Stephen Leacock Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• 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

• 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)

  4 Copy quote

• 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”

  10 Copy quote

• I admit that when the facts are not good enough, I always exaggerate them.

  Stephen Leacock

  Not Good Enough, Facts, Good Enough

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  17 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  13 Copy quote

• 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"

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Parenting, Boys, Shakes

  1916 Further Foolishness,'The Lot of the Schoolmaster'.

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

• Professors of theory merely hold post-mortems.

  Stephen Leacock

  Professors, Theory, Posts

  Stephen Leacock, Gerald Lynch (2002). “Leacock on Life”, p.51, University of Toronto Press

  5 Copy quote

• Chess is one long regret.

  Stephen Leacock

  Regret, Long, Chess

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

  8 Copy quote

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

  Stephen Leacock

  Europe, America, Sorrow

  Stephen Leacock (1945). “Last Leaves”, New York : Dodd, Mead

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Tragedy, World, Humour

  Stephen Leacock (2010). “My Remarkable Uncle”, p.114, New Canadian Library

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

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

  Stephen Leacock

  Work, Thinking, Actors

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Character, Alive, Language

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

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Music, Suicide, Kind

  Stephen Leacock (2014). “Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town”, p.143, The Floating Press

  5 Copy quote

• 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'.

  11 Copy quote

Page 3 of 4

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin