Stephen Leacock

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

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

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.

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.

With the Great Detective to think was to act and to act was to think. Frequently he could do both together.

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

Each section of the British Isles has its own way of laughing, except Wales, which doesn't.

A sportsman is a man who every now and then, simply has to get out and kill something.

He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.

Astronomy teaches the correct use of the sun and the planets.

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.

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

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.

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

It's called political economy because it is has nothing to do with either politics or economy.

It is to be observed that 'angling' is the name given to fishing by people who can't fish.

The Lord said 'let there be wheat' and Saskatchewan was born.

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

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

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.

Humour is essentially a comforter reconciling us to things as they are in contrast to things as they might be.

The tears of childhood fall fast and easily, and evil be to him who makes them flow.

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.

On the same bill and on the same side of it there should not be two charges for the same thing.

There are two things in ordinary conversation which ordinary people dislike - information and wit.

It may be those who do most, dream most.

Golf may be played on Sunday, not being a game within the view of the law, but being a form of moral effort.

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.

In ancient times they had no statistics so they had to fall back on lies.

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

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.

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.

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.

It's a lie, but Heaven will forgive you for it.