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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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Joseph Epstein
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: January 9
Essayist
Short Story Writer
University Teacher
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Aristides
Kind
Always
Never
Strongly
Envy
General
Particular
Least
Feels

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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.
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For me writing is foremost a mode of thinking and when it works well, an act of discovery
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In recompense, envy may be the subtlest - perhaps I should say the most insidious - of the seven deadly sins.
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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.
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One of the pleasures of being a Jew, I don't have to tell you, it allows you anti-Semitism.
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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.
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No nostalgia runs deeper than that for something one has never known and now cannot obtain.
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Within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live.
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I am married to someone I love.
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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
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Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.
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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.
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No one has really ever defined what a friend is.
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We do choose how we shall live
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I myself think anti-Semitism is about envy.
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If geniuses can sometimes make mistakes, cannot the rest of us on occasion be geniuses?
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A cat is the only domestic animal I know who toilet trains itself and does a damned impressive job of it.
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The pleasure of jogging and running is rather like that of wearing a fur coat in Texas in August: the true joy comes in being able to take the damn thing off.
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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.
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That wine drinking is more effete than beer drinking? No question.
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