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Cyril Connolly [1903-1974] English
Rank: 102
Journalist, Critic


Cyril Vernon Connolly was an English literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizon and wrote Enemies of Promise, which combined literary criticism with an autobiographical exploration of why he failed to become the successful author of fiction that he had aspired to be in his youth.

Fear, Wisdom, Art, Food, Great, Health, Home, Life, Love, Men, Morning, Nature, Romantic, Success



QuoteTagsRank
The secret of success is to be in harmony with existence, to be always calm to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore. Life, Success
101
We love but once, for once only are we perfectly equipped for loving. Love
102
The artist one day falls through a hole in the brambles, and from that moment he is following the dark rapids of an underground river which may sometimes flow so near to the surface that the laughing picnic parties are heard above. Art
103
It is only in the country that we can get to know a person or a book. Nature
104
Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.
105
Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate it; a child who fears noises becomes a man who hates noise. Fear
106
Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present.
107
A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out. Great
108
Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of life.
109
Purity engenders Wisdom, Passion avarice, and Ignorance folly, infatuation and darkness. Wisdom
110
The dread of lonliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married. Fear
111
The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife. Health, Men
112
Words today are like the shells and rope of seaweed which a child brings home glistening from the beach and which in an hour have lost their luster. Home
113
The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.
114
We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament, and embrace it with passion, if we want to be happy.
115
All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.
116
No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning. Morning
117
As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.
118
Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.
119
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
120
There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another. This should be made clear to all who contemplate such a union. The avoidance of this pain is the beginning of wisdom, for it is strong enough to contaminate the rest of our lives. Wisdom
121
Like water, we are truest to our nature in repose.
122
No one over thirty-five is worth meeting who has not something to teach us, - something more than we could learn for ourselves, from a book.
123
Those of us who were brought up as Christians and have lost our faith have retained the sense of sin without the saving belief in redemption. This poisons our thought and so paralyses us in action.
124
When young we are faithful to individuals, when older we grow loyal to situations and to types.
125
The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.
126
A lazy person, whatever the talents with which he set out, will have condemned himself to second-hand thoughts and to second-rate friends.
201
In the sex war, thoughtlessness is the weapon of the male, vindictiveness of the female.
202
Imprisoned in every fat man a thin man is wildly signaling to be let out.
203
The worst vice of the solitary is the worship of his food. Food
204
Classical and romantic: private language of a family quarrel, a dead dispute over the distribution of emphasis between man and nature. Romantic
205
When we have ceased to love the stench of the human animal, either in others or in ourselves, then are we condemned to misery, and clear thinking can begin.
206
Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.
207
The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence.
208
For what is liberty but the unhampered translation of will into act?
209
Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.
210
Youth is a period of missed opportunities.
211
It is a mistake to expect good work from expatriates for it is not what they do that matters but what they are not doing.
212
The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this we are not likely to be forgiven.
213
No taste is so acquired as that for someone else's quality of mind.
214
Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.
215
There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.
216
Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear.
217
There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say.
218
The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence.
219
A best-seller is the golden touch of mediocre talent.
220
The only way for writers to meet is to share a quick peek over a common lamp-post.
221
Our memories are card indexes consulted and then returned in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.
222
Today the function of the artist is to bring imagination to science and science to imagination, where they meet, in the myth.
223

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