Quotes by Stephen Leacock

Charles Dickens creation of Mr. Pickwick did more for the elevation of the human race - I say it in all seriousness - than Cardinal Newmans Lead Kindly Light Amid the Encircling Gloom. Newman only cried out for light in the gloom of a sad world. Dickens gave it.

Life we learn too late is in the living in the tissue of every day and hour.

The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.

Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl.

Many a man in love with a dimple makes a mistake of marrying the whole girl.

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

A sportsman is a man who every now and then simply has to get out and kill something. Not that hes cruel. He wouldnt hurt a fly. Its not big enough.

It may be that those who do most dream most.

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.

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.

I detest life-insurance agents: they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so.

Advertising: the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.

I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.

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

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.

Men are able to trust one another, knowing the exact degree of dishonesty they are entitled to expect.

It is to be observed that angling is the name given to fishing by people who cant fish.

Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica.

Its called political economy because it is has nothing to do with either politics or economy.