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
Topics: Birthdays
A good memory is one trained to forget the trivial.
—Clifton Fadiman
Topics: Memory
I think we must quote whenever we feel that the allusion is interesting or helpful or amusing.
—Clifton Fadiman
Topics: Quotations
When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.
—Clifton Fadiman
Topics: Literature, Self-Discovery, Reading, Books
There are two kinds of writers—the great ones who can give you truths, and the lesser ones, who can only give you themselves.
—Clifton Fadiman
Topics: Writing, Authors & Writing, Writers
A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke-and that the joke is oneself.
—Clifton Fadiman
Topics: Jokes
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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