Leo Rosten Quotes

At the end of a pier in Tel Aviv, a man was about to jump into the sea when a policeman came running up to him. “No, no!” he cried. “How can a man like you, in the prime of life, think of jumping into that water?” “Because I can’t stand it anymore! I don’t want to live!” “But listen, mister, please. If you jump in the water, I’ll have to jump in after you, to save you. Right? Well, it so happens I can’t swim. Do you know what that means? I have a wife and four children, and in the line of duty I would drown! Would you want to have such a terrible thing on your conscience? No, I’m sure. So be a good Jew, and do a real mitzva. Go home. And in the privacy and comfort of your own home, hang yourself.

FOLK SAYINGS: “Nine wise men don’t make a minyan, but ten cobblers do.” “Nine saints do not make a minyan, but one ordinary man can by joining them.

Chutzpa is that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.

He sat there, sighing and moaning and ruminating thusly: “Oh, if only the Holy One, blessed be His name, would give me ten thousand dollars, I promise I would give a thousand to the poor. Halevay! … And if the Holy One doesn’t trust me, He can deduct the thousand in advance and just give me the balance.

The braggadocio aspect is important: a successful but modest man is ordinarily not called a k’nocker. A k’nocker is someone who works crossword puzzles — with a pen (especially if someone is watching).

PROVERB: “A tavern can’t corrupt a good man, and a synagogue can’t reform a bad one.

A young khokhem told his grandmother that he was going to become a doctor of philosophy. The bubbe smiled proudly: “Wonderful. But what kind of disease is ‘philosophy’?

At a mass meeting in Berlin, Adolf Hitler, in thrall to a most appalling aynredenish, shrieked, “And who is responsible for all our troubles?” Ben Cohen shouted, “The bicycle riders and the Jews!” Hitler looked up, astonished. “Why the bicycle riders?” “Why the Jews?” replied Cohen.

I am informed by veterans of the Lower East Side that decalcomania pictures were called “cockamamies” because no one knew how to spell “decalcomania.

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.

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

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

Jewish dropout: a boy who didn’t get his Ph.D. — ANON

In the Catskills, it is claimed that an ingenious gentleman crossbred a Guernsey with a Holstein — to get a Goldstein.

Extremists think "communication" means agreeing with them.