Stephen Leacock Quotes & Sayings

How strange it is, our little procession of life! The child says, "When I am a big boy." But what is that? The big boy says, "When I grow up." And then, grown up, he says, "When I get married." But to be married, what is that after all? The thought changes to "When I'm able to retire." And then, when retirement comes, he looks back over the landscape traversed; a cold wind seems to sweep over it; somehow he has missed it all, and it is gone. — Stephen Leacock

broke into a blaze of effulgence. — Stephen Leacock

The writing of solid, instructive stuff fortified by facts and figures is easy enough. There is no trouble in writing a scientific treatise on the folk-lore of Central China, or a statistical enquiry into the declining population of Prince Edward Island. But to write something out of one's own mind, worth reading for its own sake, is an arduous contrivance only to be achieved in fortunate moments, few and far in between. Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica. — Stephen Leacock

Charles Dickens' creation of Mr. Pickwick did more for the elevation of the human race - I say it in all seriousness - than Cardinal Newman's Lead Kindly Light Amid the Encircling Gloom. Newman only cried out for light in the gloom of a sad world. Dickens gave it. — Stephen Leacock

Many a man inlove with a dimple makes the mistake of marring the whole Girl — Stephen Leacock

Being a specialist is one thing, getting a job is another. — Stephen Leacock

Education that stops with school stops where it is beginning. — Stephen Leacock

Concealed from view a face so face-like in its appearance as to be positively facial. — 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

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. — Stephen Leacock

I admit that when the facts are not good enough, I always exaggerate them. — Stephen Leacock

You cannot depict love inside a frame of fact. It needs a mist to dissolve in. — Stephen Leacock

There is an old motto that runs, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." This is nonsense. It ought to read, "If at first you don't succeed, quit, quit at once." — Stephen Leacock

Too much has been said of the heroes of history-the strong men, the troublesome men; too little of the amiable, the kindly, the tolerant. — Stephen Leacock

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

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

Any man will admit if need be that his sight is not good, or that he cannot swim or shoots badly with a rifle, but to touch upon his sense of humour is to give him mortal affront. — Stephen Leacock

A silk dress in four sections, and shoes with high heels that would have broken the heart of John Calvin. — Stephen Leacock

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. — Stephen Leacock

You frequently ask, where are the friends of your childhood, and urge that they shall be brought back to you. As far as I am able to learn, those of your friends who are not in jail are still right there in your native village. You point out that they were wont to share your gambols, If so, you are certainly entitled to have theirs now. — Stephen Leacock

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

Suppose a would-be writer can't begin? I really believe there are many excellent writers who have never written because they never could begin. This is especially the case of people of great sensitiveness, or of people of advanced education. Professors suffer most of all from this inhibition. Many of them carry their unwritten books to the grave. They overestimate the magnitude of the task, they overestimate the greatness of the final result. A child in a prep school will write the History of Greece and fetch it home finished after school. "He wrote a fine History of Greece the other day," says his fond father. Thirty years later the child, grown to be a professor, dreams of writing the History of Greece
the whole of it from the first Ionic invasion of the Aegean to the downfall of Alexandria. But he dreams. He never starts. He can't. It's too big. Anybody who has lived around a college knows the pathos of those unwritten books. — Stephen Leacock

Presently I shall be introduced as 'this venerable old gentleman' and the axe will fall when they raise me to the degree of 'grand old man'. That means on our continent any one with snow-white hair who has kept out of jail till eighty. — Stephen Leacock

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. — Stephen Leacock

Astronomy teaches the correct use of the sun and the planets. — Stephen Leacock

All Dickens's humour couldn't save Dickens, save him from his overcrowded life, its sordid and neurotic central tragedy and its premature collapse. But Dickens's humour, and all such humour, has saved or at least greatly served the world. — Stephen Leacock

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

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

The classical scholars have kept alive the tradition of the superiority of the ancient languages
a kaleidoscopic mass of suffixes and prefixes, supposed to represent an infinite shading of meaning. It is a character they share with the Ojibway and the Zulu. — Stephen Leacock

