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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
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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
Rather
Absurdity
Understand
Joke
Comes
Surely
Sense
Jokes
Feelings
Oneself
Humor
Feeling
Ability
Residing
More quotes by Clifton Fadiman
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
To take wine into your mouth is to savor a droplet of the river of human history.
Clifton Fadiman
I tried to use the questions and answers as an armature on which to build a sculpture of genuine conversation
Clifton Fadiman
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
Being a child is in itself a profession.
Clifton Fadiman
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
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
One's first book, kiss, home run is always the best.
Clifton Fadiman
I found nothing really wrong with this autobiography except poor choice of subject.
Clifton Fadiman
One newspaper a day ought to be enough for anyone who still prefers to retain a little mental balance.
Clifton Fadiman
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
Gertrude Stein was masterly in making nothing happen very slowly
Clifton Fadiman
Books act like a developing fluid on film. That is, they bring into consciousness what you didn’t know you knew.
Clifton Fadiman
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
Wine is a civilizing agent.
Clifton Fadiman
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
The only reason for being young is to outgrow it.
Clifton Fadiman
A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke-and that the joke is oneself.
Clifton Fadiman
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
As between mileage and experience choose experience.
Clifton Fadiman
