Quotes from Joseph Epstein

His waiting for Teddy left Schlesinger rather in the position of the poor village idiot paid by his shtetl to sit at the outskirts of town awaiting the arrival of the messiah.

We know the ideal isn't where the action is.

Always seek the general and never quite trust it.

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

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

I am married to someone I love.

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.

A writer can get into a vast deal of trouble through misquotation. If you ever want to receive lots of mail, I recommend you get a Shakespeare quote wrong in a magazine or newspaper.

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

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

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.

There is no word equivalent to 'cuckold' for women.

Envy is never general, but always very particular - at least envy of the kind one feels strongly.

By the way, the secret of speaking French is confidence. Whether you are right or wrong, you don't hesitate.

I myself think anti-Semitism is about envy.

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