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Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.

Leo Rosten

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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
Insight
Communication
Humor
Play
Affectionate

More quotes by Leo Rosten

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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
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Everyone, in some small sacred sanctuary of the self, is nuts.
Leo Rosten
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Satire is focused bitterness.
Leo Rosten
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Her cooking suggested she had attended the Cordon Noir.
Leo Rosten
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What's green, hangs on a wall and whistles? [A Herring]
Leo Rosten
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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
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Hope is ambiguous, but fear is precious.
Leo Rosten
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Money can't buy happiness, but neither can poverty.
Leo Rosten
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The purpose of life is to matter, to be productive, to have it make a difference that you lived at all-using the talents that God has given you for the betterment of others.
Leo Rosten
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If at first you don't succeed, before you try again, stop to figure out what you did wrong.
Leo Rosten
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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
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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
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Acting is a form of deception, and actors can mesmerize themselves almost as easily as an audience.
Leo Rosten
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Where there is too much, something is missing.
Leo Rosten
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The purpose of life is not to be happy, the purpose of life is to matter.
Leo Rosten
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The fellow who laughs last may laugh best, but he gets the reputation of being very slow-witted.
Leo Rosten
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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
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Extremists think 'communication' means agreeing with them.
Leo Rosten
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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
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Machines certainly can solve problems, store information, correlate, and play games - but not with pleasure.
Leo Rosten