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
book reading smoking
If I were founding a university I would begin with a smoking room; next a dormitory; and then a decent reading room and a library. After that, if I still had more money that I couldn't use, I would hire a professor and get some text books.
reading writing encyclopedia-britannica
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.
book reading class
The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.
appears assured forgive laugh lord noble object professor
We think of the noble object for which the professor appears to-night, we may be assured that the Lord will forgive any one who will laugh at the professor
girl love man marrying mistake
Many a man in love with a dimple makes a mistake of marrying the whole girl
directions himself horse lord madly rode
Lord Ronald said nothing; he flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions
simply sportsman
A sportsman is a man who every now and then, simply has to get out and kill something
advertising arresting human intelligence money science
Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it.
collar general laundry shirt
The general idea, of course, in any first-class laundry is to see that no shirt or collar ever comes back twice.
continent hair jail kept means snow till white
A 'Grand Old Man'. That means on our continent any one with snow white hair who has kept out of jail till eighty.
humor expression may
Humor may be defined as the kindly contemplation of the incongruities of life, and the artistic expression thereof.
book world detectives
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.
suicide kind aspect
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.
country fighting winning
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.