Joseph Epstein Quotes

“Culture 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.”

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

“What's cool about Spider-Man is that it's everybody - anyone, you put on the suit, anyone believes that you're Spider-Man. That's what's charming about the character. He's anyone. He's a huge nerd that ends up being this huge superhero.”

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

“Enlightenment does not mean getting rid of anything. It means changing one's frame of reference so that all things become enlightening.”

“The acquisition of culture requires repose, sitting quietly in a room with a book, or alone with one's thoughts even any crowded concert or art museum.”

“The English philosopher Michael Oakeshott notes that one of the signs of being cold today is that one knows what one doesn't have to know.”

“For reasons no one has yet explained, the Internet is at once riveting and a great killer of concentration.”

“Those who consider themselves good teachers probably aren't.”

“[Snobbishness] is the desire for what divides men and the inability to value what unites them.”