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

Joseph Epstein

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Joseph Epstein
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: January 9
Essayist
Short Story Writer
University Teacher
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Aristides
Thirds
Tenths
Setting
Foolhardy
Nine
Cowardly
Courage
Bravery
Another
Courageous
Even
Context
Settings
Third

More quotes by Joseph Epstein

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I am the heterosexual Truman Capote.
Joseph Epstein
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The decisive moment in the defeat of upper class, capital-S, Society may have come when, in newspapers all over the nation, what used to be call the Society page was replaced by the Style section.
Joseph Epstein
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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 it is better to receive than to give.
Joseph Epstein
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My wife who is non-Jewish regrets it all the time that I can say these terrible things about fellow Jews and she can't.
Joseph Epstein
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No one has really ever defined what a friend is.
Joseph Epstein
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If geniuses can sometimes make mistakes, cannot the rest of us on occasion be geniuses?
Joseph Epstein
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That wine drinking is more effete than beer drinking? No question.
Joseph Epstein
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No nostalgia runs deeper than that for something one has never known and now cannot obtain.
Joseph Epstein
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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
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Envy is never general, but always very particular - at least envy of the kind one feels strongly.
Joseph Epstein
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I believe it was Gayelord Hauser, the nutritionist, who said, 'You are what you eat,' but if you happen to be an intellectual, you are what you quote.
Joseph Epstein
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In recompense, envy may be the subtlest - perhaps I should say the most insidious - of the seven deadly sins.
Joseph Epstein
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Someone — Cyril Connolly? Ezra Pound? — once said that anything that can be read twice is literature I would say that anything that bears saying twice is quotable.
Joseph Epstein
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Food has it over sex for variety. Hedonistically, gustatory possibilities are much broader than copulatory ones.
Joseph Epstein
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Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.
Joseph Epstein
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The problem for me is that reading is, I won't say a sacred, but nevertheless a pretty serious act.
Joseph Epstein
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Within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live.
Joseph Epstein
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We do choose how we shall live
Joseph Epstein
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I am not merely a habitual quoter but an incorrigible one. I am, I may as well face it, more quotatious than an old stock-market ticker-tape machine, except that you can't unplug me.
Joseph Epstein
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What distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, and what we do to make them come about.
Joseph Epstein