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The fellow who laughs last may laugh best, but he gets the reputation of being very slow-witted.

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
Luck
Laugh
Laughing
Witted
Gets
Laughs
Lasts
Fellow
Last
Slow
May
Reputation
Best
Fellows

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Her cooking suggested she had attended the Cordon Noir.
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Thinking is harder work than hard work.
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The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that, perhaps, is what makes him different from others.
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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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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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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.
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What's green, hangs on a wall and whistles? [A Herring]
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If you are going to do something wrong, at least enjoy it.
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Satire is focused bitterness.
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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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Acting is a form of deception, and actors can mesmerize themselves almost as easily as an audience.
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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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Money can't buy happiness, but neither can poverty.
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The purpose of life is not to be happy, the purpose of life is to matter.
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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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If a picture is worth a thousand words, please paint me the Gettysburg Address.
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Where there is too much, something is missing.
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Extremists think 'communication' means agreeing with them.
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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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Everyone, in some small sacred sanctuary of the self, is nuts.
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