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Courage Is Nine-tenths Context. What Is Courageous In One Setting Can Be Foolhardy In Another And Even Cowardly In A Third.

-Joseph Epstein

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Courage Is Nine-tenths Context.

Joseph Epstein

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Courage Is Nine-tenths Context. What Is Courageous In One Setting Can Be Foolhardy In Another And Even Cowardly In A Third.

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We Do Not Choose To Be Born.we Do Not--most Of Us, Choose To Die, Or The Times Or Conditions Of Our Death. But Within All This Realm Of Choicelessness, We Do Choose How We Shall Live--courageously Or In Cowardice, Honorably Or Dishonorably, With Purpose Or Adrift. We Decide What Is Important And What Is Trivial. What Makes Us Significant Is What We Do, Or Refuse To Do. We Decide And We Choose--and So We Give Definition To Our Lives.

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In Recompense, Envy May Be The Subtlest - Perhaps I Should Say The Most Insidious - Of The Seven Deadly Sins.

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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 Have Myself Always Been Terrified Of Plagiarism - Of Being Accused Of It, That Is. Every Writer Is A Thief, Though Some Of Us Are More Clever Than Others At Disguising Our Robberies. The Reason Writers Are Such Slow Readers Is That We Are Ceaselessly Searching For Things We Can Steal And Then Pass Off As Our Own: A Natty Bit Of Syntax, A Seamless Transition, A Metaphor That Jumps To Its Target Like An Arrow Shot From An Aluminum Crossbow.

I Know How Many Days In Which I Have Just Answered E-mail, Had Three Phone Calls And A Two Hour Lunch. Poof, Gone. They Are Not Infrequent.

The Decisive Moment In The Defeat Of Upper Class, Capital-s, Society May Have Come When, In Newspapers All Over The Nation, What Used To Be Call The Society Page Was Replaced By The Style Section.

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.

I Just Know So Many People Who Have Six Or Seven Foreign Languages And Have Read Everything And Have Musical Training And They Are Still Dorks

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A Writer Can Get Into A Vast Deal Of Trouble Through Misquotation. If You Ever Want To Receive Lots Of Mail, I Recommend You Get A Shakespeare Quote Wrong In A Magazine Or Newspaper.

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While Reading Writers Of Great Formulatory Power — Henry James, Santayana, Proust — 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, "c’mon, 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 Writer’s Cramp While Reading.

What, Really, Is Wanted From A Neighborhood? Convenience, Certainly, An Absence Of Major Aggravation, To Be Sure. But Perhaps Mostof 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.

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What Distinguishes Us One From Another Is Our Dreams, And What We Do To Make Them Come About.

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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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I Was Recently Asked What It Takes To Become A Writer. Three Things, I Answered: First, One Must Cultivate Incompetence At Almost Every Other Form Of Profitable Work. This Must Be Accompanied, Second, By A Haughty Contempt For All The Forms Of Work That One Has Established One Cannot Do. To These Two Must Be Joined, Third, The Nuttiness To Believe That Other People Can Be Made To Care About Your Opinions And Views And Be Charmed By The Way You State Them. Incompetence, Contempt, Lunacy—once You Have These In Place, You Are Set To Go.

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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.

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