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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.

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
Turns
Spirit
Firsts
First
Transcendentalism
Thing
Presently
Believe
Christmas
Make
Essence

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It may be those who do most, dream most.
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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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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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Anybody who has listened to certain kinds of music, or read certain kinds of poetry, or heard certain kinds of performances on the concertina, will admit that even suicide has its brighter aspects.
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You cannot depict love inside a frame of fact. It needs a mist to dissolve in.
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Golf may be played on Sunday, not being a game within the view of the law, but being a form of moral effort.
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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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I admit that when the facts are not good enough, I always exaggerate them.
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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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My parents migrated to Canada in 1876, and I decided to go with them.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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With the Great Detective, to think was to act, and to act was to think. Frequently he could do both together.
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The minute a man is convinced he is interesting, he isn't.
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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.
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About the only good thing you can say about old age is, it's better than being dead!
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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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You can never have international peace as long as you have national poverty.
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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.
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