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I Am Afraid I Am One Of Those People Who Continues To Read In The Hope Of Sometime Discovering In A Book A Single—and Singular—piece 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

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I Am Afraid I

Joseph Epstein

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I Am Afraid I Am One Of Those People Who Continues To Read In The Hope Of Sometime Discovering In A Book A Single—and Singular—piece 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.

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All Men And Women Are Born, Live, Suffer And Die; What Distinguishes Us One From Another Is Our Dreams, Whether They Be Dreams About Worldly Or Unworldly Things, And What We Do To Make Them Come About... We Do Not Choose To Be Born. We Do Not Choose Our Parents. We Do Not Choose Our Historical Epoch, The Country Of Our Birth, Or The Immediate Circumstances Of Our Upbringing. We Do Not, Most Of Us, Choose To Die; Nor Do We Choose The Time And Conditions Of Our Death. But Within This Realm Of Choicelessness, We Do Choose How We Live.

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