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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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Joseph Epstein
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: January 9
Essayist
Short Story Writer
University Teacher
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Aristides
Sacred
Serious
Pretty
Reading
Problem
Nevertheless

More quotes by 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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I myself think anti-Semitism is about envy.
Joseph Epstein
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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.
Joseph Epstein
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No one has really ever defined what a friend is.
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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That wine drinking is more effete than beer drinking? No question.
Joseph Epstein
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One of the pleasures of being a Jew, I don't have to tell you, it allows you anti-Semitism.
Joseph Epstein
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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.
Joseph Epstein
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Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.
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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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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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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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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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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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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No nostalgia runs deeper than that for something one has never known and now cannot obtain.
Joseph Epstein
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For me writing is foremost a mode of thinking and when it works well, an act of discovery
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