Stephen Leacock Quotes
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
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.
A half truth, like half a brick, is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better.
Advertising: the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.
There are two things in ordinary conversation which ordinary people dislike - information and wit
I detest life-insurance agents: they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so.
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.
The Compleat Angler is acknowledged to be one of the world's books. Only the trouble is that the world doesn't read its books, it borrows a detective story instead.
He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.
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.
With the Great Detective, to think was to act, and to act was to think. Frequently he could do both together.
The Victorians needed parody. Without it their literature would have been a rank and weedy growth, over-watered with tears.
The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.
Men are able to trust one another, knowing the exact degree of dishonesty they are entitled to expect.
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.
It is to be observed that 'angling' is the name given to fishing by people who can't fish.
About the only good thing you can say about old age is, it's better than being dead!
Writing is not hard. Just get paper and pencil, sit down, and write as it occurs to you. The writing is easy-it's the occurring that's hard.
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.
The parent who could see his boy as he really is, would shake his head and say: 'Willie is no good; I'll sell him.
Golf may be played on Sunday, not being a game within the view of the law, but being a form of moral effort.
The attempt to make the consumption of beer criminal is as silly and as futile as if you passed a law to send a man to jail for eating cucumber salad.
It's called political economy because it is has nothing to do with either politics or economy.
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.
Each section of the British Isles has its own way of laughing, except Wales, which doesn't.
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.
A sportsman is a man who, every now and then, simply has to get out and kill something.
Newspapermen learn to call a murderer "an alleged murderer" and the King of England "the alleged King of England" in order to avoid libel suits.
Most people can tire of a lecture in fifteen minutes, clever people can do it in five, and sensible people don't go to lectures at all.
The great man... walks across his century and leaves the marks of his feet all over it, ripping out the dates on his goloshes as he passes.
Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica.
The road comes to an end just when it ought to be getting somewhere. The passengers alight, shaken and weary, to begin, all over again, something else.
Humour is essentially a comforter, reconciling us to things as they are in contrast to things as they might be.
Humor may be defined as the kindly contemplation of the incongruities of life, and the artistic expression thereof.
In Canada we have enough to do keeping up with two spoken languages ... so we just go right ahead and use English for literature, Scotch for sermons, and American for conversation.
American politicians do anything for money... English politicians take the money and won't do anything.
I've seen lifelong friends drift apart over golf just because one could play better, but the other counted better.