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Satire is focused bitterness.

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
Focused
Satire
Bitterness
Bitter

More quotes by 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.
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What's green, hangs on a wall and whistles? [A Herring]
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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.
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Her cooking suggested she had attended the Cordon Noir.
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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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If you are going to do something wrong, at least enjoy it.
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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.
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Everyone, in some small sacred sanctuary of the self, is nuts.
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Dogs are getting bigger, according to a leading dog manufacturer.
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Machines certainly can solve problems, store information, correlate, and play games - but not with pleasure.
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I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.
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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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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.
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Thinking is harder work than hard work.
Leo Rosten
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If a picture is worth a thousand words, please paint me the Gettysburg Address.
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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.
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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Money can't buy happiness, but neither can poverty.
Leo Rosten
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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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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