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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

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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
Differences
Purpose
Betterment
Given
Talents
Others
Productive
Matter
Using
Make
Lived
Life
Difference
Talent

More quotes by 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.
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Machines certainly can solve problems, store information, correlate, and play games - but not with pleasure.
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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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The purpose of life is not to be happy, the purpose of life is to matter.
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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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Courage is the capacity to confront what can be imagined.
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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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The fellow who laughs last may laugh best, but he gets the reputation of being very slow-witted.
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Extremists think 'communication' means agreeing with them.
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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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If you are going to do something wrong, at least enjoy it.
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Her cooking suggested she had attended the Cordon Noir.
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What's green, hangs on a wall and whistles? [A Herring]
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The hardest part of growing up is learning how to wait
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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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Money can't buy happiness, but neither can poverty.
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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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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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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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Thinking is harder work than hard work.
Leo Rosten