A half truth, like half a brick, is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better.
Stephen LeacockThe 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 LeacockI've seen lifelong friends drift apart over golf just because one could play better, but the other counted better.
Stephen LeacockI detest life-insurance agents: they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so.
Stephen LeacockHow can you shorten the subject? That stern struggle with the multiplication table, for many people not yet ended in victory, how can you make it less? Square root, as obdurate as a hardwood stump in a pasturenothing but years of effort can extract it. You can't hurry the process. Or pass from arithmetic to algebra; you can't shoulder your way past quadratic equations or ripple through the binomial theorem. Instead, the other way; your feet are impeded in the tangled growth, your pace slackens, you sink and fall somewhere near the binomial theorem with the calculus in sight on the horizon.
Stephen Leacock