Quote

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Leo Rosten

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Leo Rosten
Age: 88 †
Born: 1908
Born: January 1
Died: 1997
Died: January 1
Lexicographer
Linguist
Novelist
Political Scientist
Screenwriter
Writer
Lodz
Leo Calvin Rosten
Play
Affectionate
Insight
Communication
Humor

More quotes by Leo Rosten

Image
I came to believe it not true that the coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man only one. I think it is the other way around: It is the brave who die a thousand deaths. For it is imagination, and not just conscience, which doth make cowards of us all. Those who do not know fear are not truly brave.
Leo Rosten
Image
A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood.
Leo Rosten
Image
Courage is the capacity to confront what can be imagined.
Leo Rosten
Image
The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that, perhaps, is what makes him different from others.
Leo Rosten
Image
Money can't buy happiness, but neither can poverty.
Leo Rosten
Image
Where was it ever promised us that life on this earth can ever be easy, free from conflict and uncertainty, devoid of anguish and wonder and pain? … The purpose of life is to matter, to be productive, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.
Leo Rosten
Image
Satire is focused bitterness.
Leo Rosten
Image
You understand people better if you look at them-no matter how old or impressive or important they may be-as if they were children. For most men never mature they simply grow taller.
Leo Rosten
Image
The purpose of life is not to be happy, the purpose of life is to matter.
Leo Rosten
Image
What's green, hangs on a wall and whistles? [A Herring]
Leo Rosten
Image
Proverbs often contradict one another, as any reader soon discovers. The sagacity that advises us to look before we leap promptly warns us that if we hesitate we are lost that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but out of sight, out of mind.
Leo Rosten
Image
The love of money is the source of an enormous amount of good the fact that the good is a by-product of the selfish pursuit of riches has nothing to do with its indisputable value.
Leo Rosten
Image
O, to be sure, we laugh less and play less and wear uncomfortable disguises like adults, but beneath the costume is the child we always are, whose needs are simple, whose daily life is still best described by fairy tales.
Leo Rosten
Image
Machines certainly can solve problems, store information, correlate, and play games - but not with pleasure.
Leo Rosten
Image
The fellow who laughs last may laugh best, but he gets the reputation of being very slow-witted.
Leo Rosten
Image
Thinking is harder work than hard work.
Leo Rosten
Image
Where there is too much, something is missing.
Leo Rosten
Image
In the dark colony of night, when I consider man's magnificent capacity for malice, madness, folly, envy, rage, and destructiveness, and I wonder whether we shall not end up as breakfast for newts and polyps, I seem to hear the muffled cries of all the words in all the books with covers closed.
Leo Rosten
Image
Everyone, in some small sacred sanctuary of the self, is nuts.
Leo Rosten
Image
I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.
Leo Rosten