Conservatives and those on the right are usually willing to settle for thinking themselves correct on political issues; those on the left have always needed to feel not so much that they are correct but that they are also good. Disagree with someone on the right and he is likely to think you obtuse, wrong, sentimental, foolish, a dope; disagree with someone one the left and he is more likely to think you selfish, cold-hearted, a sellout, evil-in league with the devil, he might say, if he didn't think religious terminology too coarse for our secular age. To this day one will hear of people who fell for Communism in a big way let off the hook because they were sincere; if one's heart is in the right place, nothing else matters, even if one's naive opinions made it easier for tyrants to murder millions.
Joseph Epstein
What distinguishes us one from another is our dreams... And what we do to make them come about.
dreams
High standards generally -- about workmanship and creation of objects, about what is owed in friendship, about the quality of art and much else -- far from being snobbish, are required to maintain decency in life.
quality friendship life art creation aesthetics decency standards snobbery
politics government opinions conservatism liberals liberalism secularism leftism conservatives
[Snobbishness] is the desire for what divides men and the inability to value what unites them.
human-nature snobbery
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.
people language
My wife who is non-Jewish regrets it all the time that I can say these terrible things about fellow Jews and she can't.
thetimes time
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.
reading culture experience
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.
nations style society
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.
order
Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.
fun
I am married to someone I love.
We know the ideal isn't where the action is.
action
I know from the middle distance I give off the look of being prolific, which is a funny compliment to receive.
funny distance
Not to like ice cream is to show oneself uninterested in food.
food
By the way, the secret of speaking French is confidence. Whether you are right or wrong, you don't hesitate.
rights french wrongs
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