Quotes from Stephen Leacock


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


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


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


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.


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


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.


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


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.


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


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


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


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.


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


It may be those who do most, dream most.


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.


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


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


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


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


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.