Stephen Leacock Quotes

you cannot give to people what they are incapable of receiving.

I don't think I'm in any position to give anybody advice about anything.

There are some people who have a low tolerance for criticism. I'm not one of those people.

We hate to have some people give us advice because we know how badly they need it themselves.

Age does not bring wisdom... but it does give perspective... and the saddest sight of all is to see, far behind you, temptations you've resisted.

Me, as myself, I don't think I'm particularly funny. But I've noticed that people in my life always have found me amusing. Which, when I was little, really bothered me.

Was it me you were discussing?” he countered with lifted brows. “I couldn’t tell from the description you were giving. Since when am I kind, considerate, refined, and amiable?” “You’re angry,” Victoria concluded on a sigh. A low chuckle rumbled in his chest and his arms tightened, drawing her close to his leann, muscular body. “I’m not angry,” he said in a husky, gentle voice. “I’m embarrassed

For most people, self-awareness and self-pity blossom simultaneously in early adolescence. It's about that time that we start viewing the world as something other than a whoop-de-doo playground, we start to experience personally how threatening it can be, how cruel and unjust. At the very moment when we become, for the first time, both introspective and socially conscientious, we receive the bad news that the world, by and large, doesn't give a rat's ass.

When you think about people, you give them power.

Others can give you a name or a number, but they can never tell you who you really are. That is something you yourself can only discover from within.

Negative opinions about me don't faze me unless I respect the person giving the opinion, which is rare. And if it's someone I respect, I usually take heed of what they're saying. But if I don't respect them, which I usually don't, what's the point?

A fence can be protective around your family - a familial fence. Then, there are the people who only know how to take, to abuse, to offend and they build fences to keep you out. They don't have time to talk, they don't have kind words, they only talk about themselves. They never give an olive branch or forgiveness - they create a fence because of their personality or behavior and they want to create a barrier to keep people out.

You can't give it to others if you don't have it in yourself.

The asking and the answering which history provides may help us to understand, even to frame, the logic of experience to which we shall submit. History cannot give us a program for the future, but it can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves, and of our common humanity, so that we can better face the future.

These illustrations suggest four general maxims[...]. The first is: remember that your motives are not always as altruistic as they seem to yourself. The second is: don't over-estimate your own merits. The third is: don't expect others to take as much interest in you as you do yourself. And the fourth is: don't imagine that most people give enough thought to you to have any special desire to persecute you.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

When I express my opinions it is so as to reveal the measure of my sight not the measure of the thing.

The man of meditation becomes the man of understanding because his energy accumulates. He is not wasting it. He is not interested in trivia; he does not put any energy at all into petty things. So whenever the time arises to give, he has to give. Energy is understanding. Be conscious of it and use your energy very consciously, and use your energy in such a way that you don't simply go on wasting it.

Give us being and feeling over having any day.

If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothing which may tend to its increase. At first, keep quiet and count the days when you were not angry: "I used to be angry every day, then every other day: next, every two, then every three days!" and if you succeed in passing thirty days, sacrifice to the gods in thanksgiving.

We can all reduce our life to a description that makes people feel sorry for ourselves or we can expand our life to a dimension where we connect and give to others.

I can take critism, but if it's like 'I don't like you' then I want to know why people don't like me. Why do you hate me? What have I done?

I realized I never played a character that was skilled at anything, or skilled at anything that I couldn't become skilled at.

Were wisdom to be sold, she would give no price; every man is satisfied with the share he has from nature.

The purpose of our lives is to give birth to the best that is in us. It is only through our own personal awakening that the world can be awakened. We cannot give what we do not have.