Stephen Leacock Quotes
"Golf may be played on Sunday, not being a game within the view of the law, but being a form of moral effort."
- Stephen Leacock
(Related: Being, Effort, Golf, Law, May)
"Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl."
- Stephen Leacock
(Related: Love, Mistake, Man)
"Life, we learn too late, is in the living, the tissue of every day and hour."
- Stephen Leacock
(Related: Life, Day, Living)
"Men are able to trust one another, knowing the exact degree of dishonesty they are entitled to expect."
- Stephen Leacock
(Related: Men, Trust, Dishonesty)
"Now, the essence, the very spirit of Christmas is that we first make believe a thing is so, and lo, it presently turns out to be so."
- Stephen Leacock
(Related: Christmas, First, Now, Spirit)
"On the same bill and on the same side of it there should not be two charges for the same thing."
- Stephen Leacock
"The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine."
- Stephen Leacock
(Related: Music, Class, Literature, Medicine)
"The landlady of a boarding-house is a parallelogram - that is, an oblong angular figure, which cannot be described, but which is equal to anything."
- Stephen Leacock
"The Lord said 'let there be wheat' and Saskatchewan was born."
- Stephen Leacock
"There are two things in ordinary conversation which ordinary people dislike - information and wit."
- Stephen Leacock
(Related: People, Conversation, Information, Wit)
"We think of the noble object for which the professor appears tonight, we may be assured that the Lord will forgive any one who will laugh at the professor."
- Stephen Leacock
(Related: May, Will)
"Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself - it is the occurring which is difficult."
- Stephen Leacock
(Related: Ideas, Simplicity, Writing)
"It's called political economy because it is has nothing to do with either politics or economy."
- Stephen Leacock
(Related: Politics, Economy, Nothing)
"What we call creative work, ought not to be called work at all, because it isn't. I imagine that Thomas Edison never did a day's work in his last fifty years."
- Stephen Leacock
(Related: Work, Day, Years)
"Electricity is of two kinds, positive and negative. The difference is, I presume, that one comes a little more expensive, but is more durable; the other is a cheaper thing, but the moths get into it."
- Stephen Leacock
(Related: Negative, Positive, Difference, Electricity, Moths)
"I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it."
- Stephen Leacock
(Related: Work, Luck)
"It's a lie, but Heaven will forgive you for it."
- Stephen Leacock
(Related: Lie, Heaven, Will)
"A sportsman is a man who every now and then, simply has to get out and kill something."
- Stephen Leacock
(Related: Man, Now)
"Advertising: the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it."
- Stephen Leacock
(Related: Intelligence, Money, Science)
"Each section of the British Isles has its own way of laughing, except Wales, which doesn't."
- Stephen Leacock
"He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions."
- Stephen Leacock
"A half truth, like half a brick, is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better."
- Stephen Leacock
(Related: Truth, Argument)
"I detest life-insurance agents: they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so."
- Stephen Leacock
(Related: Life, Day)
"If every day in the life of a school could be the last day but one, there would be little fault to find with it."
- Stephen Leacock
(Related: Life, Day, Fault, School)
"In ancient times they had no statistics so they had to fall back on lies."
- Stephen Leacock
(Related: Lies, Statistics)
"It is to be observed that 'angling' is the name given to fishing by people who can't fish."
- Stephen Leacock
(Related: People, Fish, Fishing, Name)
"It may be those who do most, dream most."
- Stephen Leacock
(Related: Dream, May)
"It takes a good deal of physical courage to ride a horse. This, however, I have. I get it at about forty cents a flask, and take it as required."
- Stephen Leacock
(Related: Courage)
"Astronomy teaches the correct use of the sun and the planets."
- Stephen Leacock
(Related: Astronomy, Sun)