Joseph Epstein Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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 or unworldly things, and what we do to make them come about... We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time and conditions of our death. But within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live.

  Joseph Epstein

  Inspirational, Life, Dream

  50 Copy quote

• Not to like ice cream is to show oneself uninterested in food.

  Joseph Epstein

  Ice Cream, Icy, Shows

  50 Copy quote

• We do not choose to be born.We do not--most of us, choose to die, or the times or conditions of our death. But within all this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we shall live--Courageously or in cowardice, Honorably or dishonorably, With purpose or adrift. We decide what is important and what is trivial. What makes us significant is what we DO, Or REFUSE TO DO. WE DECIDE and WE CHOOSE--and so we give definition to our lives.

  Joseph Epstein

  Giving, Important, Adrift

  23 Copy quote

• Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.

  Joseph Epstein

  Fun, Envy, Sin

  23 Copy quote

• We who are quotatious are never truly alone, but always hear the cheerful flow of remarks made by dead writers so much more intelligent than we.

  Joseph Epstein

  Intelligent, Cheerful, Flow

  4 Copy quote

• 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 of profitable work. This must be accompanied, second, by a haughty contempt for all the forms of work that one has established one cannot do. To these two must be joined, third, the nuttiness to believe that other people can be made to care about your opinions and views and be charmed by the way you state them. Incompetence, contempt, lunacy—once you have these in place, you are set to go.

  Joseph Epstein

  Believe, Views, Two

  6 Copy quote

• Political correctness and so many of the political fashions of the day...could only be perpetrated in adolescent minds: minds, that is, that are trained to search out one thing and one thing only...Only an adolescent would find it worthwhile to devote his or her attention chiefly to the hunting of offenses, the possibility of slights, real and imagined.

  Joseph Epstein

  Fashion, Real, Hunting

  5 Copy quote

• I just know so many people who have six or seven foreign languages and have read everything and have musical training and they are still dorks

  Joseph Epstein

  People, Training, Musical

  9 Copy quote

• We use books like mirrors, gazing into them only to discover ourselves.

  Joseph Epstein

  Book, Mirrors, Gazing

  9 Copy quote

• A cat is the only domestic animal I know who toilet trains itself and does a damned impressive job of it.

  Joseph Epstein

  Jobs, Cat, Animal

  11 Copy quote

• What distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, and what we do to make them come about.

  Joseph Epstein

  Inspirational, Dream, Individual Differences

  30 Copy quote

• 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 has changed your outlook in some ways. And not necessarily made you a better human being but made you see things.

  Joseph Epstein

  Reading, Mean, Thoughtful

  Interview with Robert Birnbaum, www.identitytheory.com. August 31, 2003.

  8 Copy quote

• 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 an ability to convince them that what they are being taught is deadly serious

  Joseph Epstein

  Teacher, Teaching, Satisfaction

  4 Copy quote

• That wine drinking is more effete than beer drinking? No question.

  Joseph Epstein

  Drinking, Wine, Beer

  9 Copy quote

• I myself think anti-Semitism is about envy.

  Joseph Epstein

  Thinking, Envy, Anti Semitism

  Interview with Robert Birnbaum, www.identitytheory.com. August 31, 2003.

  16 Copy quote

• For me writing is foremost a mode of thinking and when it works well, an act of discovery

  Joseph Epstein

  Writing, Thinking, Discovery

  9 Copy quote

• In recompense, envy may be the subtlest - perhaps I should say the most insidious - of the seven deadly sins.

  Joseph Epstein

  Envy, May, Sin

  Joseph Epstein (2003). “Envy: The Seven Deadly Sins”, p.1, Oxford University Press

  23 Copy quote

• Courage is nine-tenths context. What is courageous in one setting can be foolhardy in another and even cowardly in a third.

  Joseph Epstein

  Courage, Bravery, Nine

  9 Copy quote

• The best joke-tellers are those who have the patience to wait for conversation to come around to the point where the jokes in their repertoire have application.

  Joseph Epstein

  Waiting, Conversation, Application

  Joseph Epstein (1979). “Familiar territory: observations on American life”, Oxford University Press

  5 Copy quote

• What, really, is wanted from a neighborhood? Convenience, certainly, an absence of major aggravation, to be sure. But perhaps mostof all, ideally, what is wanted is a comfortable background, a breathing space of intermission between the intensities of private life and the calculations of public life.

  Joseph Epstein

  Breathing Space, Aggravation, Absence

  Joseph Epstein (1979). “Familiar territory: observations on American life”, Oxford University Press

  8 Copy quote

• No nostalgia runs deeper than that for something one has never known and now cannot obtain.

  Joseph Epstein

  Running, Nostalgia, Deeper

  Joseph Epstein (2003). “Snobbery: The American Version”, p.126, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  8 Copy quote

• We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents, or the country of our birth.
  We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time and conditions of our death.
  But within this realm of choicelessnness, we do choose how we live.

  Joseph Epstein

  Country, Parent, Birth

  6 Copy quote

• One of the pleasures of being a Jew, I don't have to tell you, it allows you anti-Semitism.

  Joseph Epstein

  Pleasure, Jew, Anti Semitism

  Interview with Robert Birnbaum, www.identitytheory.com. August 31, 2003.

  7 Copy quote

• No one has really ever defined what a friend is.

  Joseph Epstein

  Defined

  Interview with Robert Birnbaum, www.identitytheory.com. August 31, 2003.

  4 Copy quote

• While reading writers of great formulatory power — Henry James, Santayana, Proust — I find I can scarcely get through a page without having to stop to record some lapidary sentence. Reading Henry James, for example, I have muttered to myself, "C’mon, Henry, turn down the brilliance a notch, so I can get some reading done." I may be one of a very small number of people who have developed writer’s cramp while reading.

  Joseph Epstein

  Reading, Numbers, People

  5 Copy quote

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