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All our yesterdays, it is true, have only lighted fools the way to dusty death. But we need at least the dates of the yesterdays and the list of the fools.

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
True
Fools
Need
List
Needs
Lists
Way
Yesterday
Fool
Yesterdays
Least
Lighted
Education
Dusty
Death
Dates

More quotes by 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.
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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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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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There is an old motto that runs, If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. This is nonsense. It ought to read, If at first you don't succeed, quit, quit at once.
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Advertising: the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.
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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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It may be those who do most, dream most.
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My parents migrated to Canada in 1876, and I decided to go with them.
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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 classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.
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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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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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You can never have international peace as long as you have national poverty.
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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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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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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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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.
Stephen Leacock
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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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I admit that when the facts are not good enough, I always exaggerate them.
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