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

A sportsman is a man who, every now and then, simply has to go out and kill something. — Stephen Leacock

But after all
I say this as a kind of afterthought in conclusion
why bother with success at all? I have observed that the successful people get very little real enjoyment out of life. In fact the contrary is true. If I had to choose
with an eye to having a really pleasant life
between success and ruin, I should prefer ruin every time. I have several friends who are completely ruined
some two or three times
in a large way of course; and I find that if I want to get a really good dinner, where the champagne is just as it ought to be, and where hospitality is unhindered by mean thoughts of expense, I can get it best at the house of a ruined man. — Stephen Leacock

As for politics, well, it all seemed reasonable enough. When the Conservatives got in anywhere, [Judge] Pepperleigh laughed and enjoyed it, simply because it does one good to see a straight, fine, honest fight where the best man wins. When a Liberal got in, it made him mad, and he said so,
not, mind you; from any political bias, for his office forbid it,
but simply because one can't bear to see the country go absolutely to the devil. — Stephen Leacock

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

Boarding-House Geometry DEFINITIONS AND AXIOMS All boarding-houses are the same boarding-house. Boarders in the same boarding-house and on the same flat are equal to one another. A single room is that which has no parts and no magnitude. The landlady of a boarding-house is a — Stephen Leacock

In point of morals, the average woman is, even for business, too crooked. — Stephen Leacock

About the only good thing you can say about old age is, it's better than being dead! — Stephen Leacock

To me, as a lover of Nature, the waving of a tree conveys thoughts which are never conveyed to me except by seeing a tree wave. — Stephen Leacock

Hockey captures the essence of Canadian experience in the New World. In a land so inescapably and inhospitably cold, hockey is the chance of life, and an affirmation that despite the deathly chill of winter we are alive. — 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

I do not think that there is any doubt that educated people possess a far wider range of humour than the uneducated class. Some people, of course, get overeducated and become hopelessly academic. The word "highbrow" has been invented exactly to fit the case. The sense of humour in the highbrow has become atrophied, or, to vary the metaphor, it is submerged or buried under the accumulated strata of his education, on the top soil of which flourishes a fine growth of conceit. — Stephen Leacock

A barber is by nature and inclination a sport. He can tell you at what exact hour the ball game is to begin, can foretell its issue without losing a stroke of the razor, and can explain the points of inferiority of all the players, as compared with the better men that he has personally seen elsewhere, with the nicety of a professional. — Stephen Leacock

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

Advertising - A judicious mixture of flattery and threats. — Stephen Leacock

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

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

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

Surely if we all try hard, we can all lift ourselves up high above the average. It looks a little difficult mathematically, but that's nothing. — Stephen Leacock

There is no doubt that many things in life come to us ... at backrounds so to speak. Happiness is one of them. — Stephen Leacock

When actors begin to think, it's time for a change. They are not fitted for it. — Stephen Leacock

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. — Stephen Leacock

All the books and instructions insist that the selection of the soil is the most important part of gardening. No doubt it is. But, if a man has already selected his own backyard before he opens the book, what remedy is there? All the books lay stress on the need of "a deep, friable loam full of nitrogen." This I have never seen. My own plot of land I found on examination to contain nothing but earth. I could see no trace of nitrogen. I do not deny the existence of loam. There may be such a thing. But I am admitting now in all humility of mind that I don't know what loam is. — Stephen Leacock

Modern critics, who refuse to let a plain thing alone, have now started a theory that Cervantes's work is a vast piece of "symbolism." If so, Cervantes didn't know it himself and nobody thought of it for three hundred years. He meant it as a satire upon the silly romances of chivalry. — Stephen Leacock

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

The Victorians needed parody. Without it their literature would have been a rank and weedy growth, over-watered with tears. — Stephen Leacock

I am what is called a professor emeritus - from the Latin e, 'out,' and meritus, 'so he ought to be. — Stephen Leacock

