88 Quotes by Joseph Epstein

High standards generally – about workmanship and creation of objects, about what is owed in friendship, about the quality of art and much else – far from being snobbish, are required to maintain decency in life.

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.

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.

For me writing is foremost a mode of thinking and when it works well, an act of discovery.

One of the pleasures of being a Jew, I don’t have to tell you, it allows you anti-Semitism.

The problem for me is that reading is, I won’t say a sacred, but nevertheless a pretty serious act.

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.

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

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