Quote

We prefer to think that the absence of inverted commas guarantees the originality of a thought, whereas it may be merely that the utterer has forgotten its source.

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
Forgotten
Merely
Commas
Source
Inverted
Thought
Originality
May
Guarantees
Think
Whereas
Thinking
Prefer
Absence

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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.
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I found nothing really wrong with this autobiography except poor choice of subject.
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I think we must quote whenever we feel that the allusion is interesting or helpful or amusing.
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The kind of poetry to avoid in the pretty-pretty kind that pleased our grandmothers, the kind that Longfellow and Tennyson, good poets at their best, wrote at their worst.
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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.
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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.
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Science fiction is a kind of archaeology of the future.
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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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The German mind has a talent for making no mistakes but the very greatest.
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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.
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Wine is a civilizing agent.
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Gertrude Stein was masterly in making nothing happen very slowly
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One's first book, kiss, home run is always the best.
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Cheese is milk's leap towards immortality.
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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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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.
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The only reason for being young is to outgrow it.
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Being a child is in itself a profession.
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A good memory is one trained to forget the trivial.
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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.
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