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Humour is essentially a comforter, reconciling us to things as they are in contrast to things as they might be.

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
Essentially
Might
Things
Reconciling
Comforter
Humour
Contrast

More quotes by Stephen Leacock

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My parents migrated to Canada in 1876, and I decided to go with 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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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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The minute a man is convinced he is interesting, he isn't.
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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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When actors begin to think, it's time for a change. They are not fitted for it.
Stephen Leacock
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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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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.
Stephen Leacock
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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.
Stephen Leacock
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Life, we learn too late, is in the living, the tissue of every day and hour.
Stephen Leacock
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Being a specialist is one thing, getting a job is another.
Stephen Leacock
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Humour in its highest reach mingles with pathos: it voices sorrow for our human lot and reconciliation with it.
Stephen Leacock
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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.
Stephen Leacock
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In ancient times they had no statistics so they had to fall back on lies.
Stephen Leacock
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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.
Stephen Leacock
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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.
Stephen Leacock
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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.
Stephen Leacock
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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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Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica.
Stephen Leacock
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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