Stephen Leacock quotes

Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl. (Stephen Leacock)
I detest life-insurance agents: they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so. View quote
Stephen Leacock
It may be those who do most, dream most. View quote
Stephen Leacock
It is to be observed that "angling" is the name given to fishing by people who can't fish. View quote
Stephen Leacock
I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it. View quote
Stephen Leacock
He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions. View quote
Stephen Leacock
Advertising: the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it. View quote
Stephen Leacock
The Lord said 'let there be wheat' and Saskatchewan was born. View quote
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. View quote
Stephen Leacock
Astronomy teaches the correct use of the sun and the planets. View quote
Stephen Leacock
It's called political economy because it is has nothing to do with either politics or economy. (Stephen Leacock)
A half truth, like half a brick, is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better. View quote
Stephen Leacock
In ancient times they had no statistics so they had to fall back on lies. View quote
Stephen Leacock
You know, many a man realizes late in life that if when he was a boy he had known what he knows now, instead of being what he is he might be what he won't; but how few boys stop to think that if they knew what they don't know instead of being what they will be, they wouldn't be? View quote
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. View quote
Stephen Leacock
My parents migrated to Canada in 1876, and I decided to go with them. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
Stephen Leacock
Men are able to trust one another, knowing the exact degree of dishonesty they are entitled to expect. View quote
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)
Golf may be played on Sunday, not being a game within the view of the law, but being a form of moral effort. View quote
Stephen Leacock
Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica. View quote
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. View quote
Stephen Leacock
There are two things in ordinary conversation which ordinary people dislike - information and wit. View quote
Stephen Leacock