When actors begin to think, it's time for a change. They are not fitted for it. Stephen Leacock More Quotes by Stephen Leacock More Quotes From Stephen Leacock The road comes to an end just when it ought to be getting somewhere. The passengers alight, shaken and weary, to begin, all over again, something else. Stephen Leacock wearypassengersends A half truth, like half a brick, is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better. Stephen Leacock brickstrusthalf About the only good thing you can say about old age is, it's better than being dead! Stephen Leacock aginggood-thingsage You can never have international peace as long as you have national poverty. Stephen Leacock international-peacepovertylong Life, we learn too late, is in the living, the tissue of every day and hour. Stephen Leacock learningtoo-latelife 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. Stephen Leacock simplicitywritingideas How can you shorten the subject? That stern struggle with the multiplication table, for many people not yet ended in victory, how can you make it less? Square root, as obdurate as a hardwood stump in a pasturenothing but years of effort can extract it. You can't hurry the process. Or pass from arithmetic to algebra; you can't shoulder your way past quadratic equations or ripple through the binomial theorem. Instead, the other way; your feet are impeded in the tangled growth, your pace slackens, you sink and fall somewhere near the binomial theorem with the calculus in sight on the horizon. Stephen Leacock strugglemathfall 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. Stephen Leacock symbolismsillyyears 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. Stephen Leacock communicationcollegelong 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 shakesparentingboys 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. Stephen Leacock readingislandswriting Each section of the British Isles has its own way of laughing, except Wales, which doesn't. Stephen Leacock economylaughingway Humour in its highest reach mingles with pathos: it voices sorrow for our human lot and reconciliation with it. Stephen Leacock pathosvoicesorrow A silk dress in four sections, and shoes with high heels that would have broken the heart of John Calvin. Stephen Leacock shoesfashionheart Presently I shall be introduced as 'this venerable old gentleman' and the axe will fall when they raise me to the degree of 'grand old man'. That means on our continent any one with snow-white hair who has kept out of jail till eighty. Stephen Leacock menmeanfall 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. Stephen Leacock teamworkmotivationalyears It is difficult to be funny and great at the same time. Aristophanes and Moliere and Mark Twain must sit below Aristotle and Bossuet and Emerson. Stephen Leacock difficultmark A barber is by nature and inclination a sport. He can tell you at what exact hour the ball game is to begin, can foretell its issue without losing a stroke of the razor, and can explain the points of inferiority of all the players, as compared with the better men that he has personally seen elsewhere, with the nicety of a professional. Stephen Leacock playersportsmen 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 sundayviewsgolf Humor may be defined as the kindly contemplation of the incongruities of life, and the artistic expression thereof. Stephen Leacock humorexpressionmay
