Stephen Leacock
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.Collection: Courage
A half truth, like half a brick, is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better.Collection: Truth
I detest life-insurance agents: they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so.Collection: Death
Advertising: the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.Collection: Science
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.Collection: Christmas
Men are able to trust one another, knowing the exact degree of dishonesty they are entitled to expect.Collection: Trust
I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.Collection: Chance
Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl.Collection: Marriage
It is to be observed that 'angling' is the name given to fishing by people who can't fish.Collection: Funny
Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica.Collection: Imagination
He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.
It may be those who do most, dream most.
The Lord said 'let there be wheat' and Saskatchewan was born.
Life, we learn too late, is in the living, the tissue of every day and hour.
Each section of the British Isles has its own way of laughing, except Wales, which doesn't.
In ancient times they had no statistics so they had to fall back on lies.
A sportsman is a man who every now and then, simply has to get out and kill something.
It's called political economy because it is has nothing to do with either politics or economy.
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.
The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.
There are two things in ordinary conversation which ordinary people dislike - information and wit.
It's a lie, but Heaven will forgive you for it.
Electricity is of two kinds, positive and negative. The difference is, I presume, that one comes a little more expensive, but is more durable; the other is a cheaper thing, but the moths get into it.
Astronomy teaches the correct use of the sun and the planets.
On the same bill and on the same side of it there should not be two charges for the same thing.
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.
We think of the noble object for which the professor appears tonight, we may be assured that the Lord will forgive any one who will laugh at the professor.
Golf may be played on Sunday, not being a game within the view of the law, but being a form of moral effort.
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.
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.Collection: Life
There are two things in ordinary conversation which ordinary people dislike - information and witCollection: Two
Success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.Collection: Inspirational
Writing is not hard. Just get paper and pencil, sit down, and write as it occurs to you. The writing is easy-it's the occurring that's hard.Collection: Writing
About the only good thing you can say about old age is, it's better than being dead!Collection: Age
American politicians do anything for money... English politicians take the money and won't do anything.Collection: Politician
The minute a man is convinced he is interesting, he isn't.Collection: Wisdom
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.Collection: Reading
Most people can tire of a lecture in fifteen minutes, clever people can do it in five, and sensible people don't go to lectures at all.Collection: Inspirational
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.Collection: Hockey
The Lord said 'let there be wheat' and Saskatchewan was bornCollection: Wheat
Being a specialist is one thing, getting a job is another.Collection: Jobs
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.Collection: Lying
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?Collection: Boys
In Canada we have enough to do keeping up with two spoken languages ... so we just go right ahead and use English for literature, Scotch for sermons, and American for conversation.Collection: Two
I owe a lot to my teachers and mean to pay them back some day.Collection: Teacher
Too much has been said of the heroes of history-the strong men, the troublesome men; too little of the amiable, the kindly, the tolerant.Collection: Strong
Any man will admit if need be that his sight is not good, or that he cannot swim or shoots badly with a rifle, but to touch upon his sense of humour is to give him mortal affront.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Real
The great man... walks across his century and leaves the marks of his feet all over it, ripping out the dates on his goloshes as he passes.Collection: Greatness