Joseph Epstein Quotes

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

I myself think anti-Semitism is about envy.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

No one has really ever defined what a friend is.

If geniuses can sometimes make mistakes, cannot the rest of us on occasion be geniuses?