Joseph Epstein Quotes

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.

What, really, is wanted from a neighborhood? Convenience, certainly, an absence of major aggravation, to be sure. But perhaps most of all, ideally, what is wanted is a comfortable background, a breathing space of intermission between the intensities of private life and the calculations of public life.

The best joke-tellers are those who have the patience to wait for conversation to come around to the point where the jokes in their repertoire have application.

I should prefer to die laughing, and, on more than one occasion, thought I might.

Generalization, especially risky generalization, is one of the chief methods by which knowledge proceeds... Safe generalizations are usually rather boring. Delete that "usually rather." Safe generalizations are quite boring.

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.

Always seek the general and never quite trust it.

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