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 Copy Share 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… — Clifton Fadiman Copy Share Image
A bottle of wine begs to be shared; I have never met a miserly wine lover. — Clifton Fadiman Copy Share Image
[Books] will visit you at your convenience, whether you are lonesome or not, on rainy days or fair. They propose themselves as either transient acquaintances or permanent friends. They will stay as long as you like, departing or returning as you wish. Their friendship entails no obligation. Best of all, and not always true of our merely human friends, they… — Clifton Fadiman Copy Share
Name me any liquid except our own blood that flows more intimately and incessantly through the labyrinth of symbols we have conceived to make… — Clifton Fadiman Copy Share Image
When you read a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there… — Clifton Fadiman Copy Share Image
To take wine into your mouth is to savor a droplet of the river of human history. — Clifton Fadiman Copy Share Image
Seriously, I do not know what to say of this book [ Absalom, Absalom!] except that it seem to point to the final blowup of what was once a remarkable, if minor, talent… this is a penny dreadful tricked up in fancy language and given a specious depth by the expert manipulation of a series of eccentric technical tricks. The… — Clifton Fadiman Copy Share
