Quote of the Day (John Buchan, on Poetry and ‘A Time of National Crisis’)

“A time of national crisis is the very time to turn to poetry. A poet writes, not for the common round only, but for the great moments of life. The greatest poets, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Dante, have written not in times of peace but amid war and unsettlement. There is something in such epochs of crisis which quickens the imagination and the mind, and brings the spiritual world of the poet closer to our common life.”—Scottish novelist, memoirist, soldier, and Canadian Governor-General John Buchan (1875-1940), “The Immoral Memory” (address to the London Burns Club, Jan. 25, 1918), The John Buchan Journal, Spring 2004, Issue 30

Quote of the Day (John Buchan, on Atheism)

"I have heard an atheist defined as a man who had no invisible means of support." –John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, statesman and novelist (The Thirty-Nine Steps) in a speech to the Law Society of Upper Canada, February 21,1936; published in his book Canadian Occasions (1940)

That quote was later used by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen in an article in Look Magazine in its December 14, 1955 issue. It remains as true now as it did then.