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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
Least
Feels
Kind
Always
Never
Strongly
Envy
General
Particular

More quotes by Joseph Epstein

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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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Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.
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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.
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The problem for me is that reading is, I won't say a sacred, but nevertheless a pretty serious act.
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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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I am the heterosexual Truman Capote.
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Food has it over sex for variety. Hedonistically, gustatory possibilities are much broader than copulatory ones.
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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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That wine drinking is more effete than beer drinking? No question.
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I am married to someone I love.
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If geniuses can sometimes make mistakes, cannot the rest of us on occasion be geniuses?
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Within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live.
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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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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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One of the pleasures of being a Jew, I don't have to tell you, it allows you anti-Semitism.
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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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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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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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We do choose how we shall live
Joseph Epstein