Leo Rosten Quotes

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.

FOLK SAYING: “Poverty is no disgrace — which is the only good thing you can say about it.

Yiddish, the language which will ever bear witness to the violence and murder inflicted on us, bears the marks of our expulsions from land to land, the language which absorbed the wails of the fathers, the laments of the generations, the poison and bitterness of history, the language whose precious jewels are undried, uncongealed Jewish tears.

I have it on indisputable authority that in Scarsdale, during a school celebration of Christmas, one of the children sang the carol as “God rest ye, Jerry Mandelbaum.

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

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

If God lived on earth,” goes a sardonic Yiddish saying, “people would knock out all His windows.

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

Circumcision is described as “the seal of God” — a seal in the flesh, as it were. (In the early days of Christianity, baptism was called “sealing.”) In Genesis 17:10, you may remember, the Lord says: “This is my covenant … every man child among you shall be circumcised.” And Abraham, who was a very great man, circumcised himself.

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

In the Middle Ages, church and secular powers often forbade Jews to trim their beards in any way. Why? To be certain that a Jew could be identified.

FOLK SAYING: “Your health comes first; you can always hang yourself later.

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

George S. Kaufman, a prince of wit, once remarked that he liked to write with his collaborator, Moss Hart, because Hart was so lucky. “In my case,” said Kaufman, “it’s gelt by association.

The purpose of life is not to be happy — but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.