Books act like a developing fluid on film. That is, they bring into consciousness what you didn’t know you knew. Clifton Fadiman More Quotes by Clifton Fadiman More Quotes From Clifton Fadiman Cheese is milk's leap towards immortality. Clifton Fadiman cheese milk cheesy For most men, life is a search for the proper Manila envelope in which to get themselves filed. Clifton Fadiman finding-yourself men life A man who is careful with his palate is not likely to be careless with his paragraphs. Clifton Fadiman cooking food men Being a child is in itself a profession. Clifton Fadiman profession children What is a sense of humor? Surely not the ability to understand a joke. It comes rather from a residing feeling of one's own absurdity. It is the ability to understand a joke, and that the joke is on oneself. Clifton Fadiman sense-of-humor ability feelings By the end of high school I was not of course an educated man, but I knew how to try to become one Clifton Fadiman trying men school Seriously, I do not know what to say of this book [ Absalom, Absalom!] except that it seem to point to the final blowup of what was once a remarkable, if minor, talent… this is a penny dreadful tricked up in fancy language and given a specious depth by the expert manipulation of a series of eccentric technical tricks. The characters have no magnitude and no meaning because they have no more reality than a mince-pie nightmare. Clifton Fadiman character book reality A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke-and that the joke is oneself. Clifton Fadiman fools-day funny-inspirational humor I think we must quote whenever we feel that the allusion is interesting or helpful or amusing. Clifton Fadiman helpful interesting thinking The adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech. Clifton Fadiman adjectives vocabulary inspiration Wine is a civilizing agent. Clifton Fadiman agents wine The drinking of wine seems to me to have a moral edge over many pleasures and hobbies in that it promotes love of one's neighbor. Clifton Fadiman hobbies wine drinking The German mind has a talent for making no mistakes but the very greatest. Clifton Fadiman sarcastic mind mistake Socrates called himself a midwife of ideas. A great book is often such a midwife, delivering to full existence what has been coiled like an embryo in the dark, silent depths of the brain. Clifton Fadiman dark book ideas Reading to small children is a specialty. Clifton Fadiman small-child reading children To divide one's life by years is of course to tumble into a trap set by our own arithmetic. The calendar consents to carry on its dull wall-existence by the arbitrary timetables we have drawn up in consultation with those permanent commuters, Earth and Sun. But we, unlike trees, need grow no annual rings. Clifton Fadiman wall birthday years To read in bed is to draw around us invisible, noiseless curtains. Then at last we are in a room of our own and are ready to burrow back, back to that private life of the imagination we all led as a child and to whose secret satisfactions so many of us have mislaid the key. Clifton Fadiman keys imagination children Experience teaches you that the man who looks you straight in the eye, Clifton Fadiman hiding-something eye men Name me any liquid — except our own blood — that flows more intimately and incessantly through the labyrinth of symbols we have conceived to mark our status as human beings, from the rudest peasant festival to the mystery of the Eucharist. Clifton Fadiman wine names blood Science fiction is a kind of archaeology of the future. Clifton Fadiman entertainment fiction art