Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Clifton Fadiman
Age: 95 †
Born: 1904
Born: May 15
Died: 1999
Died: June 20
Intellectual
Journalist
Literary Critic
Radio Personality
Television Presenter
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Clifton Paul Fadiman
Often
Depths
Ideas
Depth
Book
Silent
Coiled
Great
Full
Embryo
Like
Called
Embryos
Brain
Midwife
Existence
Socrates
Dark
Delivering

More quotes by Clifton Fadiman

Image
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
Image
There are two kinds of writers the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves.
Clifton Fadiman
Image
I think we must quote whenever we feel that the allusion is interesting or helpful or amusing.
Clifton Fadiman
Image
Wine is a civilizing agent.
Clifton Fadiman
Image
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
Image
My main recollection is of the work I had to do in order to eat
Clifton Fadiman
Image
A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke-and that the joke is oneself.
Clifton Fadiman
Image
If you want to feel at home, stay home.
Clifton Fadiman
Image
Insomnia is a gross feeder. It will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking.
Clifton Fadiman
Image
Muhammad Ali: Superman Don't need no seat belt. Flight Attendant: Superman Don't need no airplane, either.
Clifton Fadiman
Image
There is no reader so parochial as the one who reads none but this morning's books. Books are not rolls, to be devoured only when they are hot and fresh. A good book retains its interior heat and will warm a generation yet unborn.
Clifton Fadiman
Image
To take wine into your mouth is to savor a droplet of the river of human history.
Clifton Fadiman
Image
The German mind has a talent for making no mistakes but the very greatest.
Clifton Fadiman
Image
Wine is poetry in a bottle.
Clifton Fadiman
Image
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
Image
Being a child is in itself a profession.
Clifton Fadiman
Image
Cheese is milk's leap towards immortality.
Clifton Fadiman
Image
The adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech.
Clifton Fadiman
Image
One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention.
Clifton Fadiman
Image
When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.
Clifton Fadiman