Leo Rosten Quotes

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.

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.

To have nothing to do, to sit there waiting for little aches and pains, is fundamentally wrong. Life has to be lived.

Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.

You would not exist if you did not have something to bring to the table of life.

Every character is asking: 'What's my place? Why am I here? I don't want the answer to be 'Just because.' You find your own purpose. Each finds the reason to be here and how to contribute.

My trade and art is to live.

The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live - moreover, the only one.

Things can be really empty in this world, and I don't just mean the music world. It can become a very meaningless place if you don't really understand: 'who am I? Why am I here? What am I doing?' To feel fulfilment and have a deeper level of understanding, personally, that is the most important thing.

All of us want to live, and that is absolutely natural. However, we should learn from childhood on to choose our best way to die. If we don't do that, we end up spending our days like a dog, only in search of harbour, food and expressing a blind loyalty to his owner in return. That isn't enough to make our lives have a meaning.

I am waiting for a sign that will indicate to me what meaning I must give to my life, but right now my existence is satisfactory.

If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.

I am only here on this earth for a short period of time, like the rest of the country and citizens, and I want the time that I spend here on earth to matter.

All of us have a mission here on Earth.

If everything happens for a reason, what's the reason?

I think life doesn't necessarily have an endgame.

It's hard sometimes to remember why we do anything in the first place. It's nice to think there's a purpose, or even a real decision that turns everything in one direction, but that's not always true, is it? We just fall into our lives.

The purpose of life is life.

Happiness comes only when we push our brains and hearts to the farthest reaches of which we are capable. The purpose of life is to matter-to count, to stand for something, to have it make so difference that we lived at all.

What's the point of being alive," she said, "if you're not going to communicate?

Is there a design in the events of our lives? Or do things just happen, much like a junk yard falling down a staircase? If it's the latter, how do you deal with it?

The struggle for existence is a struggle 'for' something; it is purposeful and only in so being is it meaningful and able to bring meaning into life.

Life has meaning for anyone who takes an interest in it.

I don't know if I was put on this Earth for a purpose or not. But I'm fairly confident that I'll be taken off of it for one.

I hope that my work makes a difference because I think that's why I do it.