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I have known fellows to whom the earth was so full of little pleasures that after the worst clouts they rose like larks from a furrow. A wise philosophy—but I had none of it. I always saw the little pageant of man's life like a child's peep-show beside the dark wastes of eternity.

— John Buchan The Path of the King (1921)

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More quotes by John Buchan

Wise men never grow up; indeed, they grow younger, for they lose the appalling worldly wisdom of youth.

A Lodge in the Wilderness (1906)

The true definition of a snob is one who craves for what separates men rather than for what unites them.

Memory Hold-The-Door (1940)

The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.

Montrose and Leadership (1930)

I have heard an atheist defined as a man who had no invisible means of support.

Canadian Occasions (1940)

We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: John Buchan (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.