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For most men, life is a search for the proper Manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.

Clifton Fadiman

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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
Vocation
Discovering
Proper
Search
Men
Manila
Life
Filed
Envelope
Envelopes

More quotes by Clifton Fadiman

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As between mileage and experience choose experience.
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Muhammad Ali: Superman Don't need no seat belt. Flight Attendant: Superman Don't need no airplane, either.
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I found nothing really wrong with this autobiography except poor choice of subject.
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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.
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My main recollection is of the work I had to do in order to eat
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One newspaper a day ought to be enough for anyone who still prefers to retain a little mental balance.
Clifton Fadiman
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I tried to use the questions and answers as an armature on which to build a sculpture of genuine conversation
Clifton Fadiman
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To take wine into your mouth is to savor a droplet of the river of human history.
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A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke-and that the joke is oneself.
Clifton Fadiman
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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
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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.
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Books act like a developing fluid on film. That is, they bring into consciousness what you didn’t know you knew.
Clifton Fadiman
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My son is 7 years old. I am 54. It has taken me a great many years to reach that age. I am more respected in the community, I am stronger, I am more intelligent and I think I am better than he is. I don't want to be a pal, I want to be a father.
Clifton Fadiman
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The German mind has a talent for making no mistakes but the very greatest.
Clifton Fadiman
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Gertrude Stein was masterly in making nothing happen very slowly
Clifton Fadiman
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The only reason for being young is to outgrow it.
Clifton Fadiman
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Cheese is milk's leap towards immortality.
Clifton Fadiman
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A cheese may disappoint. It may be dull, it may be naive, it may be oversophisticated. Yet it remains cheese, milk's leap toward immortality.
Clifton Fadiman
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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
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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