Joseph Epstein Quotes

48 quotes in 784 categories

• Culture means, I think, that you have widened your experience enough through reading and through being a little bit thoughtful about these things that it…
• All men and women are born, live, suffer and die; what distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, whether they be dreams about worldly…
• A cat is the only domestic animal I know who toilet trains itself and does a damned impressive job of it.
• One serious drawback about letters is that, in order to get them, one must send some out. When it comes to the mail, I feel…
• What all great teachers appear to have in common is love of their subject, an obvious satisfaction in rousing this love in their students, and…
• Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.
• I myself think anti-Semitism is about envy.
• In recompense, envy may be the subtlest - perhaps I should say the most insidious - of the seven deadly sins.
• Envy is never general, but always very particular - at least envy of the kind one feels strongly.
• High standards generally -- about workmanship and creation of objects, about what is owed in friendship, about the quality of art and much else --…
• I was recently asked what it takes to become a writer. Three things, I answered: first, one must cultivate incompetence at almost every other form…
• I am afraid I am one of those people who continues to read in the hope of sometime discovering in a book a single—and singular—piece…
• I should prefer to die laughing, and, on more than one occasion, thought I might.
• That wine drinking is more effete than beer drinking? No question.
• No one has really ever defined what a friend is.
• I am the heterosexual Truman Capote.
• By the way, the secret of speaking French is confidence. Whether you are right or wrong, you don't hesitate.
• I am basically a complainer and all the grounds for complaint have been swept out from under me.
• One of the pleasures of being a Jew, I don't have to tell you, it allows you anti-Semitism.
• Many moons ago dictionaries of quotations may have been less needed than they are today. In those good/bad old days, people walked around with entire…

Browse Joseph Epstein Quotes by Category