Quote

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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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
Make
Imagination
Cowards
Men
Came
Deaths
Think
Dies
Doth
Thinking
Fear
Coward
True
Brave
Around
Conscience
Believe
Truly
Way
Thousand

More quotes by Leo Rosten

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Where there is too much, something is missing.
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If you are going to do something wrong, at least enjoy it.
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If a picture is worth a thousand words, please paint me the Gettysburg Address.
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Money can't buy happiness, but neither can poverty.
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Courage is the capacity to confront what can be imagined.
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Everyone, in some small sacred sanctuary of the self, is nuts.
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Machines certainly can solve problems, store information, correlate, and play games - but not with pleasure.
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The hardest part of growing up is learning how to wait
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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.
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Happiness comes only when we push our brains and hearts to the farthest reaches of which we are capable.
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Hope is ambiguous, but fear is precious.
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Every writer is a narcissist. This does not mean that he is vain it only means that he is hopelessly self-absorbed.
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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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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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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.
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You can learn much about life from a checker game: surrender one to take two don't make two moves at one time move up, not down and when you reach the top, you may move as you like.
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Humor is, I think, the subtlest and chanciest of literary forms. It is surely not accidental that there are a thousand novelists, essayists, poets or journalists for each humorist. It is a long, long time between James Thurbers.
Leo Rosten
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The first printed mention of bagels... is to be found in the Community Regulations of Kracow, Poland, for the year 1610 which stated that bagels would be given as a gift to any woman in childbirth.
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Satire is focused bitterness.
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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