Chess is one long regret. — Stephen Leacock

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

Humour is essentially a comforter, reconciling us to things as they are in contrast to things as they might be. — Stephen Leacock

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. — Stephen Leacock

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. — Stephen Leacock

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

I owe a lot to my teachers and mean to pay them back some day. — Stephen Leacock

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

Anybody who has listened to certain kinds of music, or read certain kinds of poetry, or heard certain kinds of performances on the concertina, will admit that even suicide has its brighter aspects. — Stephen Leacock

My parents migrated to Canada in 1876, and I decided to go with them. — Stephen Leacock

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

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

With the Great Detective, to think was to act, and to act was to think. Frequently he could do both together. — Stephen Leacock

Professors of theory merely hold post-mortems. — Stephen Leacock

Any two meals at a boarding-house are together less than two square meals. — Stephen Leacock

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. — Stephen Leacock

I've seen lifelong friends drift apart over golf just because one could play better, but the other counted better. — Stephen Leacock

We can no longer communicate with the apes by direct language, nor can we understand, without special study, their modes of communication which we have long since replaced by more elaborate forms. But it is at least presumable that they could still detect in our speech, at least when it is public and elaborate, the underlying tone values with which it began. Thus if we could take a gibbon ape to a college public lecture, he would not understand it, but he would "get a good deal of it." This is all the students get anyway. — Stephen Leacock

Dickens had, with all his genius, the narrow short sight of his day and class, sentimental tears for poverty but no vision to remove it except by inviting everybody to be as noble a fellow as himself. War — Stephen Leacock

It was Einstein who made the real trouble. He announced in 1905 that there was no such thing as absolute rest. After that there never was. — Stephen Leacock

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

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. — Stephen Leacock

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

Indeed I have always found that the only thing in regard to Toronto which faraway people know for certain is that McGill University is in it. — Stephen Leacock

Have just been reading in the press the agonizing statement that there are only 4,000,000,000,000 cords of pulp wood left in the world, and that in another fifty years it will be all gone. — Stephen Leacock

All our yesterdays, it is true, have only lighted fools the way to dusty death. But we need at least the dates of the yesterdays and the list of the fools. — Stephen Leacock

The tears of childhood fall fast and easily, and evil be to him who makes them flow. — Stephen Leacock

In the field of letters, as apart from medicine and science, professors do not lead but follow. Their wisdom is always that of a post-mortem. They — Stephen Leacock

The English are terribly lazy about fighting. They like to get it over and done with and then set up a game of cricket. — Stephen Leacock

How can you shorten the subject? That stern struggle with the multiplication table, for many people not yet ended in victory, how can you make it less? Square root, as obdurate as a hardwood stump in a pasturenothing but years of effort can extract it. You can't hurry the process. Or pass from arithmetic to algebra; you can't shoulder your way past quadratic equations or ripple through the binomial theorem. Instead, the other way; your feet are impeded in the tangled growth, your pace slackens, you sink and fall somewhere near the binomial theorem with the calculus in sight on the horizon. — Stephen Leacock

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. — Stephen Leacock

It may be those who do most, dream most. — Stephen Leacock

Humour in its highest reach mingles with pathos: it voices sorrow for our human lot and reconciliation with it. — Stephen Leacock

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

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

In earlier times they had no statistics and so they had to fall back on lies. Hence the huge exaggerations of primitive literature, giants, miracles, wonders! It's the size that counts. They did it with lies and we do it with statistics: but it's all the same. — Stephen Leacock

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

You can never have international peace as long as you have national poverty. — Stephen Leacock

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

American politicians do anything for money ... English politicians take the money and won't do anything. — Stephen Leacock

Most people tire of a lecture in ten minutes; clever people can do it in five. Sensible people never go to lectures at all. But the people who do go to a lecture and who get tired of it, presently hold it as a sort of grudge against the lecturer personally. In reality his sufferings are worse than theirs. — Stephen Leacock

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

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. — Stephen Leacock

There are two things in ordinary conversation which ordinary people dislike - information and wit. — Stephen Leacock