Clifton Fadiman Quotes

My death from the wrists, two name tags, blood worn like a corsage to bloom one on the left and one on the right.

Once again decent citizens will be able to enter this house of worship, kneel down in front of a nearly-naked man hanging from a wooden apparatus by a series of gruesome body piercings, and engage in their bizarre practices of ritualized blood-drinking and cannibalism without being assaulted by graphic images of attractive young women with bare breasts.

What is more insane than to be partakers of the Sacraments of the Lord and not partakers of the words of the Lord? These men truly have to say: "In Thy Name we have eaten and drunk," and they will have to hear: "I do not know you!" (Luke 13:26-27). They eat and drink His Body and Blood in the Sacrament and do not recognize in the Gospel His members spread over the whole world, and for this reason they are not numbered among them at the Judgment.

A writer should give direct certainty; explanations are so much water poured into the wine.

The mark of the Christian is the willingness to look for the Divine in the flesh of a babe in a crib, the continuing Christ under the appearance of bread on an altar, and a meditation and a prayer on a string of beads

Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength, not knowledge and words, that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood.

Never, never trust anyone who asks for white wine. It means they're phonies.

Real feminism is spinsterhood. It's time America admitted that old maids give all women a good name.

I hunger for the bread of God, the flesh of Jesus Christ ...; I long to drink of his blood, the gift of unending love.

On the altar you are looking at the same thing as you saw there last night. You have not heard, however, what this is, what it signifies, or about the greatness of the reality of which it is a sacrament. Your eyes are looking at bread and cup. This is the evidence before your physical sight. But your faith must be instructed concerning it- this bread being Christ 's Body and the cup containing His Blood. Though perhaps these words may be enough to initiate faith, faith must be further instructed in accordance with the Prophet's words: 'Believe that you may understand'

Japanese-owned cargo ship Tsimtsum, flying Panamanian flag, sank July 2nd, 1977, in Pacific, four days out of Manila. Am in lifeboat. Pi Patel my name. Have some food, some water, but Bengal tiger a serious problem. Please advise family in Winnepeg, Canada. Any help very much appreciated. Thank you.

The perverted ingenuity of man has given to water the power of intoxicating where wine is not procured. Western nations intoxicate themselves by moistened grain.

I burst into tears and I cry and cry until it feels as though it is not salt and water being squeezed from my eyes, but blood.

It's wisest always to be so clad that our friends need not ask us for our names.

High and fine literature is wine, and mine is only water; but everybody likes water.

Hate is like a swordfish, working through water invisibly and then you see it coming with blood along its blade, but transparency disarms it.

Kaye: You know what the sun looks like? Janet: No, What? Kaye: Like he slit his wrists in a bathtub and the blood is all over the water. Janet: That's gross, Kaye. Kaye: And the moon is just watching. She's just watching him die. She must have driven him to it.

All else-valor, a good name, glory, everything in heaven and earth-is secondary to the charm of riches.

As it is a major component of blood, water is vital for transporting oxygen to the brain. Heaven forbid that your blood should dry out.

All wines are by their very nature full of reminiscence, the golden tears and red blood of summers that are gone.

Those who have nothing else to recommend them to the respect of others but only their blood, cry it up at a great rate, and have their mouth perpetually full of it. They swell and vapor, and you are sure to hear of their families and relations every third word.

Hunger reduces one to an utterly spineless, brainless condition, more like the after-effects of influenza than anything else. It is as though all one's blood had been pumped out and lukewarm water substituted.

That which we call a snob by any other name would still be snobbish.