39 Stephen Leacock Quotes Worth Knowing
Stephen Leacock was a Canadian write, political scientist, humorist, and teacher, renowned for his superlative comic skills. He was best known for his light humor supported by skepticism and criticism of people and their errors. Starting off from humble beginnings as a writer in magazines, he went on to publish novels which became popular worldwide. Famous comedians such as Jack Benny and Groucho Marx have acknowledged the role of Leacock as an inspiration for their works. His popular fictional and non-fictional works include Literary Lapses, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich, Practical Political Economy and Humour and Humanity. Apart from these works, Leacock also published biographies of Charles Dickens and Mark Twain. The Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour is presented to authors in Canada for outstanding achievements in this genre of writing. We have curated some of his notable quotes from his writings, observations, speeches, interviews etc. Let us go through some of the greatest quotes by Stephen Leacock.
Advertising - A judicious mixture of flattery and threats.
Life, we learn too late, is in the living, the tissue of every day and hour.
He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.
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.
Advertising: the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.
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.
In ancient times they had no statistics so they had to fall back on lies.
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.
Men are able to trust one another, knowing the exact degree of dishonesty they are entitled to expect.
Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour.
It is to be observed that 'angling' is the name given to fishing by people who can't fish.
A sportsman is a man who every now and then, simply has to get out and kill something.
It may be those who do most, dream most.
It's called political economy because it is has nothing to do with either politics or economy.
Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl.
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.
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.
There are two things in ordinary conversation which ordinary people dislike - information and wit.
I detest life-insurance agents: they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so.
The Lord said 'let there be wheat' and Saskatchewan was born.
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.
A sportsman is a man who, every now and then, simply has to go out and kill something.
If their occupation is actual work they prefer to pump water into cisterns, two of which leak through holes in the bottom and one of which is water-tight. A, of course, has the good one;
A half truth, like half a brick, is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better.
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.
The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.
Concealed from view a face so face-like in its appearance as to be positively facial.
A sportsman is a man who, every now and then, simply has to get out and kill something.
