The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.
quote by Stephen Leacock
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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.
quote by Stephen Leacock
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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.
quote by Stephen Leacock
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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.
quote by Stephen Leacock
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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.
quote by Stephen Leacock
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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.
quote by Stephen Leacock
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Anybody who has listened to certain kinds of music, or read certain kinds of poetry, or heard certain kinds of performances on the concertina, will admit that even suicide has its brighter aspects.
Stephen Leacock in 1912
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Electricity is of two kinds, positive and negative. The difference is, I presume, that one comes a little more expensive, but is more durable; the other is a cheaper thing, but the moths get into it.
quote by Stephen Leacock
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The Social Plan
I know a very tiresome Man
Who keeps on saying, "Social Plan."
At every Dinner, every Talk
Where Men foregather, eat or walk,
No matter where, -- this Awful Man
Brings on his goddam Social Plan.
The Fall in Wheat, the Rise in Bread,
The social Breakers dead ahead,
The Economic Paradox
That drives the Nation on the rocks,
The Wheels that false Abundance clogs --
And frightens us from raising Hogs, --
This dreary field, the Gloomy Man
Surveys and hiccoughs, Social Plan.
Till simpler Men begin to find
His croaking aggravates their mind,
And makes them anxious to avoid
All mention of the Unemployed,
[...] Read more
poem by Stephen Leacock
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Oh! Mr. Malthus!
"Mother, Mother, here comes Malthus,
Mother, hold me tight!
Look! It's Mr. Malthus, Mother!
Hide me out of sight."
This was the cry of little Jane
In bed she moaning lay,
Delirious with Stomach Pain,
That would not go away.
All because her small Existence
Over-pressed upon Subsistence;
Human Numbers didn't need her;
Human Effort couldn't feed her.
Little Janie didn't know
The Geometric Ratio.
Poor Wee Janie had never done
Course Economics No. 1;
Never reached in Education
Theories of Population, --
Theories which tend to show
Just how far our Food will go,
[...] Read more
poem by Stephen Leacock
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