Stephen Leacock Quotes (37 Quotes)

A 'Grand Old Man'. That means on our continent any one with snow white hair who has kept out of jail till eighty.

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.

A half truth, like half a brick, is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better.

Astronomy teaches the correct use of the sun and the planets.

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.

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.

The sorrows and disasters of Europe always brought fortune to America.

Life, we learn too late, is in the living, the tissue of every day and hour.

Advertising: the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.

I detest life-insurance agents: they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so.

It may be those who do most, dream most.

There are two things in ordinary conversation which ordinary people dislike - information and 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.

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.

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.

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.

It is to be observed that 'angling' is the name given to fishing by people who can't fish.

The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.

The general idea, of course, in any first-class laundry is to see that no shirt or collar ever comes back twice.

The Lord said 'let there be wheat' and Saskatchewan was born.

Men are able to trust one another, knowing the exact degree of dishonesty they are entitled to expect.

Humor may be defined as the kindly contemplation of the incongruities of life, and the artistic expression thereof.

If I were founding a university I would begin with a smoking room next a dormitory and then a decent reading room and a library. After that, if I still had more money that I couldn't use, I would hire a professor and get some text books.

Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl.

A sportsman is a man who every now and then, simply has to get out and kill something.

I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.

He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.

It's called political economy because it is has nothing to do with either politics or economy.

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.

Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica.

On the same bill and on the same side of it there should not be two charges for the same thing.

It's a lie, but Heaven will forgive you for it.

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.

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.

Each section of the British Isles has its own way of laughing, except Wales, which doesn't.

Golf may be played on Sunday, not being a game within the view of the law, but being a form of moral effort.

In ancient times they had no statistics so they had to fall back on lies.