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In earlier times they had no statistics and so they had to fall back on lies. Hence the huge exaggerations of primitive literature, giants, miracles, wonders! It's the size that counts. They did it with lies and we do it with statistics: but it's all the same.

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
Science
Miracle
Counts
Back
Lies
Hence
Huge
Earlier
Wonder
Miracles
Literature
Statistics
Lying
Primitive
Exaggerations
Times
Giants
Exaggeration
Fall
Size
Wonders

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In ancient times they had no statistics so they had to fall back on lies.
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Indeed I have always found that the only thing in regard to Toronto which faraway people know for certain is that McGill University is in it.
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I admit that when the facts are not good enough, I always exaggerate them.
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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
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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.
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I am what is called a professor emeritus—from the Latin e, 'out,' and meritus, 'so he ought to be.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Charles Dickens' creation of Mr. Pickwick did more for the elevation of the human race - I say it in all seriousness - than Cardinal Newman's Lead Kindly Light Amid the Encircling Gloom. Newman only cried out for light in the gloom of a sad world. Dickens gave it.
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The tears of childhood fall fast and easily, and evil be to him who makes them flow.
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The sorrows and disasters of Europe always brought fortune to America.
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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.
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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.
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In Canada we have enough to do keeping up with two spoken languages ... so we just go right ahead and use English for literature, Scotch for sermons, and American for conversation.
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Too much has been said of the heroes of history-the strong men, the troublesome men too little of the amiable, the kindly, the tolerant.
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