Stephen P. H. Butler Leacock, FRSC, was a Canadian teacher, political scientist, writer, and humorist. Between the years 1915 and 1925, he was the best-known English-speaking humorist in the world. He is known for his light humour along with criticisms of people's follies. The Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour was named in his honour.
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“ما أعجب الحياة !! يقول الطفل : عندما أشب فأصبح غلاماً.ويقول الغلام : عندما أترعرع فأصبح شاباً .ويقول الشاب : عندما أتزوج . فإذا تزوج قال عندما أصبح رجلاً متفرغاً .. فإذا جاءته الشيخوخة تطلع إلى المرحلة التي قطعها من عمره ,فإذا هي تلوح وكأن ريحاً باردة اكتسحتها اكتساحاً ,. إننا نعلم بعد فوات الأوان أن قيمة الحياة في أن نحياها .,نحيا كل يوم منها وكل ساعة”
“Many a man inlove with a dimple makes the mistake of marring the whole Girl”
“If their occupation is actual work they prefer to pump water into cisterns,two of which leak through holes in the bottom and one ofwhich is water-tight. A, of course, has the good one;”
“The writing of solid, instructive stuff fortified by facts and figures is easy enough. There is no trouble in writing a scientific treatise on the folk-lore of Central China, or a statistical enquiry into the declining population of Prince Edward Island. But to write something out of one's own mind, worth reading for its own sake, is an arduous contrivance only to be achieved in fortunate moments, few and far in between. Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica.”
“A half truth, like half a brick, is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better.”
“I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it”
“concealed from view a face so face-like in its appearance as to be positively facial.”
“I detest life-insurance agents: they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so.”
“Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour. ”
“Advertising - A judicious mixture of flattery and threats.”
“He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions. ”
“A sportsman is a man who, every now and then, simply has to go out and kill something.”
“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.”