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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

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Stephen Leacock
Age: 74 †
Born: 1869
Born: December 30
Died: 1944
Died: March 28
Economist
Humorist
Political Scientist
Writer
Hants
Stephen Butler Leacock
Lasts
Motivation
Last
Motivational
Work
Ought
Years
Economy
Never
Imagine
Edison
Called
Thomas
Creative
Teamwork
Call
Fifty

More quotes by Stephen Leacock

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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
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Most people tire of a lecture in ten minutes clever people can do it in five. Sensible people never go to lectures at all. But the people who do go to a lecture and who get tired of it, presently hold it as a sort of grudge against the lecturer personally. In reality his sufferings are worse than theirs.
Stephen Leacock
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In ancient times they had no statistics so they had to fall back on lies.
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Being a specialist is one thing, getting a job is another.
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You cannot depict love inside a frame of fact. It needs a mist to dissolve in.
Stephen Leacock
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I admit that when the facts are not good enough, I always exaggerate them.
Stephen Leacock
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The minute a man is convinced he is interesting, he isn't.
Stephen Leacock
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All Dickens's humour couldn't save Dickens, save him from his overcrowded life, its sordid and neurotic central tragedy and its premature collapse. But Dickens's humour, and all such humour, has saved or at least greatly served the world.
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There is an old motto that runs, If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. This is nonsense. It ought to read, If at first you don't succeed, quit, quit at once.
Stephen Leacock
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American politicians do anything for money... English politicians take the money and won't do anything.
Stephen Leacock
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Each section of the British Isles has its own way of laughing, except Wales, which doesn't.
Stephen Leacock
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Men are able to trust one another, knowing the exact degree of dishonesty they are entitled to expect.
Stephen Leacock
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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
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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
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The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.
Stephen Leacock
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You frequently ask, where are the friends of your childhood, and urge that they shall be brought back to you. As far as I am able to learn, those of your friends who are not in jail are still right there in your native village. You point out that they were wont to share your gambols, If so, you are certainly entitled to have theirs now.
Stephen Leacock
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The tears of childhood fall fast and easily, and evil be to him who makes them flow.
Stephen Leacock
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About the only good thing you can say about old age is, it's better than being dead!
Stephen Leacock
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When actors begin to think, it's time for a change. They are not fitted for it.
Stephen Leacock
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My parents migrated to Canada in 1876, and I decided to go with them.
Stephen Leacock