Stephen Leacock Quotes

71 Sourced Quotes

Special Correspondence. I learn from a very high authority, whose name I am not at liberty to mention, (speaking to me at a place which I am not allowed to indicate and in a language which I am forbidden to use)—that Austria-Hungary is about to take a diplomatic step of the highest importance. What this step is, I am forbidden to say. But the consequences of it—which unfortunately I am pledged not to disclose—will be such as to effect results which I am not free to enumerate.

Stephen Leacock
My parents migrated to Canada in 1876, and I decided to go with them.

Stephen Leacock
In earlier times they had no statistics and so they had to fall back on lies. Hence the huge exaggerations of primitive literature, giants, miracles, wonders! It's the size that counts. They did it with lies and we do it with statistics: but it's all the same.

Stephen Leacock
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
A half truth, like half a brick, is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better.

Stephen Leacock
[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
It was Einstein who made the real trouble. He announced in 1905 that there was no such thing as absolute rest. After that there never was.

Stephen Leacock
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
A decision of the courts decided that the game of 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
I am what is called a professor emeritus—from the Latin e, 'out', and meritus, 'so he ought to be'.

Stephen Leacock
A sportsman is a man who, every now and then, simply has to get out and kill something. Not that he's cruel. He wouldn't hurt a fly. It's not big enough.

Stephen Leacock