Leo Rosten Quotes

Happiness includes chiefly the idea of satisfaction after full honest effort. No one can possibly be satisfied and no one can be happy who feels that in some paramount affairs he failed to take up the challenge of life.

I think every individual has his or her own power, and it's a matter of working, taking time and defining what that power is.

I say that virtue is really all about enjoying yourself, living fully; but of course it is far from obvious what living fully actually means.

If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?

The best thing we can do is develop our own.

The good life consists in deriving happiness by using your signature strengths every day in the main realms of living. The meaningful life adds one more component: using these same strengths to forward knowledge, power or goodness.

We're all always wondering about our own limits, what we're capable of.

I just keep surprising myself, I guess.

Personal growth has its price, and she was paying it without complaint.

Life experience is not something to be denied, but to be celebrated.

I really want to keep at it until I find out what I'm capable of.

We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.

I believe happiness is a chemical imbalance - it's a silly thing to strife for. But satisfaction - if you seek satisfaction, you can succeed. Satisfaction is knowing that you're doing the best that you can do; you're living your life to the fullest.

The distance between who you are and who you might be is closing.

Revolution begins with the self, in the self.

All is worthwhile if the soul is not small.

If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.

We learn the inner secret of happiness when we learn to direct our inner drives, our interest and our attention to something besides ourselves.

I got married before I found myself. People should find themselves before they get married.

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

Obviously, the goal is to maximize my own potential, whatever that may be. That's all I focus on.

Your sole contribution to the sum of things is yourself.

Let each become all that he was created capable of being.

I think we all strive to push ourselves, to overcome our struggles. And when we do, we get to know ourselves better.

That the potential to become Level 5 exists in you and me and the people we work with and that it is then a process or a journey to nurture that seed... in a culture by and large that doesn't reinforce it.