Canadian humorist (1869-1944)
The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
Behind the Beyond
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.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
attributed, Biteback Dictionary of Humorous Sporting Quotations
Until two weeks ago I might have taken my pen in hand to write about humour with the confident air of an acknowledged professional. But that time is past. Such claim as I had has been taken from me. In fact I stand unmasked. An English reviewer writing in a literary journal, the very name of which is enough to put contradiction to sleep, has said of my writing, "What is there, after all, in Professor Leacock's humour but a rather ingenious mixture of hyperbole and myosis?" The man was right. How he stumbled upon this trade secret I do not know. But I am willing to admit, since the truth is out, that it has long been my custom in preparing an article of a humorous nature to go down to the cellar and mix up half a gallon of myosis with a pint of hyperbole. If I want to give the article a decidedly literary character, I find it well to put in about half a pint of paresis. The whole thing is amazingly simple.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
Feast of Stephen
A sportsman is a man who, every now and then, simply has to get out and kill something. Not that he is cruel. He wouldn't hurt a fly. It's not big enough.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
My Remarkable Uncle
I really believe there are many excellent writers who have never written because they never could begin. This is especially the case of people of great sensitiveness, or of people of advanced education. Professors suffer most of all from this inhibition. Many of them carry their unwritten books to the grave. They overestimate the magnitude of the task, they overestimate the greatness of the final result. A child in a prep school will write the History of Greece and fetch it home finished after school. "He wrote a fine History of Greece the other day," says his fond father. Thirty years later the child, grown to be a professor, dreams of writing the History of Greece -- the whole of it from the first Ionic invasion of the Aegean to the downfall of Alexandria. But he dreams. He never starts. He can't. It's too big. Anybody who has lived around a college knows the pathos of those unwritten books.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
How to Write
Professors of theory merely hold post-mortems.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
Last Leaves
The Victorians needed parody. Without it their literature would have been a rank and weedy growth, over-watered with tears.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
Humor and Humanity
Humour is the kindly contemplation of the incongruities of life.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
Humour and Humanity
Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marring the whole girl.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
attributed, The Concise Columbia Dictionary of Quotations
Humour in its highest reach mingles with pathos: it voices sorrow for our human lot and reconciliation with it.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
Humour and Humanity
It is to be observed that "angling" is the name given to fishing by people who can't fish.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
"When Fellers Go Fishing", The Leacock Roundabout
The landlady of a boarding-house is a parallelogram--that is, an oblong figure, which cannot be described, but which is equal to anything.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
Literary Lapses
The rushing of his spirit from its prison-house was as rapid as a hunted cat passing over a garden fence.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
Literary Lapses
Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
Feast of Stephen
A college lecture is a queer thing, for people not accustomed to it. The Professor isn't exactly dictating the lecture, and he isn't exactly talking, and the class are not exactly taking dictation and they're not exactly listening. It's a system they both have grown so used to that it's second nature.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
Happy Stories Just to Laugh At
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
Feast of Stephen
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.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
"Reflections on Riding", Literary Lapses
The classical scholars have kept alive the tradition of the superiority of the ancient languages -- a kaleidoscopic mass of suffixes and prefixes, supposed to represent an infinite shading of meaning. It is a character they share with the Ojibway and the Zulu.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
Humour, Its Theory and Technique
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?
STEPHEN LEACOCK
"How to Make a Million Dollars", Literary Lapses
The Lord said "Let there be wheat" and Saskatchewan was born.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
My Discovery of America