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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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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
Thoughtful
Kindness
Purpose
Happy
Matter
Life
More quotes by Leo Rosten
Her cooking suggested she had attended the Cordon Noir.
Leo Rosten
Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.
Leo Rosten
Every writer is a narcissist. This does not mean that he is vain it only means that he is hopelessly self-absorbed.
Leo Rosten
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
Extremists think 'communication' means agreeing with them.
Leo Rosten
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
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
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
If at first you don't succeed, before you try again, stop to figure out what you did wrong.
Leo Rosten
What's green, hangs on a wall and whistles? [A Herring]
Leo Rosten
Machines certainly can solve problems, store information, correlate, and play games - but not with pleasure.
Leo Rosten
The fellow who laughs last may laugh best, but he gets the reputation of being very slow-witted.
Leo Rosten
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
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.
Leo Rosten
Acting is a form of deception, and actors can mesmerize themselves almost as easily as an audience.
Leo Rosten
Happiness comes only when we push our brains and hearts to the farthest reaches of which we are capable.
Leo Rosten
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
Courage is the capacity to confront what can be imagined.
Leo Rosten
The hardest part of growing up is learning how to wait
Leo Rosten
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
