image
[W]ithout humour you cannot run a sweetie-shop, let alone a nation.
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
That is the supreme value of history. The study of it is the best guarantee against repeating it.
John Buchan
Image
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
Image
London is like the tropical bush -- if you don't exercise constant care the jungle, in the shape of the slums, will break in.
John Buchan