Leo Rosten Quotes - Page 2

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

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

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.

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.

First-rate people hire first-rate people; second-rate people hire third-rate people.

The hardest part of growing up is learning how to wait

Words sing. They hurt. They teach. They sanctify. They were man's first, immeasurable feat of magic. They liberated us from ignorance and our barbarous past.

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.

People say: idle curiosity. The one thing that curiosity cannot be is idle.

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.

Some things are so unexpected that no one is prepared for them.

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.

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? Those who seek the folly of unrelieved 'happiness'-who fear moods, who shun solitude, who do not know the diginity of occasional depression-can find bliss easily enough: in tranquilizing pills, or in senility. The purpose of life is not to be happy.

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

If you are going to do something wrong, at least enjoy it.

When in trouble, mumble.

The only thing I can say about W. C. Fields ... is this: Any man who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad.

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

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

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.

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

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.

For some not to be martyrs is martyrdom indeed.

Satire is focused bitterness.

There was no answer, no solution, no sop, no deliverance. What, then, did I do? I read faster.