“I believe everything out of the common. The only thing to distrust is the normal.”
― John Buchan, quote from The 39 Steps
“It struck me that Albania was the sort of place that might keep a man from yawning.”
― John Buchan, quote from The 39 Steps
“A fool tries to look different: a clever man looks the same and is different.”
― John Buchan, quote from The 39 Steps
“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, quote from The 39 Steps
“It was a soft breathless June morning, with a promise of sultriness later...”
― John Buchan, quote from The 39 Steps
“The men who knew that he knew what he knew had found him”
― John Buchan, quote from The 39 Steps
“By God!' he whispered, drawing his breath in sharply, 'it is all pure Rider Haggard and Conan Doyle.”
― John Buchan, quote from The 39 Steps
“My thoughts hovered over all varieties of mortal edible, and finally settled on a porterhouse steak and a quart of bitter with a welsh rabbit to follow. In longing hopelessly for these dainties I fell asleep.”
― John Buchan, quote from The 39 Steps
“If you’re going to be killed you invent some kind of flag and country to fight for, and if you survive you get to love the thing”
― John Buchan, quote from The 39 Steps
“All this was very loose guessing, and I don't pretend it was ingenious or scientific. I wasn't any kind of Sherlock Holmes. But I have always fancied I had a kind of instinct about questions like this. I don't know if I can explain myself, but I used to use my brains as far as they went, and after they came to a blank wall I guessed, and I usually found my guesses pretty right.”
― John Buchan, quote from The 39 Steps
“I had a fine prospect of the whole ring of moorland. I saw the car speed away with two occupants, and a man on a hill pony riding east. I judged they were looking for me, and I wished them joy of their quest.”
― John Buchan, quote from The 39 Steps
“About six in the evening I came out of the moorland to a white ribbon of road which wound up the narrow vale of a lowland stream. As I followed it, fields gave place to bent, the glen became a plateau, and presently I had reached a kind of pass where a solitary house smoked in the twilight. The road swung over a bridge, and leaning on the parapet was a young man. He was smoking a long clay pipe and studying the water with spectacled eyes. In his left hand was a small book with a finger marking the place. Slowly he repeated— As when a Gryphon through the wilderness With winged step, o'er hill and moory dale Pursues the Arimaspian. He jumped round as my step rung on the keystone, and I saw a pleasant sunburnt boyish face. 'Good evening to you,' he said gravely. 'It's a fine night for the road.' The smell of peat smoke and of some savoury roast floated to me from the house.”
― John Buchan, quote from The 39 Steps
“(Thirty-nine steps)' was the phrase; and at its last time of use it ran—'(Thirty-nine steps, I counted them—high tide 10.17 p.m.)'. I could make nothing of that.”
― John Buchan, quote from The 39 Steps
“I skumringen kom mannen hennes tilbake fra heiene. Det var en mager kjempe som tok ett skritt der andre dødelige trengte tre.”
― John Buchan, quote from The 39 Steps
“Beklager så meget , sa han. Jeg er ikke helt meg selv i kveld. Saken er nemlig den at jeg er død i dette øyeblikk.”
― John Buchan, quote from The 39 Steps
“A little thing, lasting only a second, and the odds were a thousand to one that I might have had my eyes on my cards at the time and missed it. But I didn't, and, in a flash, the air seemed to clear. Some shadow lifted from my brain, and I was looking at the three men with full and absolute recognition.”
― John Buchan, quote from The 39 Steps
“Capital, he said, had no conscience and no fatherland.”
― John Buchan, quote from The 39 Steps
“Ariadne, as I discovered from the cap of one of”
― John Buchan, quote from The 39 Steps
“Pardon,' he said, 'I'm a bit rattled tonight. You see, I happen at this moment to be dead.”
― John Buchan, quote from The 39 Steps
John Buchan
Born place: in Perth, Scotland
Born date August 26, 1875
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“History seemed meaningless here, or at least bewildered.”
― China Miéville, quote from Railsea
“I can't make the hills
The system is shot
I'm living on pills
For which I thank G-d
I followed the course
From chaos to art
Desire the horse
Depression the cart
I sailed like a swan
I sank like a rock
But time is long gone
Past my laughing stock
My page was too white
My ink was too thin
The day wouldn't write
What the night pencilled in
My animal howls
My angel's upset
But I'm not allowed
A trace of regret
For someone will use
What I couldn't be
My heart will be hers
Impersonally
She'll step on the path
She'll see what I mean
My will cut in half
And freedom between
For less than a second
Our lives will collide
The endless suspended
The door open wide
Then she will be born
To someone like you
What no one has done
She'll continue to do
I know she is coming
I know she will look
And that is the longing
And this is the book”
― Leonard Cohen, quote from Book of Longing
“Odd, said Miss Pettigrew conversationally, 'the undermining effect of flowers on a woman's common sense.”
― Winifred Watson, quote from Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
“To the world you may be just one person, but to the one person you may be the world. —Mother Theresa CLOSING”
― Aleatha Romig, quote from The Consequences Series Box Set
“When I first took this job at the factory it was not my intention to work there very long, for I once possessed higher hopes for my life, although the exact nature of these hopes remained rather vague in my youthful mind. While the work was not arduous, and my fellow workers congenial enough, I did not imagine myself standing forever at my designated assembly block, fitting together pieces of metal into other pieces of metal, with a few interruptions throughout that day for breaks that were supposed to refresh our minds from the tedium of our work or for meal breaks to allow us to nourish our bodies. Somehow it never occurred to me that the nearby town where I and the others at the factory lived, travelling to and from our jobs along the same fog-strewn road, held no higher opportunities for me or anyone else, which no doubt accounts for the vagueness, the wispy insubstantiality, of my youthful hopes.”
― Thomas Ligotti, quote from Teatro Grottesco
Against All Odds
Dark Tide
The Marriage of Oppo...
Choices of One
The Moth in the Mirr...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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