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What's green, hangs on a wall and whistles? [A Herring]

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
Whistles
Herring
Hangs
Green
Wall

More quotes by 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.
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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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Satire is focused bitterness.
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Everyone, in some small sacred sanctuary of the self, is nuts.
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Machines certainly can solve problems, store information, correlate, and play games - but not with pleasure.
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If a picture is worth a thousand words, please paint me the Gettysburg Address.
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Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.
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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Thinking is harder work than hard work.
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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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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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Courage is the capacity to confront what can be imagined.
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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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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.
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
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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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The fellow who laughs last may laugh best, but he gets the reputation of being very slow-witted.
Leo Rosten
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Money can't buy happiness, but neither can poverty.
Leo Rosten
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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.
Leo Rosten