Leo Rosten Quotes

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.

If at first you don't succeed, before you try again, stop to figure out what you did wrong.

The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.

Happiness, in the ancient, noble sense, means self-fulfillment - and is given to those who use to the fullest whatever talents God ... bestowed upon them.

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.

I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.

Everyone, in some small secret sanctuary of the self, is nuts.

A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.

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. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved.

I never cease being dumbfounded by the unbelievable things people believe.

Words must surely be counted among the most powerful drugs man ever invented.

Every writer is a narcissist. This does not mean that he is vain; it only means that he is hopelessly self-absorbed.

Where there is too much, something is missing.

Acting is a form of deception, and actors can mesmerize themselves almost as easily as an audience.

Courage is the capacity to confront what can be imagined.

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

An angel is a spiritual creature created by God without a body for the service of Christendom and the church.

Money can't buy happiness, but neither can poverty.

The twelfth-century poet Abraham ibn Ezra, whom you encountered in high school as Browning's Rabbi ben Ezra (may his tribe increase), limpidly described the shlimazl's lot when he wrote: If I sold lamps, The sun, In spite, Would shine at night.

It was at this point, visualizing too vividly another Mr. Kaplan in the class, that anxious little lines had crept around Mr. Parkhill´s eyes.

I sometimes think there is a dimension beyond the four of experience and Einstein: insight, that fifth dimension which promises to liberate us from bondage to the long, imperfect past

Hope is ambiguous, but fear is precious.

Her cooking suggested she had attended the Cordon Noir.

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.

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.

Dogs are getting bigger, according to a leading dog manufacturer.

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.

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.

Satire is focused bitterness.

The hardest part of growing up is learning how to wait

Anybody who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad.

A shnorrer knocked on the door of the rich man's house at six-thirty in the morning. The rich man cried, "How dare you wake me up so early?" "Listen," said the shnorrer, "I don't tell you how to run your business, so don't tell me how to run mine.

Waiter: "Tea or coffee, gentlemen?" First customer: "I'll have tea." Second customer: "Me too - and be sure the glass is clean!" (WAITER EXITS, RETURNS) Waiter: "Two teas. Which one asked for the clean glass?

It is not that which is beautiful that pleases us, but that which pleases is is called beautiful.

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.

What's green, hangs on a wall and whistles?