Joseph Epstein

“Ambition is an expensive impulse, one that requires an enormous investment of emotional capital.”

“Gossip is news running ahead of itself in a red satin dress.”

“Much of the work of mid-life is to tell the difference between the ideas of others that have taken up residence in our minds, and our own original ideas.”

“A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses it to judge the whole of you.”

“The greatest luxury is not to have to think about money.”

“Envy, among other ingredients, has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good-fortune.”

“A bibliophile of little means is likely to suffer often. Books don't just cost money; they take up space.”

“A good sentence, I find, is worth a good deal more than a good idea.”

“To be an intellectual really means to be in the profession of thinking.”

“To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life.”

“We are what we read.”

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

“What is the point of it all? Not leaving legacies. But being ripe. Being ripe.”

“The first rule of conversation is listening.”

“Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun.”