Quotes by Canadian Authors - Page 7

Indifference may not wreck a man's life at any one turn but it will destroy him with a kind of dry-rot in the long run.
Bliss Carman
Some people have a perfect genius for doing nothing and doing it assiduously.
Thomas Haliburton
It is no rest to be idle.
Paul Peel
The love of truth lies at the root of much humour.
Robertson Davies
One loses so many laughs by not laughing at oneself.
Sara Jeannette Duncan
Charles Dickens' creation of Mr. Pickwick did more for the elevation of the human race - I say it in all seriousness - than Cardinal Newman's Lead Kindly Light Amid the Encircling Gloom. Newman only cried out for light in the gloom of a sad world. Dickens gave it.
Stephen Leacock
You encourage a comic man too much and he gets silly.
Stephen Leacock
Any man will admit if need be that his sight is not good or that he cannot swim or shoots badly with a rifle but to touch upon his sense of humour is to give him mortal affront.
Stephen Leacock
A satirist is a man who discovers unpleasant things about himself and then says them about other people.
Peter McArthur
The best definition of humour I know is: humour may be defined as the kindly contemplation of the incongruities of life and the artistic expression thereof. I think this is the best I know because I wrote it myself.
Stephen Leacock
Humour is richly rewarding to the person who employs it. It has some value in gaining and holding attention. But it has no persuasive value at all.
J. K. Galbraith
Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.
Margaret Atwood
True vision is always twofold. It involves emotional comprehensions as well as physical perception.
Ross Parmenter
Faith walks simply childlike between the darkness of human life and the hope of what is to come.
Catherine de Hueck Doherty
Hope is a pleasant acquaintance but an unsafe friend.
Thomas Chandler Haliburton
I'm frank brutally frank. And even when I'm not frank I look frank.
Lord Thomson
People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the brutality than out of the honesty.
Richard J. Needham
A human being isn't an orchid he must draw something from the soil he grows in.
Sara Jeannette Duncan
Societies that do not eat people are fascinated by those that do.
Ronald Wright
I have no history but the length of my bones.
Robin Skelton
I never realized that there was history close at hand beside my very own home. I did not realize that the old grave that stood among the brambles at the foot of our farm was history.
Stephen Leacock
Don't brood on what's past but never forget it either.
Thomas H. Raddall
The habit of being uniformly considerate toward others will bring increased happiness to you.
Grenville Kleiser
Sons branch out but one woman leads to another.
Margaret Atwood
Moments of kindness and reconciliation are worth having even if the parting has to come sooner or later.
Alice Munro
Maturity begins to grow when you can sense your concern for others outweighing your concern for yourself.
John MacNaughton
A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it but there's less of you.
Margaret Atwood
I'm not that much into working out. My philosophy - no pain no pain.
Toni Anderson
The happy man is he who knows his limitations yet bows to no false gods.
Robert Service
The more the heart is sated with joy the more it becomes insatiable.
Gabrielle Roy
Time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee ... I hold inside it the clues and solutions and the power for what I must do now.
Margaret Atwood
All the wealth of the world cannot be compared with the happiness of living together happily united.
Saint Mary Margaret d'Youville
Treat a horse like a woman and a woman like a horse. And they'll both win for you.
Elizabeth Arden
People genuinely happy in their choices seem less often tempted to force them on other people than those who feel martyred and broken by their lives.
Jane Rule
For the rational psychologically healthy man the desire for pleasure is the desire to celebrate his control over reality. For the neurotic the desire for pleasure is the desire to escape from reality.
Nathaniel Branden
If I am a great man then a good many of the great men of history are frauds.
Bonar Law
I'm a great believer in luck. I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
Stephen Leacock
No intelligence system can predict what a government will do if it doesn't know itself.
J. K. Galbraith
The strongest pressure in the world can be friendly pressure.
Lester Pearson
The more the world is specialized the more it will be run by generalists.
Marcel Masse
Government in the last analysis is organised opinion. Where there is little or no public opinion there is likely to be bad government which sooner or later becomes autocratic government.
William Lyon Mackenzie King
In the Conservative view you have 10 premiers and the Prime Minister as a kind of head waiter to take their orders.
Pierre Elliott Trudeau
There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.
Pierre Elliott Trudeau
Egypt: Where the Israelites would still be if Moses had been a bureaucrat.
Laurence J. Peter
Why is it that when people have no capacity for private usefulness they should be so anxious to serve the public?
Sara Jeannette Duncan
If a man wants to be of the greatest possible value to his fellow-creatures let him begin the long solitary task of perfecting himself.
Robertson Davies
You seldom get what you go after unless you know in advance what you want.
Maurice Switzer
I took a day to search for God And found Him not. But as I trod By rocky ledge through woods untamed Just where one scarlet lily flamed I saw His foot print in the sod.
Bliss Carman
To know what has to be done then do it comprises the whole philosophy of practical life.
Sir William Osier
Men of genius are the worst possible models for men of talent.
Murray D. Edwards
Business is more exciting than any game.
Lord Beaverbrook
To act the part of a true friend requires more conscientious feeling than to fill with credit and complacency any other station or capacity in social life.
Sarah Ellis
It is the weak and confused who worship the pseudo-simplicities of brutal directness.
Marshall McLuhan
Nothing is ever lost by courtesy. It is the cheapest of pleasures costs nothing and conveys much. It pleases him who gives and receives and thus like mercy is twice blessed.
Erastus Wiman
You can always tell a real friend when you've made a fool of yourself he doesn't feel you've done a permanent job.
Laurence J. Peter
Do not rely completely on any other human being however dear. We meet all life's greatest tests alone.
Agnes Macphail
We don't need to increase our goods nearly as much as we need to scale down our wants. Not wanting something is as good as possessing it.
Donald Horban
Generally the man with a good wife or the woman with a good husband or the children with good parents discover too late the goodness they overlooked while it was in full bloom.
James Douglas
My private measure of success is daily. If this were to be the last day of my life would I be content with it? To live in a harmonious balance of commitments and pleasures is what I strive for.
Jane Rule
Rage and bitterness do not foster femininity. They harden the heart and make the body sick.
Marion Woodman