Courage is nine-tenths context. What is courageous in one setting can be foolhardy in another and even cowardly in a third.
Joseph EpsteinIn recompense, envy may be the subtlest - perhaps I should say the most insidious - of the seven deadly sins.
Joseph EpsteinWhile reading writers of great formulatory power โ Henry James, Santayana, Proust โ I find I can scarcely get through a page without having to stop to record some lapidary sentence. Reading Henry James, for example, I have muttered to myself, "Cโmon, Henry, turn down the brilliance a notch, so I can get some reading done." I may be one of a very small number of people who have developed writerโs cramp while reading.
Joseph EpsteinHigh 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.
Joseph EpsteinCulture means, I think, that you have widened your experience enough through reading and through being a little bit thoughtful about these things that it has changed your outlook in some ways. And not necessarily made you a better human being but made you see things.
Joseph EpsteinI am afraid I am one of those people who continues to read in the hope of sometime discovering in a book a singleโand singularโpiece of wisdom so penetrating, so soul stirring, so utterly applicable to my own life as to make all the bad books I have read seem well worth the countless hours spent on them. My guess is that this wisdom, if it ever arrives, will do so in the form of a generalization.
Joseph Epstein