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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
Bitterness
Bitter
Focused
Satire

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.
Leo Rosten
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Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.
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
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Machines certainly can solve problems, store information, correlate, and play games - but not with pleasure.
Leo Rosten
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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.
Leo Rosten
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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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If a picture is worth a thousand words, please paint me the Gettysburg Address.
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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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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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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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
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If you are going to do something wrong, at least enjoy it.
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.
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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Everyone, in some small sacred sanctuary of the self, is nuts.
Leo Rosten
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Happiness comes only when we push our brains and hearts to the farthest reaches of which we are capable.
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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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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Courage is the capacity to confront what can be imagined.
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