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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

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
House
Boarding
Cannot
Swagger
Anything
Described
Figure
Oblong
Figures
Landlady
Equal
Parallelogram
Economy
Angular
Science
Swag

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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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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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In ancient times they had no statistics so they had to fall back on lies.
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Newspapermen learn to call a murderer an alleged murderer and the King of England the alleged King of England in order to avoid libel suits.
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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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It may be those who do most, dream most.
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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.
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The minute a man is convinced he is interesting, he isn't.
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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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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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It is difficult to be funny and great at the same time. Aristophanes and Moliere and Mark Twain must sit below Aristotle and Bossuet and Emerson.
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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.
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Each section of the British Isles has its own way of laughing, except Wales, which doesn't.
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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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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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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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When actors begin to think, it's time for a change. They are not fitted for it.
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Humour is essentially a comforter, reconciling us to things as they are in contrast to things as they might be.
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I've seen lifelong friends drift apart over golf just because one could play better, but the other counted better.
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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