Stephen Leacock
Stephen Leacock
Stephen P. H Butler Leacock, FRSCwas a Canadian teacher, political scientist, writer, and humourist. Between the years 1910 and 1925, he was the most widely read English-speaking author in the world. He is known for his light humour along with criticisms of people's follies. The Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour was named in his honour...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth30 December 1869
CountryCanada
wisdom men interesting
The minute a man is convinced he is interesting, he isn't.
two people information
There are two things in ordinary conversation which ordinary people dislike - information and wit
might humour contrast
Humour is essentially a comforter, reconciling us to things as they are in contrast to things as they might be.
trust half bricks
A half truth, like half a brick, is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better.
love marriage girl
Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl.
funny life business
I detest life-insurance agents: they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so.
teacher mean pay
I owe a lot to my teachers and mean to pay them back some day.
hockey winter land
Hockey captures the essence of Canadian experience in the New World. In a land so inescapably and inhospitably cold, hockey is the chance of life, and an affirmation that despite the deathly chill of winter we are alive.
men thinking boys
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?
communication college long
We can no longer communicate with the apes by direct language, nor can we understand, without special study, their modes of communication which we have long since replaced by more elaborate forms. But it is at least presumable that they could still detect in our speech, at least when it is public and elaborate, the underlying tone values with which it began. Thus if we could take a gibbon ape to a college public lecture, he would not understand it, but he would "get a good deal of it." This is all the students get anyway.
silly years symbolism
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.
horse economy flasks
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.
life retirement growing-up
How strange it is, our little procession of life! The child says, "When I am a big boy." But what is that? The big boy says, "When I grow up." And then, grown up, he says, "When I get married." But to be married, what is that after all? The thought changes to "When I'm able to retire." And then, when retirement comes, he looks back over the landscape traversed; a cold wind seems to sweep over it; somehow he has missed it all, and it is gone.
dream may human-nature
It may be those who do most, dream most.