Life & Wisdom Quote by Clifton Paul Fadiman

Adjectives look like help, but Clifton Fadiman is warning they’re often the slickest way a sentence can embarrass itself. Calling the adjective “the banana peel of the parts of speech” turns a grammar lesson into physical comedy: you can picture a writer striding confidently through a paragraph, only to hit a “very,” a “truly,” a “beautiful,” and go down hard. The joke lands because it reframes a familiar habit - dressing nouns up - as a hazard rather than an upgrade.

The intent isn’t anti-description; it’s anti-crutch. Adjectives are the easiest tool to reach for when you haven’t earned the image. They can be vague (“nice,” “amazing”), evaluative in place of evidence (“important,” “powerful”), or sentimental glue that tries to force a reader to feel something. Like a banana peel, they’re not inherently evil; they’re just what you get when something disposable is left in the path. The subtext is about discipline: precision beats decoration, and strong nouns and verbs can carry weight without a fog of modifiers.

Context matters: Fadiman was a midcentury American man of letters - editor, anthologist, radio personality - steeped in a culture that prized clarity, wit, and cultivated taste. His quip echoes that tradition’s suspicion of purple prose and advertising language, where adjectives pile up to simulate meaning. It’s also a sly status play: the confident writer doesn’t need to shout with “stunning” when they can simply show what stuns.