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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
Life
Thoughtful
Kindness
Purpose
Happy
Matter

More quotes by Leo Rosten

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Hope is ambiguous, but fear is precious.
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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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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.
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Her cooking suggested she had attended the Cordon Noir.
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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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Thinking is harder work than hard work.
Leo Rosten
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What's green, hangs on a wall and whistles? [A Herring]
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Machines certainly can solve problems, store information, correlate, and play games - but not with pleasure.
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Everyone, in some small sacred sanctuary of the self, is nuts.
Leo Rosten
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Extremists think 'communication' means agreeing with them.
Leo Rosten
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If a picture is worth a thousand words, please paint me the Gettysburg Address.
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The hardest part of growing up is learning how to wait
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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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Satire is focused bitterness.
Leo Rosten
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Courage is the capacity to confront what can be imagined.
Leo Rosten
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Words must surely be counted among the most powerful drugs man ever invented.
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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.
Leo Rosten
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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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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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Dogs are getting bigger, according to a leading dog manufacturer.
Leo Rosten