Stephen Leacock Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

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

  Stephen Leacock

  Needs, Facts, Mist

  Stephen Leacock, Gerald Lynch (2002). “Leacock on Life”, p.88, University of Toronto Press

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Fighting, Games, Lazy

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• 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

  Science, Swag, House

  'Literary Lapses' (1910) 'Boarding-House Geometry'

  77 Copy quote

• In point of morals, the average woman is, even for business, too crooked.

  Stephen Leacock

  Women, Average, Moral

  Stephen Leacock, Alan Bowker (1973). “The social criticism of Stephen Leacock”

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• 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

  Fall, Struggle, Math

  15 Copy quote

• 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

  Country, Fighting, Winning

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• 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

  Silly, Years, Symbolism

  Stephen Leacock, Gerald Lynch (2002). “Leacock on Life”, p.49, University of Toronto Press

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• 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

  Motivational, Teamwork, Years

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

  Stephen Leacock

  Men, Now And Then, Economy

  'My Remarkable Uncle' (1942) p. 73

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

  Stephen Leacock

  Trust, Honesty, Men

  Stephen Leacock, Alan Bowker (1973). “The social criticism of Stephen Leacock”

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

  Stephen Leacock

  Latin, Professors, Ought

  Here Are My Lectures ch. 14 (1938)

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• 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

  Light, Race, World

  Stephen Leacock (2012). “Feast of Stephen”, p.111, McClelland & Stewart

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

  Stephen Leacock

  Book, Reading, Class

  1913 Behind the Beyond,'Homer and Humbug'.

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• 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

  Reading, Writing, Islands

  Stephen Leacock (2014). “Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town”, p.7, The Floating Press

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

  Stephen Leacock

  Laughing, Way, Economy

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• 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

  Book, Stories, World

  Stephen Leacock, Robertson Davies (1981). “The Penguin Stephen Leacock”, Penguin ; Markham, Ont. : Penguin Books Canada

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

  Stephen Leacock

  Voice, Sorrow, Pathos

  Stephen Leacock, Gerald Lynch (2002). “Leacock on Life”, p.84, University of Toronto Press

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

  Stephen Leacock

  Humor, Expression, May

  Stephen Leacock (2012). “Feast of Stephen”, p.28, McClelland & Stewart

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• 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

  Silly, Beer, Men

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• 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

  Sunday, Golf, Views

  Over the Footlights (1923) "Why I Refuse to Play Golf"

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

  Stephen Leacock

  Things In Life, Doubt, Speak

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

  Stephen Leacock

  Work, Thinking, Actors

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• Chess is one long regret.

  Stephen Leacock

  Regret, Long, Chess

  Stephen Leacock (1943). “Happy stories, just to laugh at”

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• 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

  School, Would Be, Littles

  Stephen Leacock (2012). “Feast of Stephen”, p.96, McClelland & Stewart

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

  Stephen Leacock

  Fall, Evil, Childhood

  Stephen Leacock, Gerald Lynch (2002). “Leacock on Life”, p.50, University of Toronto Press

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