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You know, many a man realizes late in life that if when he was a boy he had known what he knows now, instead of being what he is he might be what he won't; but how few boys stop to think that if they knew what they don't know instead of being what they will be, they wouldn't be?

— Stephen Leacock Literary Lapses (1910)

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More quotes by Stephen Leacock

Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it.

It is to be observed that "angling" is the name given to fishing by people who can't fish.

Americans are queer people: they can't rest.

With the thermometer at 30 below zero and the wind behind him, a man walking on Main Street in Winnipeg knows which side of him is which.

My Discovery of the West (1937)

Lord Ronald said nothing; he flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Stephen Leacock (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.