Leo Rosten
First-rate people hire first-rate people; second-rate people hire third-rate people.Collection: Business
Extremists think 'communication' means agreeing with them.Collection: Communication
Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense.Collection: Truth
Courage is the capacity to confront what can be imagined.Collection: Courage
We see things as we are, not as they are.Collection: Brainy
Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.Collection: Communication
Happiness comes only when we push our brains and hearts to the farthest reaches of which we are capable.Collection: Happiness
A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.Collection: Politics
Why did God give me two ears and one mouth? So that I will hear more and talk less.Collection: Communication
I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.Collection: Strength
Some things are so unexpected that no one is prepared for them.
If you are going to do something wrong at least enjoy it.
Satire is focused bitterness.
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.
The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.
An angel is a spiritual creature created by God without a body for the service of Christendom and the church.
Any man who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad.
I never cease being dumbfounded by the unbelievable things people believe.
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.
Words must surely be counted among the most powerful drugs man ever invented.
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.
I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all.Collection: Inspirational
If at first you don't succeed, before you try again, stop to figure out what you did wrong.Collection: Trying
Money can't buy happiness, but neither can poverty.Collection: Money
Where there is too much, something is missing.Collection: Missing
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.Collection: Children
Thinking is harder work than hard work.Collection: Hard Work
Everyone, in some small sacred sanctuary of the self, is nuts.Collection: Inspirational
Machines certainly can solve problems, store information, correlate, and play games - but not with pleasure.Collection: Games
If a picture is worth a thousand words, please paint me the Gettysburg Address.Collection: Addresses
The fellow who laughs last may laugh best, but he gets the reputation of being very slow-witted.Collection: Laughing
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.Collection: Differences
It is not that which is beautiful that pleases us, but that which pleases is is called beautiful.Collection: Beautiful
What's green, hangs on a wall and whistles? [A Herring]Collection: Wall
The purpose of life is not to be happy, the purpose of life is to matter.Collection: Kindness
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.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Pain
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 pastCollection: 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.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Different
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.Collection: Mean
People say: idle curiosity. The one thing that curiosity cannot be is idle.Collection: People
The hardest part of growing up is learning how to waitCollection: Growing Up
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.Collection: Time
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.Collection: Hurt
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.Collection: Pain
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.Collection: Food
If you are going to do something wrong, at least enjoy it.Collection: Enjoy
When in trouble, mumble.Collection: Advice
The only thing I can say about W. C. Fields ... is this: Any man who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad.Collection: Dog