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

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The great man... walks across his century and leaves the marks of his feet all over it, ripping out the dates on his goloshes as he passes.
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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.
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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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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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It may be those who do most, dream most.
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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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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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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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The Victorians needed parody. Without it their literature would have been a rank and weedy growth, over-watered with tears.
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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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American politicians do anything for money... English politicians take the money and won't do anything.
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In ancient times they had no statistics so they had to fall back on lies.
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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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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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Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica.
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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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When actors begin to think, it's time for a change. They are not fitted for it.
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The minute a man is convinced he is interesting, he isn't.
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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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I've seen lifelong friends drift apart over golf just because one could play better, but the other counted better.
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