Quotes by Leo Calvin Rosten

Happiness comes only when we push our brains and hearts to the farthest reaches of which we are capable.

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

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 have lived at all.

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.

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

The purpose of life is to matter, to be productive, to have it make some difference that you lived at all. Happiness, in the ancient, noble sense, means self-fulfillment-and is given to those who use to the fullest whatever talents God or luck or fate bestowed upon them.

Happiness, to me, lies in stretching, to the farthest boundaries of which we are capable, the resources of the mind and heart.

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.

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