John Buchan

“The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.”
-- John Buchan

#Inspirational #Greatness #People

“I believe that all wisdom consists in caring immensely for a few right things, and not caring a straw about the rest.”
-- John Buchan

#Life #Wisdom #Believe

“That is the supreme value of history. The study of it is the best guarantee against repeating it.”
-- John Buchan

#History #Guarantees #Study

“There may be peace without joy, and joy without peace, but the two combined make happiness.”
-- John Buchan

#Inspirational #Two #Joy

“An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.”
-- John Buchan

#Atheist #Mean #Men

“It's a great life, if you don't weaken,”
-- John Buchan

“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

#Fishing #Charm #Pursuit

“Peace is that state in which fear of any kind is unknown.”
-- John Buchan

#Peace #Kind #States

“Every man at the bottom of his heart believes that he is a born detective.”
-- John Buchan

#Believe #Heart #Men

“Without humility there can be no humanity.”
-- John Buchan

#Humility #Pride #Humanity

“He disliked emotion, not because he felt lightly, but because he felt deeply.”
-- John Buchan

#Emotion

“I wondered whether the scientific modern brain could not get to the stage of realising that Space is not an empty homogeneous medium, but full of intricate differences, intelligible and real, though not with our common reality.”
-- John Buchan

#Real #Differences #Space

“Young girls passed me with romance still in their eyes, and others, a little older, with the romance dead.”
-- John Buchan

#Girl #Eye #Romance

“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

#Running #Long #Suffering

“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

#Firsts #Discouragement #Disaster

“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

#Religious #Self #Political

“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

#Dust #Romance #Firsts

“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

#Exercise #Care #Shapes

“Any large-scale organization must lose some of the merits of its rudimentary beginnings. Quantity will have a coarsening effect on quality.”
-- John Buchan

#Organization #Quality #Merit

“[W]ithout humour you cannot run a sweetie-shop, let alone a nation.”
-- John Buchan

#Running #Humour #Shops

“Wise men never grow up; indeed, they grow younger, for they lose the appalling worldly wisdom of youth.”
-- John Buchan

#Wise #Growing Up #Men

“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

#Heaven #World #Earth

“I would be content with any job, however thankless, in any quarter, however remote, if I had the chance of making a corner of the desert blossom and a solitary place glad.”
-- John Buchan

#Jobs #Work #Would Be

“The robe of flesh wears thin, and with the years God shines through all things.”
-- John Buchan

#Years #Shining #Flesh

“To live for a time close to great minds is the best kind of education.”
-- John Buchan

#Education #Mind #Kind

“The true definition of a snob is one who craves for what separates men rather than for what unites them.”
-- John Buchan

#Men #Definitions #Snob

“Civilization is a conspiracy. Modern life is the silent compact of comfortable folk to keep up pretences.”
-- John Buchan

#Civilization #Modern Life #Quiet

“We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.”
-- John Buchan

#Past #Debt #Pay

“It struck me that Albania was the sort of place that might keep a man from yawning.”
-- John Buchan

#Men #Yawning #Albania

“I believe everything out of the common. The only thing to distrust is the normal.”
-- John Buchan

#Believe #Normal #Common